Studies of the pivotal historic place of the Mediterranean have long been dominated by specialists of its northern shores, that is, by European historians. In this groundbreaking volume, seven leading authors challenge views of Mediterranean space as shaped by European trajectories and so problematize our comfortable notions. Drawing perspectives from the south--from its Arab and African shores--the book asks anew: What is the Mediterranean? What are its borders and defining characteristics? What forces of nature, politics, culture, or economics have made the Mediterranean, and how long have they endured? How long will they? Covering the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, this timely volume brings the early modern world into conversation with the modern world in new ways, making clear that only recently have the northern and southern been differentiated into separate cultural and political zones. The Making of the Modern Mediterranean offers a blueprint for a new generation of readers to rethink the world we thought we knew.