Mediterraneanism

Mediterraneanism is an ideology that claims that there are distinctive characteristics that Mediterranean cultures have in common. Mediterraneanism is an ideology that claims that there are distinctive characteristics that Mediterranean cultures have in common. Giuseppe Sergi asserted that the Mediterranean race was 'the greatest race...derived neither from the black nor white people...an autonomous stock in the human family.':24–27 Italian Fascism initially adhered strongly to a similar version of Mediterraneanism that claimed a bond existed between all Mediterranean cultures and Mediterranean peoples, often placing Mediterranean people and cultures above other cultures. This form of Mediterraneanism was in stark contrast to and a defensive reaction towards the then-popular Nordicist racial theory common in Northwestern, Central and Northern Europe which categorized South European or Mediterranean people as inferior to Nordic people. Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi claimed that the Mediterranean race was 'the greatest race in the world'. He defined it as 'the finest brunet race which has appeared in Europe…derived neither from the black nor white peoples, but constitut an autonomous stock in the human family.'.:24–27 Sergi claimed that the Mediterranean Race probably historically spoke a Hamitic language related to the language of the prehistoric Egyptians, Iberians, and Libyans.:24–27 Sergi noted that the Roman Empire led to the spread of Mediterranean civilization across Europe and thus contemporary European civilization was bound by ancestry to the Mediterranean race.:24–27 Sergi rejected Nordicism's claims of Nordic peoples being strongly Aryan, saying that Aryans were not Nordic in appearance.:24–27 Instead he claimed that Nordics were 'Aryanized Euroafricans', and that the Nordic race is related to Mediterranean race.:24–27 Sergi responded to typical Nordicist claims of superiority of Nordics over Mediterraneans, by saying that the reason for the lack of wealth or progress in Latin countries as compared with countries of Northern Europe was because the Aryans of the North, including northern Italians, living in frigid climates had developed close-knit groups that allowed them to survive in that environment, as such they became more disciplined, productive civic-minded than southern Italians.:24–27 Because of this, Sergi claimed that the northern Italians, whom he identified as having significant Aryan heritage, were more advanced than southern Italians.:24–27 However Sergi rejected claims that Aryans who were a Euroasian people were responsible for founding Greco-Latin civilization. Sergi described the original Aryans in Europe in a negative manner: 'The Aryans were savages when they invaded Europe: they destroyed in part the superior civilization of the Neolithic populations, and could not have created the Greco-Latin civilization'.:24–27 Sergi claimed that the only contribution by the ancient Aryans to European civilization was Indo-European languages.:24–27 He claimed that the ancient Aryans interbred with the Mediterranean race north of the Po Valley but declined south of it and became insignificant south of Rome.:24–27 Sergi claimed the Nordics had made no substantial contribution to pre-modern civilization, noting that 'in the epoch of Tacitus the Germans ... remained barbarians as in prehistoric times'.:24–27 He claimed that the Romans were unable to Romanize the Germans because the Germans were averse to the Romans' civilizing influence.:24–27 He rejected Germanic scholars' claims that Germans were the saviors of a decadent post-Roman Italy.:24–27 Instead Sergi claimed that the Germans were responsible for bringing forward the Dark Ages in the Medieval period and that the Germans of the Medieval period were known for 'delinquency, vagabondage, and ferocity'.:24–27C. G. Seligman supported Mediterraneanist claims, stating 'it must, I think, be recognized that the Mediterranean race has actually more achievement to its credit than any other, since it is responsible for by far the greater part of Mediterranean civilization, certainly before 1000 B.C. (and probably much later), and so shaped not only the Aegean cultures, but those of Western as well as the greater part of Eastern Mediterranean lands, while the culture of their near relatives, the Hamitic pre-dynastic Egyptians, formed the basis of that of Egypt.' French historian Fernand Braudel in the 1920s invoked the conception of the Mediterraneanism including claims of Mediterranean universalism to justify French colonialism in Algeria. Braudel had entered his doctrinal studies in the 1920s at the precise time when the issue of Mediterranean unity was being fiercely debated. Braudel supported the pro-unity argument. The argument for Mediterranean unity justified French colonialism in Algeria and viewed the Berbers in a place of privilege amongst the peoples of Africa, as retainers of the lost Roman legacy in Africa. It was claimed that if the Berbers could be culturally separated from the Arabo-Islamic surrounding culture, that the Berbers would become natural allies of the French through their Mediterranean heritage that would challenge anti-colonial sentiment. At first, Italian Fascism promoted a variant of Mediterraneanism that, like Sergi's strain of Mediterraneanism, held that Mediterranean people and cultures shared a common historical and cultural bond. Initially, this variant mostly avoided explicit racial connotations; its followers often rejected biological racism and instead stressed the importance of the cultural aspects rather than the racial aspects of the Mediterranean peoples. Implicitly, however, this form of Mediterraneanism posited the Mediterranean race and Mediterranean cultures as superior to other groups, including the Northwestern European, Germanic, and Nordic people, and it arose partially as a response to Nordicism, a racial theory popular at the time among Northwestern European and Germanic racial theorists, as well as racial theorists of Northwestern European descent in countries such as the United States, that viewed non-Nordic people, including Italians and other Mediterranean people, as racially subordinate to the Nordic, Aryan, or Germanic peoples. In a 1921 speech in Bologna, Benito Mussolini stated that 'Fascism was born... out of a profound, perennial need of this our Aryan and Mediterranean race'.:11 In this speech Mussolini was referring to Italians as being the Mediterranean branch of the Indo-European Aryan race, in the sense of people of an Indo-European heritage rather than in the more famous Nordicist sense that was promoted by the Nazis.:39 Italian Fascism emphasized that race was bound by spiritual and cultural foundations, and identified a racial hierarchy based on spiritual and cultural factors.:39 Mussolini explicitly rejected notions that biologically 'pure' races existed in modern times. Italian Fascism strongly rejected the Nordicist conception of the Aryan race that idealized 'pure' Aryans as having certain physical traits that were defined as Nordic such as fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes, traits uncommon among Mediterranean and Italian people and the often olive-skinned members of the so-called 'Mediterranean race.':188 The antipathy by Mussolini and other Italian Fascists to Nordicism was over the existence of such theories by German and Anglo-Saxon Nordicists who viewed Mediterranean peoples as racially degenerate.:188 Nordicism and biological racism were often considered incompatible with the early Italian fascist philosophy; Nordicism inherently subordinated Italians and other Mediterranean people beneath the Germans and Northwestern Europeans in its proposed racial hierarchy, and early Italian fascists, including Mussolini, often viewed race as a cultural and political invention rather than a biological reality or saw physical race as something that could be overcome through culture. In a speech given in Bari in 1934, Mussolini reiterated his attitude toward Nordicism: 'Thirty centuries of history allow us to look with supreme pity on certain doctrines which are preached beyond the Alps by the descendants of those who were illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil and Augustus'.