The Mediterranean International System in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods

This paper takes the view that the Mediterranean basin constituted an international system long before the emergence of the modern international system. It argues that the degree and intensity of the interactions among Mediterranean societies after the Crusades made them to be part of a common system which can rightly be called as Mediterranean international system. Referring to Martin Wight’s conception of a “secondary states system among the Latin Christendom, Orthodox Christianity and the Islamic Caliphate”; the paper makes the point that the Mediterranean international system of the late medieval and early modern periods had been a trans-regional system and formed the cradle of the wider system of Afro-Eurasian international system.