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While its limits and definitions are still widely discussed, the Mediterranean region is a firm unit of analysis both in the earth and environmental sciences and in history. The connections between the scientific and the historical approaches to the Mediterranean region are widely recognized in the literature, at least since the works of Fernand Braudel. French and German physical geography first defined a botanic and climatic region which then human geographers and historians interpreted as a space partly determining a shared human past. This chapter contributes to this historiography by highlighting continuities between early modern scientific and political interest in “dry Spain” and later climatological definitions of the “Mediterranean climate” as characterized by summer droughts—a definition which became global through Wladimir Köppen’s extension of the Mediterranean climate to places like California, South Africa, and southern Australia. This conceptualization, however, contradicts current approaches to defining the Mediterranean climate by seasonal rains induced by the Mediterranean Sea.

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Regional Geopolitics, French Geography, and Climatology in “Dry Spain,” Eighteenth to Twenty-First Centuries: Birth of the “Mediterranean Climate”

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年

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  • Alberto Celis,
  • Lino Camprubí

摘要

While its limits and definitions are still widely discussed, the Mediterranean region is a firm unit of analysis both in the earth and environmental sciences and in history. The connections between the scientific and the historical approaches to the Mediterranean region are widely recognized in the literature, at least since the works of Fernand Braudel. French and German physical geography first defined a botanic and climatic region which then human geographers and historians interpreted as a space partly determining a shared human past. This chapter contributes to this historiography by highlighting continuities between early modern scientific and political interest in “dry Spain” and later climatological definitions of the “Mediterranean climate” as characterized by summer droughts—a definition which became global through Wladimir Köppen’s extension of the Mediterranean climate to places like California, South Africa, and southern Australia. This conceptualization, however, contradicts current approaches to defining the Mediterranean climate by seasonal rains induced by the Mediterranean Sea.