Ancient Mediterranean: Colonial Encounters and Imperialism Business & European Studies Program Spring 2018 Semester - Barcelona

The cultural florescence of the Ancient Mediterranean civilizations had its origins in a series of colonial entanglements beginning first in the eastern Mediterranean. Minoan and Mycenaean communities began to establish links with Egypt and the Near East in the first centuries of the II millennium BC. From then, over a period spanning more than two thousand years, and ending with the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean basin, colonists, merchants, sailors and conquerors sought to benefit from the commercial and cultural opportunities provided by the riches of the eastern, central and western Mediterranean. Collectively, it is the cumulative effects of these culture contacts along with the changes and continuities that accompanied their presence that are implicated in the making of Ancient Mediterranean.