“There is not an area where the author does not show profound knowledge and grasp of the material concerning Europeans in host societies. This book may well remain as a cornerstone for future research.”
“Clancy-Smith’s remarkable monograph sheds light on the myriad facets that makes the area so beguiling.”
“Julia A. Clancy-Smith deserves great credit. . . . Mediterraneans is a work of fundamental importance for our knowledge of migratory movements, precolonial and colonial structures of control, labor and gender relations, and cultural negotiations in the Mediterranean region and beyond.”
“There is little doubt that [this book] will become a standard for historical scholarship about the Maghrib and the Mediterranean. . . . [It is] is an important study not only for those interested in Mediterranean and Maghribi history, but for anyone interested in the history of migration around the Mediterranean basin.”
"From the anonymous Sicilian fishermen to Maltese coachmen, smugglers and burglars, from Sardinian female servants to French women missionaries and Ottoman future statesmen, Julia Clancy-Smith draws a lively, poetic, portrait of the thousands of migrants who came to Tunisia in the 19th century, changing its space, rhythms and sounds long before the advent of French colonial rule: An ethnographic journey through 19th-century Tunisia that beautifully captures the spirit of the place."—Lucette Valensi, author of The Birth of the Despot: Venice and the Sublime Porte
"In this meticulously researched, beautifully written work, Clancy-Smith has used an extraordinary array of sources from administrative and legal documents to personal letters and testimonies to bring the nineteenth-century Mediterranean world alive. Covering a wide range of situations from domestic service to contraband and exploring both the personal, legal, and administrative dimensions of each, she demonstrates the different ways in which private and public spheres intersected. The book is essential reading not only for scholars and students but also for anyone interested in gender, migration and the societies of the Mediterranean."—Patricia Lorcin, author of Imperial Identities
"In her groundbreaking study of population movements, Clancy-Smith reconceptualizes the nineteenth-century history of North Africa by inserting the 'missing' people into the social fabric. She shows the roles these Southern Europeans of modest means played in creating a borderland society whose impact continued during the colonial period. Mediterraneans opens new windows into power structures, labor history, issues of gender, and social and cultural negotiations, along the way replacing binary constructions with a much more complicated world."—Zeynep Çelik, author of Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830-1914.
