Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Model of Modernity
As Philip Mansel writes in Le Monde diplomatique, the colonial experience in the Levant was not what some might imagine. Cosmopolitan, open, tolerant and thriving, Alexandria, Smyrna and Beirut were like Paris, New York and Hong Kong today. According to Mansel, the Eastern Mediterranean was the first region to escape the prison of the nation state.
