Blurb:

This chapter introduces the rationale for studying global history from the context of specific localities and viewing the Levant in a longue durée perspective. The relevant lands are geographically defined and the editors offer a reflection on different conventions for naming these lands. Certain salient characteristics of the Levant are identified and elaborated, such as its perennial internal fragmentation, its geopoliticially strategic location as a corridor connecting cultural epicenters at three different continents, and the resultant constant exposure to successive world empires and trade networks.