Volume 14, Number 6 · March 26, 1970
Below the Boot
By R.C. Smail
A History of Sicily: Ancient Sicily to the Arab Conquest
by M.I. Finley
Viking, 256 pp., $7.50
Medieval Sicily: 800-1713 and Medieval Sicily: After 1713
by Denis Mack Smith
Viking, Vol. 1, 256, Vol. 2, 352 pp., (all 3 volumes, $25.00)
Self-government has been rare among the populations of the Mediterranean islands. Their harbors have been an enticement to the commercial Empire builders—the Phoenicians, the Venetians, the British. They have been too small to preserve their independence against sea-borne conquerors—Romans, Arabs, Normans, Ottoman Turks—or to resist being disposed of by will or marriage contract, or by treaty arrangements of Great Powers assembled in congress at Utrecht, Vienna, or Berlin.
Review, 2593 words
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