Over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Mediterranean world saw the rise of new legal institutions, markets, and technologies as well as profound social and political transformation. The workshop will explore this history from the vantage point of small actors: slaves, migrants, muleteers, postmen, watercarriers, and merchants. The papers will show how small history can contribute to a new understanding of processes unfolding on a global scale, from the rise of a new kind of state to European financial expansion, and from the ascent of liberal politics to anxieties about identity and livelihoods.