"Why did the Mediterranean not engage with an unprecedented age of globalization? Clear economic analysis shows protective trade policy, poverty, and overpopulation held migration and so the region's global integration back. Most countries reacted to the globalization of commodity markets with tariff hikes, experiencing declining terms of trade and slower wage growth relative to open economies. Overpopulation kept unskilled wages low and wage gaps wide. The emigration of unskilled labor was not high enough to raise domestic unskilled wages, and thereby reduce domestic inequality. Further, the well-documented emigration from the northern Mediterranean to the New World was not high enough to facilitate the region's integration with the global labor market. Emigration from the British Mediterranean, Syria, and North Africa was high enough, but the countries themselves comprised too small a part of the Mediterranean for the region to globally integrate in aggregate. The result: income inequality and relative economic decline. There are lessons for today's debate on migration"--