The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans - Hardcover

Abulafia, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199934983 ISBN 13: 9780199934980

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2019

Synopsis

From the beginning of history to the present, a sweep of the world's oceans and seas and how they have shaped the course of civilization.

From the author of the acclaimed The Great Sea, ("Magnificent . . . radiates scholarship and a sense of wonder and fun," Simon Sebag Montefiore; Book of the Year, The Economist), David Abulafia's new book guides readers along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans--the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian--which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. Over time, as passage through them gradually extended and expanded, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks developed, evolving from local exploration to lines of regional communication and commerce and eventually to major arteries. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and of course people--free and enslaved--across vast expanses, transforming and ultimately linking irrevocably the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Far more than merely another history of exploration, The Boundless Sea shows how maritime networks gradually formed a continuum of interaction and interconnection. Working chronologically, Abulafia moves from the earliest forays of peoples taking hand-hewn canoes into uncharted waters, to the routes taken daily by supertankers in the thousands. History on the grandest scale and scope, written with passion and precision, this is a project few could have undertaken. Abulafia, whom The Atlantic calls "superb writer with a gift for lucid compression and an eye for the telling detail," proves again why he ranks as one of the world's greatest storytellers.

About this title

About the Author:

David Abulafia is Emeritus Professor of Mediterranean History at Cambridge University. He is the author of many books, including The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean.

Review:

"David Abulafia takes us on an epic journey through the open (ocean) spaces of the earth, tracing interconnections that brought together people, religions, and civilizations . . .This is history on a grand scale that is destined to become a standard work, written with a vivid clarity that ranges from dodos to Aztec lords, Rapa Nui to cod fishers in Newfoundland waters. By any standard, this is a brilliant historical achievement that leaves one in awe of the author's intellectual breadth." - Brian Fagan, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Beyond the Blue Horizon: How the Earliest Mariner Unlocked the Secrets of the Oceans

"Were my caravel ever to be becalmed, lost in some hot oceanic doldrum, I would hope to have David Abulafia's grand book on hand, both to remind me of sailors who braved wilder and colder seas in centuries past, thereby linking continents and archipelagos and civilizations together -- but also in the hope that just one of its vast multitude of pages might eventually catch the faint breath of a tropical breeze, and waft me up onto a shipping lane, and back onto my unwittingly abandoned course." - Simon Winchester, author of Atlantic and Pacific, as well as The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0199934983
• ISBN 13: 9780199934980
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 1088