The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World

by Lincoln Paine

A monumental retelling of world history through the lens of maritime enterprise, revealing in breathtaking depth how people first came into contact with one another by ocean and river, lake and stream, and how goods, languages, religions, and entire cultures spread across and along the world’s waterways, bringing together civilizations and defining what makes us most human. 

Lincoln Paine takes us back to the origins of long-distance migration by sea with our ancestors’ first forays from Africa and Eurasia to Australia and the Americas. He demonstrates the critical role of maritime trade to the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley. He reacquaints us with the great seafaring cultures of antiquity like those of the Phoenicians and Greeks, as well as those of India and Southeast and East Asia, who parlayed their navigational skills, shipbuilding techniques, and commercial acumen to establish thriving overseas colonies and trade routes in the centuries leading up to the age of European expansion. And finally, his narrative traces how commercial shipping and naval warfare brought about the enormous demographic, cultural, and political changes that have globalized the world throughout the post–Cold War era.

This tremendously readable intellectual adventure shows us the world in a new light, in which the sea reigns supreme. We find out how a once-enslaved East African king brought Islam to his people, what the American “sail-around territories” were, and what the Song Dynasty did with twenty-wheel, human-powered paddleboats with twenty paddle wheels and up to three hundred crew. Above all, Paine makes clear how the rise and fall of civilizations can be linked to the sea. An accomplishment of both great sweep and illuminating detail, The Sea and Civilization is a stunning work of history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Maritime, World History, Audiobook, Travel, Science

Audiobook

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Lincoln Paine is the author of five books and more than fifty articles, reviews, and lectures on maritime history. His books include the award-winning The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (Knopf, 2013), Down East: A Maritime History of Maine (Tilbury House, 2000), and Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia (Houghton Mifflin, 1997).

From 2009 to 2012, Lincoln was the guest curator and archivist of the Norman H. Morse Collection of Ocean Liner Materials at the Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine, and since 2006 he has been an editor of Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction, published at Leiden University, The Netherlands, in conjunction with Cambridge University Press.

He serves on the board of the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath (one of the ten best maritime museums in the world, according to marineinsight.com). He and his wife live in Portland. Their daughters happen to be named for ships.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lincoln Paine’s The Sea and Civilization has a lot going for it. It takes on a hugely ambitious topic – the maritime history of the world – that is inherently interesting (think of all the intrepid sailors, the raging storms, the momentous sea battles, the giant squids). It covers a lot of ground, is deeply researched, and is not terribly written. Perhaps the only problem I had with this book is that I did not like it.

Paine has a laudable, if lofty goal. As he states in the introduction, he wants to change the way we see the world by focusing on water. Before the nineteenth century, “culture, commerce, contagion, and conflict generally moved faster by sea than by land.” Over the centuries, it laid the groundwork for what, in hindsight, seemed like sudden changes in history. In tackling this subject, Paine tries to meld world history, with its “synthetic investigation of complex interactions between people” and maritime history, which is “a subject of interdisciplinary and interregional inquiry.” If this sounds a bit heady… Well, I should mention this book is 600 dense pages long and feels like it weighs as much as a child.

The Sea and Civilization starts at the beginning, with people first venturing out into the wide ocean, and ends with the mammoth container ships that allow us to transport endless amounts of Kinder eggs all the way from China to the greedy, nougat-covered hands of our children. As you have already realized, this is a lot of information, and that if every topic were given equal time and thorough coverage, the book would be the size of a white whale. Thus, we are left with the old quandary of scope verses depth. Here, we have a lot of surface area, but it’s all rather shallow. (I’m getting paid by the water metaphor, in case you’re wondering).

Working within the confines of a reasonable word-and-page count, Paine decides to devote most of his discussion to ancient shipping. There are chapters on ancient Egypt, the Bronze Age, the robust activity in the Mediterranean (Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans), the Vikings, and maritime Asia. It is only around page 400 that we reach Christopher Columbus. Since this is a 600-page book, this leaves only 200 or so pages to cover the years 1492-2013. Obviously, Paine decided to tell his story with an emphasis on non-European seafaring, which is fine with me. However, it does leave the book feeling a bit unbalanced.

My issues with The Sea and Civilization have nothing to do with its prodigious length or its focus. It also has nothing to do with the effort that has been put into it. This is clearly a learned work. The bibliography and notes go on for days. There are a lot of maps.

No, my issue is with the style. The Sea and Civilization is not a narrative of maritime history, nor is it an analysis of maritime history (though there are elements of both techniques); rather, it is a reference work. The defining trait of this volume is its relentless recitation of facts. This happened. Then this happened. Then this happened. Then this happened. It all gets rather tedious very quickly.

This is a sample paragraph from randomly opening a page:

Inscriptions at Medinet Habu describing Ramesses III’s repulse of the Sea People present the most complete pictorial record of a Bronze Age naval engagement. The earliest references to such a sea battle is one a stele erected at Tanis, in the Nile delta, and refers to Ramesses II’s victory over a fleet of “Shardana, rebellious of heart…and their battle-ships in the midst of the sea,” around 1280 BCE. The Shardana are depicted subsequently as fighting both for and against the Egyptians, and they were among the “northern” allies of the Libyans defeated by the Egyptians in 1218 BCE. The next naval battle in the historical record is described in slightly more detail in a letter from the last Hittite king, Suppiluliumas II, around 1210 BCE. “Against me the ships from Cyprus drew up in a line three times for battle in the midst of the sea. I destroyed them, I seized the ships and in the midst of the sea I set them on fire.”

This is not exactly a passage to light your heart afire with passion for the sea. But this is a work of history, not a Patrick O’Brien novel. Still, in order to unpack that paragraph – in order for it to make any sense – you need to have working foreknowledge of about 12 different things. This happens constantly in The Sea and Civilization. If you are not a serious student of ancient civilization, you are going to get sucked into the whirlpool of confusion very quickly. Paine does not have time to give you the context of these forgotten and vanished places; he only has time to interpret some of their steles.

I recognize that my ignorance is partly to blame. On the whole, however, my listless response is a measure of Paine’s reference-like structure. It seems counterintuitive to complain about facts in a history book (akin to complaining about the moistness of water), but you can find facts anywhere. If I simply wanted to know the evolution of trade in ancient seafaring societies, I could find a website (or a thousand) and spend some time reading it. Yes, I could do that, but I wouldn’t, because it would be boring, and I have a non-boring life to live (playing my PS4, drinking white wine, avoiding familial obligations, etc). When I read a book on a topic, I want those facts either molded into an enjoyable tale, or analyzed and dissected for deeper meaning.

Every once in awhile, Paine does this, and you see flashes of how much better this enterprise could have been. Early on, for instance, Paine discusses how people in small, open boats could have moved from island to island without map or compass or sextant.

That people were able to make so many minute landfalls again and again was due to their outstanding familiarity with the ocean environment and their ability to “expand” the size of their intended landfalls by relying on phenomena other than direct visual contact…Some of these techniques are common to other maritime traditions – following birds that feed at sea but nest on land, noting where different species of fish or sea mammals are found, looking for smoke generated by natural fires, or discerning changes in water color over reefs. In the Pacific, sailors developed the ability to read the patterns of ocean swells and how these change as they are deflected when passing islands. Clouds can announce the presence of islands lying below the horizon by shifts in color, speed, and shape. Finally, there is the “loom” of an island, a faint but telltale column of light above islands, especially atolls with lagoons. Taken together, these phenomena widen the range at which sailors can sense the presence of land by as much as thirty miles, which increases dramatically the likelihood of finding even the smallest speck in the sea.

Think of the guts it took to go island hopping in a time before time! Sections like this jolted me out of my fact-overload-induced torpor. The problem is that these sections are too far apart, and are never given primacy. Paine chooses trivia over the romances of history at every turn. For instance, he gives you a little bit about ship construction, which I liked, but this information always takes a back seat to his timeline. It was always a paragraph verses a page or two. I’d have much rather there been a focus on how we got from dugout canoes to container ships full of Kinder eggs, but alas.

Paine frankly seems uninterested in the nuts and bolts of seafaring. At one point, he notes that there are four main navigational techniques. He goes on to describe one of them, and then trails away from his initial thought. Now, the next time I’m on the ocean, the only navigational tool I’ll be able to utilize is following the coast. (I might as well toss my sextant in the trash).

The Sea and Civilization is a book that I looked forward to as soon as I found it while browsing in Barnes & Noble. I liked its heft, its grandiosity, its pretensions. In the end, though, it lacked what is necessary in any book about the oceans: a sense of the ocean. There is nothing within these pages that describes the endless horizons, or the sting of cold salt spray, or the ominous front of a darkening storm, or the thin beacon of hope shining from a cliff-top lighthouse, or the mournful wail of a fog horn, or the scream of wind through the rigging, or the smell of a wharf, or the terrifying exhilaration of being a human person caught between the infinities of the sky and the infinities of the sea.

[Boudewijn · Rating 2 out of 5]

With its 599 pages, this is a though one. Lincoln Paine took on an ambitious project, namely a complete maritime history of the world. The result is a comprehensive overview, which is its strength as well as its weakness - I found myself skipping parts where I either was not interested or already knew a lot.

Anyone looking for a broad overview of how the seven seas served as a path to human development may be interested. Anyone looking for a detailed and in-depth overview of a particular time period, might need to look further.

[Omar Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good review of the history of seafaring (and not just seafaring, as the book makes clear, the navigation of inland waterways has been crucial to human civilization; there is a reason almost every major ancient city is on a river), with an emphasis on the time before Columbus. This is good in a way, because more people know about the sea adventures that happened AFTER Columbus, but if the intent was to write a book about the sea and civilization, then devoting only 200 or so pages to the last 500 years is not fair, since it is these 500 years that outshone and outdid all that had happened before. I assume a little bit of the urge to "balance" Eurocentric descriptions of the world was involved in this matter, but it may be that mostly it has to do with trying to keep the book within manageable limits.
In any case a great introduction to the importance of water transport, exploration and naval warfare throughout human history. I learned new things about ancient Egypt (I never internalized how much they relied on the Nile, not just for agriculture, but also for transport and military action, or that they had an active trade and naval interest in the Red Sea and beyond) and East Asia (e.g. that the Koreans had a period of maritime trading prominence) and that the compass in the West was not necessarily a transfer of technology from China (the Western compass soon had features that the Chinese never invented or used, and it is not clear that the invention itself owed much to China). The role of various canals (the Red Sea canal from the Nile in Egypt, which connected the Mediterranean with the Red sea long before the Suez canal; the grand canal in China, various canals in Europe, the Erie canal, and so on) in interlinking rivers and providing connections across vast distances is described in detail, as are ancient ship routes, construction techniques, navigational techniques (including the use of multiple "soft" features like the flights of land birds, the shape and movement of clouds, the faint changes in light, that allowed ancient mariners to find tiny islands in vast seas using no modern navigational tools). Naval warfare and its developments are described well, though the details become very scant once you get to the 20th century (presumably because interested readers already know, or can learn, so much more by reading 1000s of other books on these topics).
All in all, a good introduction to the topic and well worth a read.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an absolutely comprehensive study of the maritime history of the world from when mankind took to the waters back in the stone ages to present day. Heck even the kayaks of the Inuit have a paragraph. This 700+ page ebook of just text (not counting another 300+ pages of notes and bibliography) covers every culture and aspect of peoples and ships. There is a lot of information, and I filled my lack of knowledge concerning the maritime history of the Indian Ocean, SE Asia and China.

Some interesting facts that I picked up:
SE Asian ships did not use nails until 16th century.
The Yuan Dynasty, a dynasty that I would consider the least interested in sailing and trading by sea (that dynasty was created when the Mongol nomadic horse tribes conquered China) built so many ships that they caused deforestation in parts of China that are still present today.
The Indian Ocean and SE Asia trade was much more diverse, cosmopolitan, and extensive compared to the Mediterranean Sea for most of the history. The Portuguese inherited it rather than discovering it in the 16th century.
Sail was not used extensively in northern Europe until after Roman occupation despite having trade relationships with the the Phoenicians and Classical Greeks who had sail.

A highly recommended book for those who want to know more about world maritime history.

[P. Lundburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love books that have a new way of looking at things, and Lincoln Paine does not disappoint in this as well as the thorough approach to re-telling history he provides. Like probably all of us, I have been taught history through "landlubbers'" eyes, casting everything in terms of political and economic borders and regions that assume the sea is just a transit without influence. So wrong. Paine tells a different history, opening our eyes to just how key the sea has been in the formation of civilizations and the world we now live in.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a long book that was weakened by a lack of analysis. What the reader is confronted with is a ponderously long history of humankind's history on the water [fresh & salt] and the significance of this for us. As far as it goes it is comprehensive, but it doesn't do enough to contextualize and analyze this for the general reader.

There are also hints of an anti-Western bias rife amongst a particular school of academics-for some 50 or 60 years now. This distorts history and pushes away a whole category of reader. Let us be honest about our history, but let us not wallow in a self-loathing which undercuts and distorts the remarkable achievements of Western civilization.

Because of the lack of analysis I cannot give this book a strong general recommendation, but for those interested in maritime history it is a worthwhile edition to their library.

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

On a positive note, I take my hat off to the author for the sheer amount of research he must have put into this. If you've ever wanted to know how much duty was charged to Persian ships calling at Indian ports in medieval times, this is the book for you. I confess I found it heavy going. It started well, with some interesting stuff about prehistoric sea travel; the voyages of the Polynesians etc; and I also enjoyed the last chapter, which covered themes like globalisation and the development of container ships and oil tankers. At times though the rest of the book reminded me of the old fashioned geography textbooks in my 1970s high school, which used to list the main exports of particular regions. Perhaps more importantly there seemed to be a dearth of analysis of all the factual data, which meant that at the end I didn't feel I had learned a great deal. Surprisingly enough, and despite the level of detail provided for some aspects, other areas seemed to be treated superficially or not mentioned at all. There was extensive coverage of maritime commerce, warfare and piracy in the Mediterranean, but no mention of the seaborne Arab/Ottoman slave raids between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, that are estimated to have enslaved around a million people and left large parts of the coastlines of Spain and Italy uninhabited. The huge Atlantic slave trade is covered but with little or no analysis of its impact on Africa. In the section on WWI, the author (rightly) covers the German U-boat campaign, aimed at strangling supplies to Britain, but hardly mentions the British naval blockade of Germany, regarded by many historians as a significant factor in the Allied victory. I could go on, but you get my drift. Perhaps in the end the project was over-ambitious; the subject area simply too wide-ranging for the kind of detailed description attempted here.

Glancing at the other reviews, I can see that most people have reviewed this more positively than I have, so maybe I am being too harsh. However this is a long voyage for the reader, and I can't say it was one I especially enjoyed.

[Doug Cornelius · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lincoln Paine wants to change your view of the world. He wants you to focus on the blue parts of the map that cover over 70% of the world's surface. In his book, The Sea and Civilization , he makes that case that mankind's technological and social adaptation to the water has been a driving force in human history, whether it was to wage war, or for migration or commerce.

Perhaps Jared Diamond's great book Guns, Germs and Steel should have been Guns, Germs, Steel and Boats. Paine makes the case by telling the tales of recorded history through the lens of the seas.

At times he succeeds. At other times, the book comes across as a rote recital of history. There were several places in the book where I wanted more insight. Paine is incredibly thorough, hitting most of the major events affected by sea travel. I wish there was more depth instead of breadth.

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding — dense, readable, with tons of context that serves to expand a reader's knowledge and perspective of history far beyond popular narratives.

[Andres Felipe Contreras Buitrago · Rating 5 out of 5]

De estos dos meses de lectura, este libro es de los mejores, está muy bien escrito, de verdad que mirar el comercio más allá de los lugares obvios, suma mucho, ver una China y un sudeste asiático, con un comercio vibrante y global es enriquecedor. Hay ideas importantes en este libro, lo único negativo para mi, son los últimos capítulos más contemporáneos donde se abordan ideas no tan interesantes. Pero mirar el comercio el comercio desde Egipto y Mesopotamia hasta hoy es magistral.

El libro empieza mencionando que los primeros humanos construyeron barcos, lo cual se puede ver en representaciones rupestres de hace 6000 años, es importante señalar que los viajes por mar son más rápidos y seguros, con esto presente. Nos situamos en los primeros viajes marítimos en Oceanía, donde el centro de la atención será en el asentamiento de todo el Pacífico, los cuales fueron ocupados por grandes navegantes los cuales contaban con técnicas muy avanzadas hace 3500 años, no está muy claro la razón de esta gran diáspora por todo este gran océano, lo cierto es que estos primeros navegantes miraban el cielo, observaban el agua, seguían animales y leían el viento, todo este conocimiento era transmitido de generación en generación, los experimentos actuales demuestran la importancia del conocimiento local. Las embarcaciones que se usaban eran canoas dobles en las que se llevaban suministros a otras islas. Respecto al Caribe y el Pacífico en América latina, hay que mencionar que existió un comercio marítimo, que iba desde Ecuador hasta Guatemala y México, y en otras zonas del Caribe, se buscaban conchas en este comercio, Ecuador se sitúa como un buen punto del comercio marítimo gracias a su ubicación y recursos forestales. En Mesoamérica se realizaba un comercio muy centrado en las costas y no se llegó a comerciar hasta las Antillas, finalmente la Florida tuvo una tradición náutica y por supuesto que los habitantes de Alaska y el Ártico tenían una gran orientación marítima, en los que usaban tablones.
El segundo capítulo empieza con las embarcaciones en el antiguo Egipto donde el comercio marítimo en esta civilización era muy importante, ya que se podían encontrar embarcaciones en el río Nilo, El Mediterráneo oriental y el mar rojo, las embarcaciones locales se usaban para la pesca, caza y transporte, la gran evolución que se tuvo en Egipto fue pasar de embarcaciones de papiro a madera las cuales contaban con una vela, estas embarcaciones serán cocidas, lo cual las hacía más fáciles de montar y desmontar, los barcos también eran importantes en Egipto en su papel funerario, no hay que olvidar que muchas embarcaciones llevaron piedras para la construcción de las grandes pirámides dado que los suministros de este material estaban en lugares dispersos, otros objetos que se llevaron en embarcaciones fueron obeliscos. Con el tiempo se desarrollaron buques de guerra para escoltar la piedra que llegaba a Egipto, las embarcaciones también empezaron a comerciar con los nubios principalmente Marfil, ébano e incienso. Otro lugar importante para el comercio egipcio fue Arabia, Asia Menor, Mesopotamia e Irán, el lugar donde más rico fue el comercio fue en el Levante gracias a la importación de madera, de la cual Egipto escaseaba.
El autor nos muestra como una expedición impulsada por una faraona llevó a comerciantes egipcios hacia el mar rojo donde consiguieron incienso, mirra Marfil y ébano, estas embarcaciones egipcias contaban con muchos suministros debido a la escasez de puertos seguros. Otro de los comercios antiguos que tenía Egipto fue con la isla de Creta, donde hay muchos Morales de Egipto tenían una inspiración de esta civilización, las embarcaciones egipcias siguieron mejorando a causa de batallas navales que realizaron contra los hicsos, y posteriormente en la expansión de Tutmosis hacia el puerto de Biblos y en la derrota del pueblo de Mitani.
La edad de bronce se caracterizó por un comercio próspero en lugares que iban desde Mesopotamia hasta el mar de la India, este comercio se centraba en bienes preciosos y exóticos que querían conseguir la élite para su distinción. Las embarcaciones de Mesopotamia no contaban con velas, las naves principales se desarrollaron en Egipto, puesto que en las diferentes tablillas mesopotámicas se hace poca mención a embarcaciones, aunque eso no impide que si hubiera un comercio en el Golfo Pérsico que llegaba a lugares como la ciudad de Bahréin, donde se conseguía peces y dátiles, el imperio de Sargón de akkad llegó a comerciar con lugares tan lejanos como la India, este último lugar comerciaba con Persia y el Golfo Pérsico, se han encontrado sellos indios y mesopotámicos en ambos lugares, el estrecho de Ormuz se caracterizó por un comercio de madera, cobre y diorita, para mantener este control fue necesario las primeras flotas militares a manos del imperio acadio, un puerto importante que se ha descubierto es el de Omán. Con el dominio babilónico bajo el reinado de Hammurabi, todavía existió un comercio.
Volviendo al Mediterráneo, la isla de Chipre era un principal exportador de cobre hacia el Levante, que de allí se dirigía a Mesopotamia, el principal puerto levantino, era Biblos, el cual contaba con una gran alianza comercial Con Egipto, en esta época el comercio era tan próspero que se han encontrado sellos babilónicos en Creta y cerámica minoica en Egipto, con la caída de la civilización cretense llegan los micénicos, los cuales comercian con Asia Menor, Chipre, Levante y Egipto, esta civilización griega ya contaba con soldados armados en los barcos, los diferentes barcos encontrados actualmente demuestran el rico comercio que se lleva a cabo en la edad de bronce. Pero esta última vería una crisis con la llegada de los pueblos de mar los cuales usaron diferentes embarcaciones para conquistar diferentes territorios en la que finalmente fueron detenidos por los egipcios.
Con el fin de la edad de bronce se pasa una época en que el comercio marítimo estuviera centrado en ciudades estado, aquí el papel importante estaría en los fenicios y griegos los cuales fundan diferentes puertos y empiezan a construir barcos dedicados hacia la guerra. Los puertos del Levante empiezan a recuperarse y se lleva a cabo una industria naval centrada en el puerto de tiro, que contaba con buenos recursos forestales y una industria metalúrgica, por ello necesitaron de la importación de grano para subsistir, el comercio de los fenicios podía llegar hasta Yemen y la India todo con el fin de buscar productos exóticos como el sándalo, el comercio en el mar rojo todavía seguía controlado por los egipcios, pero los fenicios irían más allá al crear colonias en Túnez y Marruecos, un aspecto importante de estos nuevos puertos fue la creación En España y Cerdeña en la búsqueda de estaño y plata, los puertos en Portugal y las Islas Canarias eran en búsqueda de pescado y los que se situaban en Marruecos era para la obtención de oro, Marfil, sal, cobre y plomo.
Los griegos empezaron sus expansiones marítimas en Chipre y Creta, para posteriormente situarse en Sicilia y Cerdeña, su tradición naval la aprendieron de los fenicios, la mayor representación que tenemos de los primeros barcos griegos nos llegan por las horas de Homero, en el que los barcos contaban con varios remos y eran muy dependientes de las velas. Los griegos llegarán incluso hasta el mar negro y los cónicos se asentarían en anatolia, En Ucrania podrían conseguir oro y grano, mientras que Grecia exportaría hacia sus colonias bronce, cerámica y vino. Los primeros viajes de Cartago, irían tan lejos como al norte de Europa y Senegal mostrando sus grandes dotes marítimas. Los primeros buques creados por fenicios y griegos están destinados tanto para el comercio y el combate, la forma de derrotar otros barcos eran con un ariete pesado, en esta época se pasa del birreme al trirreme, estas embarcaciones tenían infantería, arqueros y lanceros.
En la época en que estaban ascendiendo los griegos otra potencia en Oriente se alzaba y eran los persas los cuales contaban con una gran flota a causa de que habían heredado la de los fenicios y egipcios, las invasiones que llevaron a cabo este imperio hacia Grecia necesito de las anteriores tradiciones navales y la de otros griegos y jónicos por lo que muchas veces parecía eso una guerra civil, pero serían los griegos los que en Salamina demostraría una mayor experiencia naval contra los persas. Con la victoria de los helenos, llevarían a cabo una expansión en el Egipto y Chipre persa, en el que Atenas tenía un gran control del mar, y llegaron a depender mucho del grano importado del mar negro.
Hoy en el quinto capítulo vemos la llegada de otras dos nuevas potencias Cartago y Roma, antes de estas dos Alejandro magno había capturado los puertos persas en el Levante, sabiendo que este imperio contaba con un gran poder marítimo del cual Alejandro no podía hacerle frente, un gran acontecimiento para la navegación marítima fue la creación de Alejandro magno del puerto de Alejandría. Volviendo a Italia, los etruscos introdujeron una gran innovación la cual fue los barcos de 2 mástiles, Sicilia también contaba con sus propios navegantes que podían hacerle frente a los auges expansionistas de Cartago. Las embarcaciones como los polirremes, contaban con una catapulta, el aumento de tamaño de los barcos hacía que se demandará mucha mayor madera por lo que se entraba en guerra por esto, una de las grandes embarcaciones de la época era la del Egipto tolemaico. La piratería empezó a hacerse común en aquella época en la que los habitantes de Rodas debían proteger a los navegantes contra la piratería creando así las primeras patrullas, la piratería se centraba principalmente en el egeo y el adriático debido al constante comercio con el mar negro del cual se traía miel, pescado y granos.
Roma empezó a construir sus primeras flotas marítimas hacia el 311 a.C, para esa época Cartago tenía un dominio total de los mares del Mediterráneo occidental con sus múltiples colonias, fue por esto que los romanos debieron copiar las embarcaciones de Cartago a causa de su inexperiencia en la navegación, No obstante, los romanos innovaron como el uso de rampas para tomar barcos de Cartago, un aspecto central es que esta última estaba más centrada en el comercio que en la vida militar. Por lo que al final los romanos tendrían una ventaja en tierra y empezarían a mejorar lentamente en el dominio marítimo. Para la época de Julio César, estaba viendo un resurgimiento de la piratería por lo cual Pompeyo el grande debo llevar a cabo una campaña contra toda la piratería que se está llevando a cabo en el Mediterráneo, una de las grandes batallas navales que se dieron fue la gran victoria de Octavio contra Antonio.
La creación del imperio romano llevó a la creación de una armada permanente y flotas en diferentes lugares del imperio desde Egipto hasta el mar negro, por lo que se vivió una época de Comercio y mejora y construcción de puertos navales, un aspecto importante en la navegación marítima fue la importación de grano hacia la capital de Roma, los romanos a su vez comerciaban con el vino hacia otros lugares, pero el autor destaca que si bien lo marítimo fue importante para Roma no fue como tal un imperio centrado en el agua.
El comercio romano llegó hasta el mar rojo y el océano Índico, donde el imperio se aprovechó del conocimiento egipcio que tenía en rutas comerciales, fueron los egipcios los que por mucho tiempo siguieron comerciando en estas dos rutas marítimas, en el que los indios eran importantes para el conocimiento del océano Índico, el budismo en su expansión se ayudó de los mares para llegar al sudeste asiático Y China, los budistas a su vez necesitaban importar especias y hierbas del sudeste asiático para su medicina. Los indios como se mencionó comerciaban, con el sudeste asiático y el mar arábigo, los persas tuvieron muchos puertos en el Golfo Pérsico, inclusive con Alejandro magno se mostró un gran interés por el comercio con Yemen a causa de la demanda de incienso y mirra. Luego de la muerte de Alejandro magno el Egipto que heredó Ptolomeo comercio con África oriental para conseguir elefantes de guerra para hacerle frente a los del imperio seléucida, por lo que por mucho tiempo como se ha venido señalando en monopolio egipcio se tuvo en el sur de Arabia y la India, por lo que se vivió un próspero comercio en toda esa época en el océano Índico.
Retornando con los romanos esto siempre mostraron interés por el mar rojo, por lo que tuvieron un rico comercio con Somalia y China, en estos lugares se podían encontrar objetos como la mirra y el incienso, especias como la pimienta en la India y la seda por supuesto en chino, otros objetos que se conseguían en estas largas rutas serán piedras preciosas, todos los objetos exóticos del océano Índico llegaban al puerto de Alejandría donde se exportaba por todo El Mediterráneo. Se ha encontrado cerámica romana En la India e incluso monedas, el principal producto de exportación de la India era la pimienta, por lo que en los puertos de este lugar habían personas de muchas procedencias y lugares, los indios importaron muchos caballos, puesto que no tenía muchos de estos, la piratería cerca de las costas indias muestran que existe un comercio muy lucrativo durante la época romana.
La isla es Sri Lanka, era una muy importante donde se encontraban inclusive cristianos nestorianos, en este lugar se comerciaba con el Golfo Pérsico a manos del nuevo imperio persa sasánida, el comercio en estos lugares se centraba en la seda el clavo y el sándalo, por lo que los sasánidas controlaron ahora el comercio del océano Índico y el mar rojo, por supuesto que los bizantinos también llevaron a cabo expediciones comerciales hacia esta rica isla, por lo que para la llegada de los árabes habían unas prósperas y ricas rutas comerciales de las cuales aprovecharán. Las embarcaciones que habían en el océano Índico eran diferentes a las del Mediterráneo, los principales comerciantes en esta región antes de los árabes eran indios e indonesios los cuales llegaron inclusive a llegar a la isla de Madagascar, los productos más importantes eran los exóticos.
Los chinos tenían una gran tradición en el manejo de las aguas como se pueden ver en sus grandes sistemas de canal, el principal comercio chino en sus primeros años se centró en el sudeste asiático, la primera dinastía Qin y han, tuvieron mucho interés en el comercio marítimo del Mar de China meridional, inclusive mucha de la expansión China hacia el sur se debió a causa de la búsqueda de artículos de lujo y exóticos, luego de la victoria China en la campaña de Yue, tuvieron una salida hacia el sudeste asiático, en los puertos han, se conseguían productos como perlas y cuernos de rinoceronte. Otro producto de gran interés para los chinos eran las piedras preciosas y productos raros los cuales se intercambia por oro y seda, los mercaderes chinos se encontraban hasta bengala, En el Reino de Funan, se encontraban puertos con objetos que procedían de China, India, Persia y el Mediterráneo, los chinos siempre mostraron interés en comerciar directamente con Roma aunque la Persia sasánida siempre lo impedía a causa de que quería mantener el control de intermediario, sobre las relaciones chinas con Japón antes de la era común existieron pocas misiones diplomáticas y comerciales, lo que unido a estos dos grandes imperios era el interés por la península de Corea, las embarcaciones del sudeste asiático también contaban con sus propias técnicas de costura y construcción, algo interesante es que los chinos siempre contaron con embarcaciones autóctonas y poco se vieron influenciados por intereses extranjeros, algo interesante de los barcos chinos es que contaban con Torres de las cuales disparan.
Con la caída del imperio romano de Occidente el Mediterráneo ahora estará controlada principalmente por los bizantinos y luego por los musulmanes, un barco encontrado datado de la antigüedad tardía muestran el rico comercio que había entre los musulmanes y Constantinopla, desde la Fundación de esta última se mostró la gran importancia de este puerto en el cuerno de oro, con los vándalos asolando el Mediterráneo occidental y capturando diferentes islas fue necesaria una gran flota mandada hacer por justiniano para luchar contra los vándalos. La expansión árabe hizo que estos consiguieron muchos puertos bizantinos al punto de crear flotas musulmanas capaces de asediar Chipre y Constantinopla, una gran victoria musulmana contra los bizantinos demostró su gran poderío naval, aunque fracasaron en la toma marítima de Constantinopla por lo que fue necesario para los bizantinos construir una gran cadena para evitar la entrada de barcos, en la España omeya Sevilla se convertiría en el puerto marítimo más importante y los musulmanes empezaría a tener mayor control del sur de Italia y de diferentes islas como Creta, Sicilia y Malta.
Hoy una complicación para los bizantinos en derrotada flota musulmana es que no había una sola sino que habían diferentes flotas musulmanas, el barco bizantino más importante fue el drumond, los barcos musulmanes Por su parte eran muy similares a los bizantinos a causa de que adquirieron muchos puertos de este anterior imperio, los barcos para aquella época también estaban centrados en el traslado de caballos, los bizantinos también dependen mucho del comercio en el que la ciudad de Constantinopla se podían encontrar comerciantes de distintos lugares. La península arábica antes de la llegada del islam ya contaba con una tradición marítima que se pueda ver en sus territorios al sur, En Egipto con el dominio musulmán también se crearon diferentes astilleros y se crearon flotas en lugares como Túnez y Alejandría. En la Marina musulmana existía una mayor especialización, pese a esto, poco podían hacer frente al fuego griego que habían en los barcos bizantinos; hoy sin embargo, con el tiempo los musulmanes también lograron replicar esta arma bizantina, sobre esta última hay que mencionar que siempre contaron con buenos recursos para construir barcos y todavía para aquella época la madera seguía siendo un bien codiciado al punto de librar guerras por lugares con abundantes bosques.
Por mucho tiempo Alejandría seguía exportando grano hacia Constantinopla hasta que fue detenido por los árabes, en el Mediterráneo se encontraba un comercio de esclavos y madera, además de otros productos esenciales, animales textiles y materias primas, también había diferentes navegantes buscando la peregrinación y oportunidades económica, el más próspero de los comercios fue el de los esclavos el cual era muy demandado por los musulmanes, estos últimos en sus empresas marítimas contaban con un sueldo fijo mientras que los bizantinos lo hacía por medio de ganancias, también para aquella época habían contratos comerciales, préstamos y la creación de un derecho marítimo para racionalizar el comercio.
Las aguas del norte de Europa por mucho tiempo no fueron importantes en el comercio marítimo, cambiando todo lo anterior con la llegada de los vikingos, antes de esto existieron algunos viajes ingleses en el Ártico buscando ballenas y morsas. Desde el norte de Europa llegaba el ámbar y el estaño a Grecia, para ello se usaban los diferentes ríos que llegaban hacia el sur de Europa. Las islas británicas se caracterizaron por la exportación de grano, ganado, este año y oro a cambio de vino, armas y aceite de oliva. Los frisones, fueron el primer pueblo del norte de Europa en tener redes comerciales marítimas, estos llegaron a tener nexos con los francos y los británicos, luego llegaron los vikingos con sus primeros ataques navales por lo que se necesitó de construir defensas en el Reino Franco y sus ataques llegaron tan lejos como a la península Ibérica, sus expediciones llegaron tan lejos como Islandia, Groenlandia y América del norte.

[Sam Reaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a history buff I'm a sucker for big fat volumes that promise you the whole story in one place; I've plowed through H.G. Wells's The Outline of History and devoured Paul Johnson's Modern Times. I also love sea stories, so this doorstop tome was right up my alley.
A maritime history of the world makes sense because our planet is mostly covered with water and very early on people discovered that large quantities of tradeable things were most easily shifted by floating them. So as people fanned out across the world, much of the time they were on boats. Lincoln Paine's survey of maritime activity includes the major river systems and so manages to cover just about all the bases.
There's a lot to keep track of; who knew there was so much going on in the Indian Ocean two thousand years ago? There are a lot of silted-up harbors, sunken galleons and lost civilizations out there. But even if you have trouble keeping Shihr, Siraf and Saymur straight, seeing the epic of history through the lens of maritime traffic is an interesting slant on an old story.

[Wendell · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best history books I've read in years, Paine's splendidly written narrative account of humanity's relationship with the sea takes a genuinely global approach to its subject, a far cry from maritime history's traditionally Western orientation. About two-thirds of the book takes place before the Columbian Exchange, allowing Paine to put the Indian Ocean in its proper place as the center of Eurasian maritime activity for a good two thousand years. As a result, the years of Western dominance come across as a little dull in Paine's telling, but I expect that's because of their prior familiarity, at least to this reader. Livening up considerably by the end with an incisive look at the present state of global trade and maritime exchange, it was a book I was genuinely sorry to see end.

[Jack Laschenski · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing history of the world from the point of view of ships and the merchants who built them.

Starting about 5,000BC folks traveled by the water in the Pacific and in Egypt.

Trade was usually the goal. Exploration another. And in Egypt's case, transporting the stones for the pyramids.

What did they build?

How die they navigate?

What was the effect on cultures?

And how did trade develop into war?

744 pages of treasure!

[晓木曰兮历史系 Chinese · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the process of life is a cycle, perhaps the history of human civilization will also move toward the same fate. The waters gave birth to the ancestors of mankind. From a certain point of view, these waters that gave birth to human civilization are an extension of the ocean, and going to the ocean is a fateful inevitability for mankind. It’s just that this inevitability looks back today, full of vicissitudes and emotions, because in the history of human development, the ocean is like the azure blue that has been silent beside the land-centered theory. People do not have a high level of understanding of it, although Along the way, the ocean is of extraordinary significance to mankind, although mankind has unknowingly created and is creating a great ocean civilization.

What Lincoln Payne presents in "Ocean and Civilization" is precisely this view of civilization history that is intertwined with loss and return. As a well-known marine historian in the United States, this sentiment in "Ocean and Civilization" is very compatible with Lincoln Payne’s long-standing view of marine history. Generally speaking, the focus of his marine history research is on marine civilization. The premise of marine history research is to provide a unique perspective for the study of human affairs by studying events that occurred at sea or related to the ocean." And these "related events" are a complex that integrates politics, economy, culture, religion, technology, war, art and other dimensions, that is, what we usually call the "complex of civilization", "Ocean and Civilization" "It is the first time that Lincoln Payne has clearly moved from the historical research of ocean history to a new dimension in the construction of the history of ocean civilization.

Because of this, Lincoln Payne needs to do a lot of work in "Ocean and Civilization". The first thing to do is to break the previous view of ocean history. If marine civilization was accidentally lost in the past years of mankind, it may not refer to the actual situation of the development of marine civilization, but mankind’s conceptual disregard and neglect of it. In Lincoln Payne’s view, the previous view of marine history is the result of a mixture of simple instrumentalism and indexism, that is, scholars are committed to studying "ancient ships, ship models, images, ethnography, and related dictionaries and bibliographies." This will surely lead historians to equate maritime history with maritime history and naval history more. Obviously, this tendency is not conducive to the development of marine history and marine civilization itself, because this narrow perspective is really "different from the heavens" compared to the vastness of marine civilization itself. "Ocean and Civilization" is also cut from many themes such as shipbuilding, maritime trade, ocean exploration, human migration, naval warfare, etc. It uses a variety of topics covering history, science, politics, economy, society, art, religion, language, and law. The "God perspective" of other disciplines clarifies such a simple but always ignored fact: marine history is a branch of world history, and marine history is essentially the history of marine civilization.

Although this fact has always been emphasized by Lincoln Payne, in this heavy "Ocean and Civilization", we can still feel the rich taste of maritime history, and even more the flavor of the history of ship development. Even so, as a senior marine history expert, Lincoln Penn’s textual writing is still fascinating, starting from "the earliest voyage in the world with existing evidence did not appear earlier than 7000 years ago in Mesopotamia "(P12) From the beginning, the development of human shipbuilding technology is beyond people's inertial imagination. "The oldest ships with masts came from southern Mesopotamia and Kuwait, dating back to 6000 years ago" (P58). By the time of Ancient Greece, three oars warships appeared in the Mediterranean area. In the era when Rome dominated the Mediterranean, not only a mature port city has appeared, but also a real fleet has appeared. Of course, the shipbuilding technology has exceeded the phenomenon of modern people. At 1,300 tons, the captain described how the ship docked in the port of Piraeus after a seven-day storm” (P140) until the global fleet in the nuclear age. This is obviously a writing style with Lincoln Payne's own characteristics, because the concept of "Ocean and Civilization" was "formed when I was writing "The Ship of the World"."

This is even a bit of "antinomy". The narration of marine history and marine civilization must get rid of the ambiguity of maritime history and ship history, but it can never be separated from its framework as a special carrier of marine history. The reason why marine civilization has gone from loss to return The process seems to be relatively long, perhaps it is caused by this innate restriction. On this issue, Lincoln Payne’s solution is full of "kingdom" momentum-telling the history of the ocean at the same time directly from the perspective of civilization history. Since it can't be avoided, let's come together. Readers will naturally experience it in reading. The history of marine civilization goes beyond the fascinating part of the history of navigation and the history of ships. For example, “how the navigation industry expands the sharing of certain knowledge (including market and business practices, or trade areas in navigation and shipbuilding)” as a main line, this is obviously a completely “historical civilization” approach. This is one of the important reasons why when Octavian triumphed in Egypt, the land part of the empire became more glorious. The continued prosperity of maritime trade in the Mediterranean region made the Roman country begin to experience unprecedented endogenous power. Develop. This is not a simple arrogance from a geopolitical perspective such as "the Mediterranean becomes an inner lake", but an expounding the strong symbiosis between "ocean" and "civilization".

If commercial or economic factors are some kind of mild marine civilization clues, then the ocean is catalyzed by the gradual development of human science and technology, and political factors brought about by its important strategic significance are accompanied by a kind of confrontation and violence, that is, "rulers". And how the government uses taxation, trade protection and other mechanisms to develop marine undertakings and use this to consolidate and strengthen its power.” Often this kind of struggle for sea power resulted in wars. Even in the 6th century when the level of human navigation was just mature, the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid dynasty at that time had already fought a final battle for maritime supremacy in the western Indian Ocean. This kind of war often spread from the sea to the land. In the 16th century when global trade was born, the Spanish and the Portuguese pioneered the prototype of the modern global route, but this process inevitably brought about a political confrontation, sailing in order to sail. It does not exist in the marine history of mankind. In 1511, the governor of the Portuguese-Indian colony, Albuquerque, the conqueror of Goa and Malacca, described the process of attacking Goa to the King of Portugal in this way: "I set fire to the city and killed every One person. For four consecutive days, your soldiers' hands were covered with blood. No matter where we are, as long as we find a Muslim, we will never let him go. We filled the mosque with corpses and set it on fire... Your Majesty, This is a very great operation, well deployed and successfully completed." (P423)

In fact, this is exactly the embarrassment that has always been in the process of the return of marine civilization. When more and more "hardships and cannons" opened the closed doors of the country, many once glorious land powers suddenly realized the strange snobbery that they used to think "far in the sky". Is very powerfully posing a deadly threat to myself. As a result, when human navigation technology achieved "time and space annihilation" (the title of Chapter 18), the issue of the ocean reminded people in every corner of the earth. It is in this sense that we say that marine civilization has always been "lost" and "return" intertwined and parallel, because even if the ocean and navigation are gradually valued by mankind, it seems that the weight of marine civilization itself in the sequence of human civilization has increased unprecedentedly. However, mankind’s understanding of this civilization is still a product of the inertia of the “lost era” of the past, and mankind has not yet examined its current and future marine life from the perspective of a “historical view of civilization”. Even after the 1950s, the “communication” of nations around the ocean was still a game in a sense. “The U.S. government can stipulate and enforce its rights in its own exclusive economic zone, and this is because the U.S. is The superpowers in the world. However, most citizens of small and medium-sized countries have no such choice." (P618)

This involves a set of key questions: What is "civilization"? What is the correct way to open the "return" of marine civilization? Speaking from a broad perspective, "civilization" refers to the overall cultural appearance of human beings in the historical stage after bidding farewell to the barbaric era and having the phenomenon of "culture", as we call "human civilization". From a narrow perspective, "civilization" refers to the overall cultural aspect of a specific human social unit or "cultural area", such as "Eastern civilization", "Western civilization", "Chinese civilization", and "Egyptian civilization". , "Islamic civilization", "Maya civilization" and so on. In short, as a whole concept of "civilization", large or small, its "cultural attribute" is a fundamental attribute, not an additional attribute. Therefore, Lincoln Penn defines one of the main thrusts of "Ocean and Civilization" as telling "how the cross-sea spread of language, religion, and law facilitates inter-regional ties". This is actually a reflection of how the ocean and civilization are culturally attributed. The accurate explanation of the interaction of layers is also the most important reason why this book can be called a "history of civilization" of a local Tao.

Then, Lincoln Payne actually insisted on clarifying the fact that one of the main driving forces of human development is in the ocean behind the vast historical materials of the book. This is the correct way to open the "return" of marine civilization, and it is the height that mankind should give to marine civilization. The famous scholars of the history of world civilization McNeill and his son said in his famous brief history of the world "The Web of Mankind": "In the three and a half centuries after 1450, the various peoples on the earth have gradually formed a unified community. From this time on In the beginning, treating the different regions of the earth as isolated-as we have sometimes done before-is becoming more and more meaningless, and we will no longer think and describe in this way. In the future we will gradually increase Explorations on various topics related to the world, including the process of globalization." This is strikingly similar to the generational division of "Ocean and Civilization". In the 1450s, the Pope officially declared in the edict that Portugal was the first to proceed. With jurisdiction over the land discovered during the maritime expeditions, the European maritime expedition era officially ushered in a climax. Regardless of the original intention, human beings began to advance to the depths of the ocean on a large scale, and indeed "gradually formed into a unified community."

Since "civilization" has always been a holistic concept, it is not difficult for us to discover the importance of marine civilization for the entire human civilization. "Ocean and Civilization" built its own text system from this perspective. Lincoln Penn organized such a huge system from two clues: one is the vertical line of civilization generation, from ancient Egypt to bronze Era, then to the Middle Ages, the Viking Era, and then the Steam Era and the Steel Era until today; one is the horizontal geo-connections, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, to Asia, to the Atlantic and Pacific, to the whole world. At this point, Lincoln Penn has realized the panoramic display of the cross-cultural encounters that have occurred through the ocean since the very early formation of mankind. We have seen the economic, political, cultural, scientific and other aspects of the ethnic groups of different civilizations. Mutual influence, "Ocean and Civilization" has realized a butterfly change from a vertically isolated maritime history to a crisscrossed and interconnected maritime civilization history. This is naturally the personal glory of Lincoln Payne, but it is also the inevitable return of the glorious return of marine civilization, and the inevitable change of human beings to the "marine civilization perspective" after entering the "Marine Century".

Yes, the “lost” of marine civilization is, in a sense, only the forgetting and neglect of human beings at the cognitive level, but her “return” carries a certain acceleration. Even more and more scholars have argued from the perspectives of geophysics and so on that the earth should be regarded as a world composed of "oceans" and "islands", and the entire "land" should be regarded as a "big island" and a few islands. One "Nakajima" and many "small islands". In the era of "globalization", with the global use of modern transportation and communication tools, economic trade and cultural communication have already circulated globally, "pure" "inlandization" has long ceased to exist, and the sky is only an extension of the ocean. The space age is nothing but a forty-five-degree elevation angle variation of "ocean thinking." No matter from the perspective of national and ethnic interests, or from the perspective of the development of human civilization itself, everything about marine civilization has never been a counterattack with a supporting role, but should be the return of the king. British marine biologist Karum Roberts warned the world in "If the Ocean Was Empty": "Since life can come from the ocean, it can also die in the ocean." That's right, today, as we know it later. When staring at the deep blue, maybe that blue has been staring at us deeply.

[James Lyon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who would have thought an 800-page maritime history of the world would sometimes be a slog to get through?
It was definitely worth it in the end, though - a really unique perspective and focus on the biome covering 70% of the Earth’s surface.
I’ll admit I got bogged down during the India and China chapters, mainly because I was overwhelmed with geography I am not familiar with (where the heck is the Strait of Malacca?). I’m glad the author took a balanced approach, though.
Things really picked up for me at the start of the European Age of Exploration, following the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English in turn.
Curiously, one of the most interesting parts of the book was the last one on the late 20th century. Container shipping has absolutely revolutionized modern commerce, yet it is almost completely unnoticed by most people. It is a background process; the days of port towns with sailors and merchants and porters is gone, for better or for worse.
Anyway, good book!

[Adam Jarvis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh, it was ok. This was a difficult read. It was not what I was expecting. Some parts were really deep, and I often found myself drowning in seemingly endless facts.

I also felt like I needed to have a map handy as I read, to buoy me up through the book as I was not familiar with all the seas, inlets, straits, canals, etc. through all parts of the world.

The Bronze Age and early history was especially difficult to navigate, but it was smoother sailing after the 1600s.

Call me shallow, but I enjoyed the parts about America the best as it was much more familiar to me.

Overall, it was interesting to see the tidal wave effect that the sea has had on civilization, but this was a really vast, expansive book, which I sometimes felt lost in, and there were several (to me) uninteresting parts that I waded through.

[Mircea Poeana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mari descoperiri geografice, razboaie, surse de hrana, voiaje de placere, comert, sclavi si emigranti...
Drumuri de ape care au schimbat si schimba lumea.
Progrese ale mintii umane si ale creatiilor sale, de la trireme, piroga, canoe si corabii lungi pana la nave cu zbaturi, aburi si propulsie nucleara.
Marile si oceanele raman mereu la fel intre fruntariile lor geografice, dar se schimba continuu odata cu mersul civilizatiei umane.
Istorie navigatiei inseamna, de fapt, drumul nefarsit al omului spre noi cuceriri.

[Nemezida · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m back online with a review of the book The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine.

The author is a specialist in maritime history and writes books, articles and lectures on the topic.

In this work, his idea was to shift the emphasis on the development of world history from land to sea. Therefore, the narrative of this volume covers a period from prehistoric times to approximately the end of the 20th century.

Therein lies the problem. At the earliest stages of human development, there is little confirmed information – and even much less about civilization from a maritime point of view. Thus, for almost half of the book, up until the Middle Ages, most of the described events are short excerpts from the general world history. Honestly, this part of the book was somewhat crumpled, uninteresting and even downright tiresome.

However, I would like to praise the second part. Thanks to the development of maritime, it’s possible to single out information about it as a separate story over time, and the author describes it with knowledge of the matter.

Also, I liked the modern chapter. Now I’m aware of how my parcels with books are transferred across the seas in container ships :)

[Darnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this book a decent rating, but I didn't enjoy it. It tends toward long lists of facts about civilizations with limited connective tissue, whereas I was hoping for a more in-depth look at individual aspects of maritime history with a focus on theory. Absolutely fine for what it is, just not for me.

[Kai Frolich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent world history from the perspective of the sea! Maps are included, but I would urge the reader to frequently use google maps while reading.

[Graham Bear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What an undertaking this work was. Kudos to the author. I have to say its an astounding work and such a huge topic. Mr Paine did a great job and I thoroughly enjoyed his book..

[Joanne Fate]

Why can't I give books 4.5 stars yet?

[Ted Hillary · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heavy but enjoyable read.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

It wasn't always smooth sailing, as a lot of the writing just skimmed the surface. Painfully dull at times. Funny that a "water based" book would be dry reading. Perhaps a magazine article would have sufficed?

[Don Trowden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable achievement, one that fascinated me for months but also one I had to read in small sections because it is so rich with information and I oftentimes read this book with Wikipedia open next to me. Those side trips into Wikipedia oftentimes took me off into other ancient places of interest as the ancient names are not always the same as the modern. This was especially true for my favorite part of the book, the ancient Phoenician, Greek, Indian, and North African ports and civilizations. One could construct a fabulous modern trip using this book as source material.

The book tells the history of civilization from the earliest times to the present through the lens of maritime development. That necessitates a good deal of information about boat and ship construction, which some might find of less interest, but it is in fact a core component of mankind's history of problem-solving. One of the great appeals is seeing how boats were being built by ancient peoples living at opposite ends of the globe, who arrived at some of the same or similar solutions. And trying to piece together from ancient discoveries (many nmade in recent times) how civilizations overlapped through distant travel and trade.

I would place this book in the same category as Barbara Tuchman's work (especially one of the more dense ones, A Distant Mirror), in that they are rich in detail and probably not a good choice for those looking for lighter historical works. I felt this work successfully bridged the gap between scholarly work and mainstream history. It is a great concept extremely well executed.

[Bill Tress · Rating 3 out of 5]

How humans have expanded all over this globe is a very interesting topic, we have been told that our origin was Africa, and from there we travelled East and eventually populated the entire globe. Paine’s answer to this question is that humans used the earths waterways to reach all the corners of this planet.
In the introduction of this book, he stated that other authors have written on this subject but have limited the use of the seas story to the European models of global exploration. Paine starts at the beginning and covers the entire globe!
He goes around the world explaining how man first sought his nourishment from streams, rivers, bays and the sea but did so only in sight of land. From these first small steps Paine tell us how man eventually circumnavigated the globe.
Paine's approach to telling the story of this evolution and slow growing familiarity with the sea is best illustrated in his narrative on Polynesia. Men on rafts fishing and exploring yet never leaving site of land hopped from island to island. At some point, they either get lost and/or followed birds, fish and currents to unknown territory and other islands. Paine tells the story of the way they explored the sea and how their rafts evolved from canoes to boats to ships. They powered their crafts first by hand using paddles, then oars, then sails and using these tools over the millennium Polynesians crossed the great expanses of the Pacific Ocean.
Using these same methods, Paine takes us around the world examining the growth of civilizations and their reliance on rivers, seas and oceans. Commerce was the driving force in this expansion, yet the results were exploration and growth of Cities and States. Religion also spurred development and was spread around the world by men on the sea. He tells us the origins of all the great religions from Confucius to Buddhism, to Islam and Christianity. He shows how the sea facilitated the spread of these creeds; religions caused war and yet, while as it spread it increased the commerce.
Paine’s story is the history of man. Man is by nature an explorer, a warrior and a seller of goods, traveled over the world's seas and built ports in locations that were centralized gathering places for commerce. these ports grew into great city states.
He tells the history of the great leaders and explorers from antiquity on to present time. He explains how nature in the form of land mass, tides and Monsoons dictated where and when man travelled until modern propulsion systems changed the world.
The development of technology was the main catalyst allowing man to move from the sight of land. Man found ways to cross oceans and find small islands hundreds or thousands of miles away and then return home. For instance, the Vikings crossed the Atlantic Ocean by hoping island to island to reach Greenland, Iceland and Ireland, each voyage increased their
knowledge of this ocean. They employed shaman who possessed a sixth sense for navigation. These wise men followed the stars, birds, seaweed and currents to find their way. But this was not unique to the Vikings or the Polynesians. All of man’s sea travel slowly added to the common knowledge that eventually led to circumnavigation of the world. In the Southern Hemisphere, man first learned to use the monsoons to their advantage. They knew when to travel East or West when the monsoon season dictated the direction of the wind. Man’s discovery of tools like compasses and sextons added to their progress. Sails came in all kinds of configurations and ship size dictated their shape. This book is a store house of all this knowledge and even more when man’s history is added to his adventures at sea. The book is well researched and qualifies as a reference book to be retained and used to identify how conflicts in Religion and the competitiveness of nations resulted in the history of man and his wars.
The reading of this text was a slow trudge along the history of sea travel. There was much to learn from this book, so I stayed on the course and sailed into head winds for most of the book. When Paine got to a more modern history, some of which I knew and some that was new to me, my speed and enjoyment picked up. He went from oars, to sail, to steam and ultimately to nuclear propulsion. In the more modern section, he went from the Spanish American War to the American Civil War to WW1, Korea, to WWII. He conveyed all of this knowledge in 590 pages!
I gained knowledge from reading this book, but I also was frustrated by the amount of knowledge being presented to a capsulized form. If a person were graded on the retention of all the information presented just by reading this work for pleasure; a passing grade would be difficult to achieve.
The weaknesses of this book made it difficult retain all the knowledge presented. I believe there is too much here for one volume. Also, Paine goes too deep into some topics like how various religions developed or the various wars that impacted development, or the many dynasties in Asia and how they effected commerce, while this material was interesting. It is my opinion that at times he moved away from the original purpose of this work and making the book somewhat incoherent. To understand names and places, He needed to place maps beside his text. I don’t know if Paine cut and pasted in this report, but he used names and places from ancient texts that could only be understood and located by a scholar who specialized in these areas and that excluded me!
I don’t want to be too hard on him, because I admire the tremendous amount of research it took to put this book together. I am glad I read it because I am sure that at some time in the future, I will be able to claim a knowledge of some subject just because I read this book.

[Robert Sparrenberger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring, tedious, and reads like a bad high school history book. I was really excited to start this one but was quickly disappointed. Way to broad in scope and with little depth due to the long history the author hopes to bring together. It also felt like at times that the author was trying to drop as many names and places as he possibly could. It all ran together.

The last few chapters were better but it didn't save this one. Steer clear on this one.

[Linda]

Review for PW.
Omygosh, this was a Herculean effort - I should have started this much earlier! But likely an unprecedented achievement, and the author did a great job.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Phoenicians and the Greeks were the first people to create sea-based colonial empires, the implications of which have inspired imitators and fascinated observers down to the present” (79).

“Dionysus is credited with being one of the first people to experiment with polyremes, galleys with more than one rower to an oar” (111).

“Traditionally, sovereigns were entitled to any wrecked ship or cargo cast up on their shores. Abolition of the right of wreck made it possible for goods recovered from a wreck to revert to their original owners” (337).

“Columbus’s crossing of the Atlantic; Gama’s opening of an all-sea route between Europe and the Indian Ocean; Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe, from east to west; and Urdaneta’s first west-to-east crossing of the Pacific—these were the navigational triumphs of the age, indeed of any age” (376).

“As to the actual practice of navigation, we can consider four distinct approaches: coastal piloting, dead reckoning, latitude sailing, and position fixing” (381).

In the 1600s it took 10-and-a-half weeks to cross the Atlantic from England to New England (461).

“The eighteenth century is the last in which sail-powered ships predominated worldwide. Sailing warships continued to be built well into the nineteenth century, and merchant ships into the twentieth, but it was in the eighteenth century that the full potential of the sailing ship was unleased and the world first made whole. The 1700s also saw an unprecedented r ise in the number of people who put to sea” (473).

“‘Annihilation of Space and Time.’ So trumpeted a newspaper headline announcing the arrival of the first commercially viable transatlantic steamship in New York on April 22, 1838, barely three decades after the inauguration of regular steamship service on the Hudson River” (508).

“Long-distance passengers are a thing of the past; their death knell was sounded by the commercial success of the passenger jet, which made its first commercial transatlantic flight in 1958. Nonetheless, the number of people who take cruises every year –between fourteen and twenty million passengers worldwide in 2010—far exceeds the number of passengers ever carried by ship at the height of the passenger trades. This figure includes passengers on sea voyages of more than 60 hours with at least two ports of call and does not count ‘cruises to nowhere’—‘nowhere’ being international waters where duty-free shopping and gambling are allowed—which had their origins in Prohibition” (537).

“The most obvious reason for the shift in people’s appreciation of seafaring and its related discipline is that maritime industries have largely vanished from public view, thanks to almost incalculable increases in automation and efficiency. Today, there are about 1.2 million seafarers in international trade worldwide, which means that less than half of one percent of the population moves 90 percent of the world’s freight over seas the cover 70 percent of the earth’s surface” (582-83).

[Norman Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another fascinating history, covering a topic much too vast to be covered in a single volume. Consequently, my main gripe with this book is that it omitted some stuff that I thought should be covered, or covered in more detail.

For example, the loss of life at sea on passenger ships is addressed in this book but the author does not mention the Titanic except in asides. My understanding of that disaster is that it led to significant changes in on-board safety regulation, in inter-ship communications, and risk (e.g., iceberg) advisories, all of which are part of the story in this book. Perhaps the author thought that the story was too well known to need repeating; certainly, he had to pick and choose his history to keep it to 600 pages.

Generally, I found the text easy to follow, there were times I felt that I needed so additional information to understand the distinction between one thing and another. For example, in discussing the alternative riggings used by sailing ship, an illustration showing those ships would have been useful.

There are a bunch of maps at the start of the book. These are particularly useful for the early years, since many of the locations mentioned are hard to find today. The later maps were less useful, and appear to have been included out of a spirit of completeness. For example, the map showing the maritime world at the turn of the millennium (i.e., today) doesn't show Singapore though it is described in the text. I think a few "trade route" lines on the maps might also have been useful.

These are quibbles, though. I enjoyed this book, and found that its synthesis of maritime history provided a fresh perspective on world history in general.