The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans

David Abulafia

Penguin

£35

A full ‘human history’ of the oceans is probably un-writeable. Professor Abulafia’s magisterial volume focusses on exploration, on the making of material links between societies and the increasing navigational connectedness of the oceans themselves. He identifies breakthrough moments such as in 20AD when Hippalos’s understanding of the monsoon wind systems made it possible to sail directly from Eygpt to India and presents trade, rather than conquest, as the major driving force behind the development of water-borne networks (though violence and exploitation are all too prevalent). The tons of ceramics loaded onto mediaeval Chinese junks ‘simply could not have been carried on the backs of camels’. Substitute aircraft for camels, container-ships for junks and it’s equally true today.