Paine Lincoln. The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World

Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. — 784 p. — ISBN 978-1-4000-4409-2A 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.List of Illustrations
Maps

A Note on MeasuresTaking to the Water
The River and Seas of Ancient Egypt
Bronze Age Seafaring
Phoenicians, Greeks, and the Mediterranean
Carthage, Rome, and the Mediterranean
Chasing the Monsoons
Continent and Archipelagoes in the East
The Christian and Muslim Mediterranean
Northern Europe Through the Viking Age
The Silk Road of the Seas
China Looks Seaward
The Medieval Mediterranean and Europe
The Golden Age of Maritime Asia
The World Encompassed
The Birth of Global Trade
State and Sea in the Age of European Expansion
Northern Europe Ascendant
“Annihilation of Space and Time”
Naval Power in Steam and Steel
The Maritime World Since the 1950s
Notes

A Note About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Illustrations