The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans

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.

Together the Pacific, the Indian, and the Atlantic Oceans cover more than half of the Earth's surface and constitute the vast majority of its water. Over the millennia, as human passage across them gradually extended, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks grew. Local exploration led to expanding lines of regional communication and commerce, which eventually became major arteries. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and of course people-free and enslaved-across huge expanses, ultimately linking and transforming the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

David Abulafia's The Boundless Sea expertly and entertainingly guides readers along these great bodies of water, from the earliest forays of peoples in hand-hewn canoes 180,000 years ago to the routes now taken daily by super tankers in the thousands. Abulafia, whose acclaimed previous work was a human history of the Mediterranean Sea, reveals here the full extent of his global reach, offering a dazzling narrative of human civilization through time and ocean currents.

This is a project few would attempt, let alone accomplish. Working chronologically, plying first the Pacific ("the Oldest Ocean"), and then the Indian ("The Middle Ocean"), and finally the Atlantic ("The Young Ocean"), Abulafia's book is history on the grandest scale and scope. Far more than merely another history of exploration, The Boundless Sea reveals how maritime networks created a continuum of human interaction and interconnection, and how the oceans made the world we know