The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World

1057 Pages·2013·16.15 MB·English

by  Lincoln Paine

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2013 by Lincoln Paine

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC,
New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House
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Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Paine, Lincoln P.
The sea and civilization : a maritime history of the world / by Lincoln Paine. —First Edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4000-4409-2 (hardback)
1. Ocean and civilization. 2. Naval history. 3. Naval art and science—History. 4. Navigation—History. 5.
Seapower—History. I. Title.
CB465.P34 2013
910.4′5—dc23
2013015436

eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-96225-6

Jacket image: Official Visit of Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Arriving at Miramare Castle
in Trieste, De Agostini
Picture Library / G. Dagli Orti / The Bridgeman Art Library
Cover design by Jason Booher

v3.1
FOR ALLISON
Now one day, as I was sitting with Abu ’Ali bin Hazim and looking at the sea—
we were on the shore at ’Adan—said he to me: “What is it with which you seem
to me to be so preoccupied?”
Said I: “God support the Shaykh! My mind is perplexed concerning the sea, so
great is the number of conflicting accounts of it. The Shaykh now is the most
knowledgeable of men about it, because he is chief of the merchants, and his
ships are continually traveling to the furthermost parts of it. Should he be willing
to give me a description of it I can rely on, and relieve me of doubt about it,
perhaps he will do so.”
Said he: “You have encountered an expert in the matter!” He smoothed the
sand with the palm of his hand and drew a figure of the sea on it.
—al-Muqaddasi, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the World (375 AH /
985 CE)
Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph

List of Illustrations
Maps
Acknowledgments
A Note on Measures
Introduction
1 Taking to the Water
2 The River and Seas of Ancient Egypt
3 Bronze Age Seafaring
4 Phoenicians, Greeks, and the Mediterranean
5 Carthage, Rome, and the Mediterranean
6 Chasing the Monsoons
7 Continent and Archipelagoes in the East
8 The Christian and Muslim Mediterranean
9 Northern Europe Through the Viking Age
10 The Silk Road of the Seas
11 China Looks Seaward
12 The Medieval Mediterranean and Europe
13 The Golden Age of Maritime Asia
14 The World Encompassed
15 The Birth of Global Trade
16 State and Sea in the Age of European Expansion
17 Northern Europe Ascendant
18 “Annihilation of Space and Time”
19 Naval Power in Steam and Steel
20 The Maritime World Since the 1950s
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A Note About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Illustrations
List of Illustrations

Bronze Age rock carving from Kvalsund, Norway
Boats of the Friendly Islands, by John Webber
Umiak on whale patrol
The oldest image of a sail, on the Naqada/Gerzean vase
The return of Hatshepsut’s ships from Punt
A Mesopotamian cylinder seal and the sealing it makes
The Magan Boat replica from Oman
Early Minoan terra-cotta “pan” from the island of Syros
Shipping cedar logs on the Phoenician coast
The flight of Luli from Tyre to Cyprus
A Greek galley overtaking an Etruscan sailing ship
Roman ships carrying Emperor Trajan across the Danube
A ship arriving at Ostia
The principal oceanic wind systems
Satavahana Dynasty coin decorated with a two-masted ship
Louchuan from the Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques
Bronze ship model from Kampong Dobo, Flores
Trackers towing a riverboat on the Yangzi
Ship from the Dunhuang cave complex in central China
“The Bay and Strait of Gibraltar,” by Carel Allard
The Gokstad ship
A stone carving of a boat from the Pala kingdom in northeast India
A bas-relief from the temple at Borobudur in central Java
The Samudra Raksa, a ship based on bas-reliefs at Borobudur
A sailing ship from the Bayon temple at Angkor Thom, Cambodia
A paddled vessel from the Bayon temple at Angkor Thom, Cambodia
Seal of the city of Lübeck
Sailors sleeping on a cargo of mangrove logs on the Triumph of
Righteousness
Chinese stamp commemorating the six hundredth anniversary of the Zheng
He expeditions
Sebastiano del Piombo’s portrait of a man thought to be Christopher
Columbus
Pierre Chassereau’s “A New and Correct Plan of the Harbour of Carthagena
[Colombia] in America”
Seal die of the English Muscovy Company
Map of the China Seas from Linschoten’s Itinerario
Jansz. van Miervelt’s Portrait of Hugo Grotius
Peter Pett and the Sovereign of the Seas, by Sir Peter Lely
Description of the slave ship Brooks
Thomas Daniell’s Calcutta from the River Hoogly
Benjamin Franklin’s Gulf Stream map
Plimsoll Mark, or Load Line
The Tusitala and Berengaria outward bound from New York
Nineteenth-century Dutch or German scrimshaw
Shoveling coal in the troopship USS Troy
The submarine tender USS Bushnell and submarine AL-3
The battleship USS Arizona passing through the Panama Canal
LSTs at Leyte Island, the Philippines
Offloading cargo at New Orleans
Insert

1. An Egyptian faience plate decorated with a papyrus raft
2. Minoan ship mural from the island of Thera (Santorini)
3. A pirate’s bireme bearing down on a sailing merchantman
4. The port of Carthage
5. Merchant ship from Ajanta, India
6. Byzantine mosaic of fisherman from Ravenna
7. Byzantine dromon fitted with Greek fire
8. The Broighter boat model from northern Ireland
9. Shipbuilding scene from the Bayeux Tapestry
10. A ship from al-Wasiti’s manuscript of al-Hariri’s Maqamat
11. A passenger-carrying junk at Kaifeng, China
12. A great galley from the shipbuilding treatise by Michael of Rhodes
13. The Doge of Venice Departing for the Lido in the Bucintoro by Antonio
Canaletto
14. Warriors repelling the Yuan invasion of Japan
15. An illustration from a 1341 manuscript of the Shahnamah
16. A ship taking soundings, from the Ordonances of Armoury
17. Jorge Aguiar’s portolan chart of the Mediterranean
18. Noah’s ark by the Mughal miniaturist Miskin
19. Johan Bruun’s Kronborg Castle, View from the Øresund
20. James Gillray’s “John Bull Taking a Luncheon,” after the battle of
Aboukir
21. Giant Demon Attacks a Ship, from the Sripal Ras
22. Jean Dupas’s art deco masterpiece, History of Navigation
23. Stephen Bone’s On Board an S-Class Submarine: Up the Conning
Tower
24. The container port of Singapore
25. A huge catch aboard a trawler in the Gulf of Alaska
26. Underway replenishment in the Arabian Sea