The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World Read online

  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 Companies.

  www.aaknopf.com

  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

  Maps

  *

  Oceania

  Pre-Columbian South America and the Caribbean

  Pre-Columbian North and Central America

  Ancient Egypt

  From Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley

  The Bronze Age Near East

  The Classical Mediterranean

  The Muslim Indian Ocean

  East and Southeast Asia

  The Medieval Mediterranean

  Europe Through the Viking Age

  Late Medieval Europe

  The Monsoon Seas

  Asia and the Pacific in the Early Modern Period

  The Atlantic World

  Early Modern Europe

  Asia and the Pacific at the Turn of the Millennium

  Oceania

  Click here to see a larger image.

  Pre-Columbian South America and the Caribbean

  Click here to see a larger image.

  Pre-Columbian North and Central America

  The shaded area indicates the range of the paper birch (Betula papyrifera), or canoe birch, and thus of the birchbark canoe.

  Click here to see a larger image.

  Ancient Egypt

  Click here to see a larger image.

  From Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley

  Click here to see a larger image.

  The Bronze Age Near East

  Click here to see a larger image.

  The Classical Mediterranean

  Click here to see a larger image.

  The Muslim Indian Ocean

  Click here to see a larger image.

  East and Southeast Asia

  Click here to see a larger image.

  The Medieval Mediterranean

  Click here to see a larger image.

  Europe Through the Viking Age

  Click here to see a larger image.

  Late Medieval Europe

  Click here to see a larger image.

  The Monsoon Seas

  Click here to see a larger image.

  Asia and the Pacific in the Early Modern Period

  Click here to see a larger image.

  The Atlantic World

  Click here to see a larger image.

  Early Modern Europe

  Click here to see a larger image.

  Asia and the Pacific at the Turn of the Millennium

  Click here to see a larger image.

  Acknowledgments

  *

  No one can write a world history without support and advice from a diverse crew of colleagues, friends, and relatives. Foremost among my creditors is John Wright, friend, colleague, horseplayer, opera buff(a), and literary agent, without whom this book would have remained nothing more than an interesting idea. Once this project was launched, he kept at the pumps to make sure it—and I—stayed afloat. He has my deepest thanks.

  Many people generously made time in their own schedules to read and comment on large portions of the manuscript at various stages in its development: Al Andrea of the World History Association; my doctoral advisors, Leonard Blussé and Femme Gaastra, Leiden University; Kelly Chavez, at the University of Tulsa; Martina Duncan, of the Southern Maine Community College; the peripatetic Felipe Fernández-Armesto, now of the University of Notre Dame; John Hattendorf, Naval War College; Joshua Smith, United States Merchant Marine Academy; and Jim Terry, Stephens College.

  Others who have offered advice on individual chapters or sections include Nick Burningham; Arthur Donovan, United States Merchant Marine Academy; Matthew Edney, Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine; David Kalivas and his fellow editors of and subscribers to H-World; Kris Lane, Tulane University; the late Ken McPherson; Nathan Lipfert, Maine Maritime Museum; John C. Perry, Tufts University; Louis Sicking, Leiden University; Tom Vosmer; Lodewijk Wagenaar, Amsterdam Museum; Cheryl Ward, Coastal Carolina University; and the subscribers to MARHST-L, among many others.

  I first tried out many of the ideas developed in this book at conferences and in articles, and for the opportunity to do so I thank the organizers of the International Maritime Economic History Association conferences (Fremantle and Greenwich), the World History Association (London), the North American Society for Oceanic History (Manitowoc and Norfolk), and the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, as well as Lewis R. “Skip” Fischer, of the International Journal of Maritime History, and Faye Kert, with The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord.

  Librarians are indispensable in more ways than they know, and I am privileged to have had the help particularly of Phyllis McQuaide, Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, Bowdoin College; Loraine Lowell, John Plante, Matt Lajoie and Noah Burch of the Glickman Library, University of Southern Maine; Yolanda Theunisssen of the Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine; Norman Fiering at the John Carter Brown Library, Providence; Kathryn Wellen, of the KITLV in Leiden; and the staff at the libraries of Columbia University and Leiden University.

  Picture research is a distinct enterprise altogether, and I have been helped by many individuals and institutions, especially David Neikirk, Adinah Barnett, and Ron Levere, Osher Map Library; Paul Adamthwaite, Naval Marine Archive, the Canadian Collection; Chip Angell; Jennifer Belt and Peter Rohowsky, Art Resource, New York; Anandajoti Bhikkhu; Joe Bonney and Barbara Wyker, Journal of Commerce; Sue Hao, US-China Business Council; John Harland; Murari Jha; Zip Kellogg, University of Southern Maine; Betsy Kohut, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; Pamela Long; Anthony Nahas; Kim Goulet Norton and Alex Agnew, Navigator Publishing; Des Pawson, MBE, Museum of Knots and Sailors Ropework; Bob Poole; Pamela Quick, MIT Press; Ulrich Rudofsky; Sila Tripati, Marine Archaeology Centre, National Institute of Oceanography, Goa; Andreas Weber; Zhang Ying, Palace Museum, Beijing; and Herwig Zahorka.

  The Bibliography offers a more complete record of my academic indebtedness, although I must and do take full responsibility for the errors of fact and interpretation that have undoubtedly bored their way into the hull of this fragile vessel.

  Laboring on this book has made me keenly aware of the enormous debt I owe to teachers from grade school through college. I have forgotten more of them than I remember, but three may stand for the others: John Pariseau, Allen-Stevenson School; Allan Wooley, Phillips Exeter Academy; and the late Steele Commager, Columbia University.

  Research on this project took me repeatedly to New York, where I freely availed myself of the hospitality of Georgina Walker and Hal Fessenden, and Madeleine Tramm and Philip Newell, and I am grateful for Caroline and Jim Clark’s bed and board in London, and the redoubtable Hôtel Garni Blussé in Amsterdam.

  I have been sustained by great friendships in addition to those I have mentioned already, especially Wendell and Soozie Large, Nathan and Eleanor Smith, and Elizabeth Mitchell and Alex Krieckhaus. I applaud Valentina von Klencke for surviving her brief abduction from Köln to the Museum für Antike Schiffahrt in Mainz, and thank Nicole von Klencke for driving the getaway car.

  The late Ashbel Green took a great leap of faith in signing this book, and I am indebted not only to him but also to his successor, Andrew Miller, and especially Andrew Carlson, a fair and forthright editor of enormous patience, tact, and goodwill. Nicole Pedersen has also pointed out countless errors great and small and added immeasurably to the quality of the finished work. And it was a great pleasure to entrust the drawing and lettering of the beautiful maps to Rosemary Mosher in this, our fourth cartographic collaboration.


  My parents were kind enough to read and comment on early drafts of the manuscript. My daughters, Kai and Madeleine, will have my gratitude if they never write a world history of their own and ask the same of me, but I thank them for their long-suffering good humor and support as I made my way through this project.

  Allison has supported this undertaking in every conceivable way since before its inception. She shares no blame for its faults, but all credit for its achievement.

  LINCOLN PAINE

  Portland, Maine

  July–October 2012

  A Note on Measures

  *

  For distances at sea, I have used nautical miles.

  For land measures, I have used the metric system.

  By convention, distances on rivers in the United States are given in statute miles.

  Nautical mile Kilometers Statute miles

  1 1.85 1.15

  0.54 1 0.62

  0.87 1.61 1

  Meter Foot

  1 3.28

  0.3 1

  Centimeter Inch

  1 0.39

  2.54 1

  Introduction

  I want to change the way you see the world. Specifically, I want to change the way you see the world map by focusing your attention on the blues that shade 70 percent of the image before you, and letting the earth tones fade. This shift in emphasis from land to water makes many trends and patterns of world history stand out in ways they simply cannot otherwise. Before the development of the locomotive in the nineteenth century, culture, commerce, contagion, and conflict generally moved faster by sea than by land. The opening of sea routes sometimes resulted in immediate transformation, but more often it laid the groundwork for what was later mistaken for sudden change. The best example of this is the trade networks of the Indian Ocean, the oldest of which were pioneered at least four thousand years ago by navigators sailing between Mesopotamia and the mouths of the Indus River. By the start of the common era two thousand years ago, the Indian subcontinent was a point of departure and destination for merchants and mendicants from across the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. This is all but unnoticed in the written record, which boasts of no figure comparable to a Gilgamesh or Odysseus, and despite a growing body of archaeological evidence, these undertakings remain largely unrecognized. As a result, the later arrival in Southeast Asia of Muslim traders from the Indian subcontinent and Southwest Asia, of Chinese merchants of various faiths, and of Portuguese Christians seem like so many historical surprises. Only the last were absolute newcomers to the Monsoon Seas that stretch from the shores of East Africa to the coasts of Korea and Japan. The others were heirs to ancient, interlinked traditions of seafaring and trade that long ago connected the shores of East Africa with those of Northeast Asia. This book shows many similar examples of maritime regions that were quietly exploited before events conspired to thrust them into the historical limelight.