The Sea and Civilization
Subtitle: a maritime history of the world
Publisher: Knopf; Alfred A. Knopf
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 744
ISBN-13: 9781400044092
Description: "A maritime history of the world"--

A retelling of world history through the lens of maritime enterprise, revealing in 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. Above all, Paine makes clear how the rise and fall of civilizations can be linked to the sea.
Table of contents: title: A note on measures; title: Introduction; title: Taking to the water; title: The river and seas of ancient Egypt; title: Bronze Age seafaring; title: Phoenicians, Greeks, and the Mediterranean; title: Carthage, Rome, and the Mediterranean; title: Chasing the monsoons; title: Continent and archipelagoes in the East; title: The Christian and Muslim Mediterranean; title: Northern Europe through the Viking Age; title: The Silk Road of the seas; title: China looks seaward; title: The medieval Mediterranean and Europe; title: The golden age of maritime Asia; title: The world encompassed; title: The birth of global trade; title: State and sea in the age of European expansion; title: Northern Europe ascendant; title: "Annihilation of space and time"; title: Naval power in steam and steel; title: The maritime world since the 1950s