The Sea and Civilisation – The East Comes First

Lincoln Paine’s The Sea and Civilisation: A Maritime History of the World is a terrific and absorbing read. For the China Rhymer it’s fascinating largely in that so much of global maritime history is linked to China and the Far East. Europeans and Americans are of course newcomers to the oceans. Just to give a small offering of the many delicacies of the book it is worth remembering, as Paine points out, that the sea was how Islam reached Indonesia and South East Asia and that during the Liu Song dynasty Buddhism was brought to China partly by sea. At the time of Marco Polo Guangzhou was a far busier port than Alexandria, the Mediterranean’s major port at the time. And on and, fascinatingly, on….Of course many of us know all this, or most of it, but putting it altogether in one book and contrasting with the maritime exploits of everywhere else has significant merit.

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 and 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, Southeast and East Asia who parlayed their navigational skills, shipbuilding techniques, and commercial acumen to establish vibrant overseas colonies and trade routes in the centuries leading up to the age of European overseas expansion. His narrative traces subsequent developments in commercial and naval shipping through the post-Cold War era. Above all, Paine makes clear how the rise and fall of civilizations can be traced to the sea.