海角大神

Humans have been conducting war, commerce, and exploration on the world鈥檚 oceans for thousands of years, and the oceans have been reflected in human literature from its beginnings. Histories of that relationship abound, including Lincoln Paine鈥檚 鈥淭he Sea and Civilization鈥� and James Stavridis鈥� 鈥淪ea Power.鈥� Now comes David Abulafia鈥檚 鈥淭he Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans,鈥� which focuses on earth鈥檚 three largest oceans: the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian.聽

These pages feature the great sea-going nations of the past, the globe-circling commercial empires built on fragile ships and enormous risks, and Abulafia includes a colorful cast of mostly well-known figures. These include Walter Raleigh, Ferdinand Magellan, and Vasco N煤帽ez de Balboa, along with equally important figures who will probably be less familiar to some readers, like the great Ming admiral Zheng He or the ancient Roman author Pliny the Elder.聽

Due to the sheer immensity of Abulafia鈥檚 subject 鈥� human interactions over centuries on three vast watery arenas 鈥� none of these figures can stay for long. When it comes to poor old Pliny the Elder, our author only has time to repeat a well-worn slander about 鈥渁 man whose obsession with scientific detail was so powerful that he lingered too long in the gas-filled air of the Bay of Naples and fell victim to the famous eruption of Vesuvius.鈥� (To set the record straight, Pliny was a naval officer attempting to get residents out of harm鈥檚 way at nearby Stabiae, not some oblivious tourist; Abulafia鈥檚 source for the slander is, oddly enough, Pliny鈥檚 own 鈥淣atural History,鈥� a book in which Pliny describes quite a bit but not, alas, the circumstances of his own death). Likewise, the book has enough room to mention Captain Edward Preble鈥檚 defeat of the Tripoli pirates during the 1801 First Barbary War but must hurry on without mentioning the star vessel of his squadron 鈥� the USS Constitution, 鈥淥ld Ironsides,鈥� whose decks you can still walk today in Boston.

But that鈥檚 one of the problems with a volume as big and inviting as this. Even while you鈥檙e floating along on the generous glories of its narrative, you鈥檙e noticing little bits and pieces that are missing. Far more notable, even given the page count here, is the sheer amount of detail Abulafia actually manages to include. Readers get glimpses of thousands of worlds, from the first American traders encountering Chinese merchants in their elaborate business hostels (鈥淭hey were not supposed to bring in women,鈥� Abulafia writes, 鈥渂ut occasionally smuggled wives or mistresses in nonetheless鈥�) to the notorious scourge of all pre-modern epic sea voyages: scurvy, which made long voyages 鈥渁 deathtrap.鈥�

And through it all, Abulafia keeps one eye on the broader aspects of his subject, both the growing interconnectedness of his three separate water-worlds but also on the larger conceptions of what the oceans mean as spheres of human endeavor.聽

Who has mastery over the sea itself? Abulafia attempts to answer that question by looking back to the days of Dutch and Portuguese supremacy. In 1609, the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius wrote that classical and Biblical literature clearly indicated that the open oceans should be neutral international fields of play. In our unprecedentedly interconnected age, the issue is intensely relevant.聽鈥淭he question that the Dutch raised has still not gone away: in the twenty-first century the South China Sea has become the focus of intense legal debates in which theoretical claims and practical realities are closely intertwined,鈥� he writes. 鈥淭he Boundless Sea鈥� largely steers clear of those 21st-century questions, and it likewise doesn鈥檛 consider the rampant, worldwide damage humans are doing to these oceans.聽

鈥淪o have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for that,鈥� Herman Melville writes in 鈥淢oby-Dick,鈥� and this is the line 鈥淭he Boundless Sea鈥� follows so engagingly: Here we have the passion and vanity on full and glorious display.