Waves of time
MICHAEL SCOTT praises an impressive book that explores humanity’s stormy relationship with the seas
On the Ocean by Barry Cunliffe Oxford University Press, 640 pages, £30
Focusing on both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Sir Barry Cunliffe’s latest fascinating book charts how these two seas have helped shape human outlook, invention, discovery, decisions and events from prehistory to AD 1500. What fascinates Cunliffe is the complex relationship homo sapiens have with the sea. On the one hand, it feeds and nurtures us, excites our curiosity, stimulates our ingenuity and encourages us to rise to a challenge. Yet at the same time, it is something of which we are innately – and rightly – fearful, thanks to its wilful and unpredictable nature. As Cunliffe puts it: “The sea is known to be alien and dangerous, yet few can resist its challenge.”
The importance of human engagement with and on the water has been underlined in the last two decades by a range of publications, such as Horden and Purcell’s The Corrupting Sea (2000), John Julius Norwich’s The Middle Sea (2006) and David Abulafia’s The Great Sea (2011). These titles echo back to Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949), which argued for the importance of considering the development of civilisations from the perspective not of the land, but of the sea.
It’s an idea that has also been emphasised by Cunliffe’s own previous works, which have focused on the development of those living on Europe’s Atlantic coast ( Facing the Ocean, 2003); the ways in which the European landmass has been influenced by the oceans that surround it ( Europe Between the Oceans, 2008); and the oceans’ contribution to the development of multiple civilisations between Europe and China ( By Steppe, Desert and Ocean, 2015). In this new book, Cunliffe picks up many of the themes and ideas of his previous works and combines them.
On the Ocean begins by looking at the primary role the sea plays in stimulating our thirst for discovery, as well as in our understanding of the physical world, and indeed its role as an allegory for life. It goes on to explore developing knowledge about prevailing winds, currents and tides, and then recounts the earliest attempts to take to the seas. Cunliffe then takes a chronological look at the development of human communities and their increasing engagement with the Atlantic and the Mediterranean through history, from 5300 BC to 1510 AD, even throwing in a brief technical interlude on ship and sail design.
This is a grand and beautifully illustrated work. It offers a fascinating perspective from which to understand human development and achievement, one that brushes aside the still too dominant cultural and disciplinary divides that have become commonplace in historical study, as well as providing a welcome antidote to event-driven history.