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Shipwrecks as hidden windows on the history of globalization
- Sales Rank: #728725 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-04-22
- Released on: 2015-04-08
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks is a great source for readers who seek a broad overview of maritime history.” —The Great Circle, Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History
"Gordon explains the background of each type of ship, how it was discovered (in the case of the older vessels), how it came to be in its current state, and why it matters. The author emphasizes the importance of each ship: did its discovery contribute to knowledge of a past civilization? What does it reveal about the politics, economics, and culture of the people who created it? Did its loss result in a significant change in maritime regulations, safety, and shipbuilding practices? These are the questions that defined Gordon’s choices, which demonstrate how maritime history is a significant part of world history. . . . Recommended.” —Choice
“This book provides a unique opportunity for the study of world history with focus on global shipping and maritime transit from earliest times to present. Gordon uses details of shipwreck recoveries and their salvaged cargoes as the basis for his concise discussions of wider period issues, such as technology, environment, and societal change, as his tracks from shipwreck sources offer opportunity for follow up discussion and pair well with world history texts. The book as a whole is an engaging series of single chapter reads, as each chapter differs in its documentation, discussion, and varying approach to global history.”�—World History Connected
"Innovative approach. . . . Interesting insights."—Naval History
“An informative read in a compelling format, allowing the author to widen his focus from specific maritime sites to their broader contexts during the time periods in which they operated. . . . Gordon has succeeded in bringing important wrecks to light and showing that their importance extends far beyond their strictly maritime realms.”—International Journal of Maritime History
"A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks is a great source for readers who seek a broad overview of maritime history.”—Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History
“The sixteen vignettes provide a thoughtful synthesis of archaeological, historical, economic, cultural, and geographical information into a narrative both captivating and fundamentally critical for understanding our human past, a reminder that water connects—not divides—civilizations.”—Sea History
"A unique perspective on world history."—Naval Review
Review
"Stewart Gordon has once again offered the reading public an instance of his innovative and accessible style of writing world history, this time using the category of shipwrecks ― a tragic but near-universal human experience ― as his unit of analysis. From dugout canoes dating to 6000 BC down to 2012, when a modern cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Italy, Gordon lucidly shows how maritime activities reflect the ever-increasing pace of globalization." (Richard M. Eaton, professor of history, University of Arizona)
"As an underwater archaeologist, editor and author of books on shipwrecks, I would have thought it impossible to write a history of the world in just sixteen shipwrecks, but Stewart Gordon has not only accomplished it, he did so in a way that should appeal to everyone from armchair explorers to the most dedicated of academicians. Gordon uses the changes in design, construction details, and cargoes of the wrecks to trace the development of ships, international trade, and what was happening in the world over a span of thousands of years. I highly recommend this elegantly written book to anyone who loves history and archaeology, as it will give them a new understanding of the importance of shipwrecks and why their stories actually matter and must be preserved." (Dr. E. Lee Spence, underwater archaeologist, President, Sea Research Society; V.P., International Diving Institute)
About the Author
STEWART GORDON is a senior research scholar at the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan and author of eight books, including When Asia Was the World.
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Backfilling History
By William C. Hagen
The author has selected an interesting and novel approach to the study of world history. Rather than following one crisis after another or the biographies of ‘Great Men’, Gordon has selected ship wrecks as a common focus to fill in the gaps often left by traditional historians. This does not give a natural flow of history—no one wreck leads to another, but it provides a subject matter thread through the times. In addition to giving the historical context of the ship wreck, it provides an opportunity to describe the natural evolution of naval architecture as well as the economic impact of seaborne commerce through the ages. The result is a picture of history from a totally different perspective. In no way does the book displace conventional histories but, for the lover of history, it augments those sources and adds a nautical and welcome flavor. The subject matters range from a 6000 BCE dugout canoe to the 2012 capsizing of the Costa Concordia including Viking Longboats and Spanish Galleons.
It is pretty apparent that Gordon has a great love of sailing ships. His technical knowledge of masts, spars, jibs, sails and all other accoutrements and trappings of vessels of that sort is evident. Unfortunately, he gets a little too technical for land lubbers like me but that does not measurably detract from the book’s worth.
Overall: Entertaining and well worth the read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Collection of Essays Rather Than a Book: Misleading Title
By Stan Prager
When A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks by Stewart Gordon showed up in my early reviewers program, I eagerly bid on it because the title at once conjured up for me Uluburun, the spectacular Bronze Age Mediterranean shipwreck that revealed to underwater archaeologists a long lost era of ancient international trade that contained vast numbers of artifacts of widespread provenance, including Mycenaean, Syro-Palestinian, Cypriot, Egyptian, Kassite and Assyrian. Thus, I imagined sixteen snapshots like that, each focused upon a single shipwreck that would communicate the significance of a historical period through its contents.
It turned out that was not quite the case. There are indeed sixteen chapters and each one is technically devoted to a ship, although in fact some of these are not actually shipwrecks at all. The first chapter, for instance, focuses upon the Dufuna Dugout, a remarkably preserved dugout canoe from Africa that dates back at least eight thousand years. Much of the narrative explores the history of dugouts over the following centuries, rather than the culture that produced Dufuna. The next one is also not a shipwreck, but the Khufu Barge, a ceremonial buried boat excavated near the base of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, which serves to spark a discussion of trade in the ancient world that is only peripherally related to the boat in this burial.
I was pleased to find the next chapter actually devoted to Uluburun itself, and it is arguably one of the best portions of the book – or maybe I just feel that way because it corresponds more closely with my interests. I am fairly deeply read in Uluburun, but to Gordon’s credit his treatment manages to reveal elements that were entirely new to me, such as the incredible story of the mouse trapped in a food storage jar whose DNA was extracted some 3400 hundred years later to determine its provenance in Ugarit in north coastal Syria! I often champion the marriage of history and technology: perhaps nothing better captures its essence and potential than this. Gordon goes on to describe other components of the cargo and how scientific analyses determined their respective source geographies. He also explores the surprisingly interconnected ancient world of trade among Hittites, Egyptians, Mycenaeans, Assyrians and others in the era prior to the mysterious collapse of Bronze Age civilizations circa 1150 BCE.
Regrettably, the Uluburun chapter is hardly typical of the rest of the book. While the volume does contain other wrecks with cargo, such as the Intan (circa 1000 CE), with some exceptions many of the subjects under discussion lack tangible remains and are utilized primarily as examples of ships in service at the time. The chapter that follows Uluburun, for example, is devoted to another ship burial, this one the sixth century CE Sutton Hoo in England. What becomes clear is that Gordon’s book is less a history of the world told through shipwrecks than a nautical history of select vessels that he has chosen to study and write about. The ancient world is strangely underrepresented: some two millennia separate Uluburun from Sutton Hoo. Conspicuous in its absence, for instance, is a full chapter devoted to the famous trireme that so dominated the ancient Greek world, or any of the various warships that comprised the Roman imperial fleet. (The trireme does receive some oddly placed peripheral attention in a later discussion of Barbary war galleys, but it certainly merits much more.) We have no surviving triremes, so the omission of these and other ancient boats with no physical remains would make sense if the book was limited to actual physical wrecks with artifacts, but it is not.
To his credit, Gordon is a fine writer and much of his narrative is clearly a labor of love of all things nautical. The non-initiated, such as myself, will appreciate his detailed descriptions of how boats and their component parts function on a body of water. Also, the book is well-documented with a thick sheaf of notes at the end and plenty of illustrations, although a certain lack of maps. More than half of the volume is focused upon the last five centuries, right up to the 2012 Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster. Each chapter stands alone and while arranged chronologically do not need to be read sequentially. Some are more stimulating than others, but I suspect that is less due to Gordon’s talents than the interests of the reader. One of my favorites, for instance, was the one devoted to Lucy Walker, the steamboat that exploded and sank on the Ohio River in 1844, which fit neatly into my studies of antebellum American history.
The chief problem with the book, as I see it, is entirely thematic: it seems that each chapter would make a fine article for a magazine, but there is almost nothing that connects one to the other as part of a larger narrative. Even the title is unwieldy as an effort to unite the respective essays in a common thread, since as I have noted earlier, many of the boats are not actually shipwrecks. I suspect Gordon himself was aware of this flaw: neither the “Introduction” nor the “Conclusion” – each only about two and half pages in length – convincingly explain why these studies of the sixteen selected ships belong together in one volume. I would nevertheless recommend A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks to students of nautical history, with the caveat that the component segments arguably are of greater value than the sum of these parts.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Studying Global History from Shipwrecks
By Robert Lebling
The author is a specialist in the history of Asia who has stepped outside his comfort zone to produce an intriguing world history based on a maritime theme: 16 significant shipwrecks from various points in time and space. Some involve discovered wrecks, others lost ships known to history but never found.
The criteria: (1) The type of ship had a significant impact on history; (2) The wrecks come from around the world and from ancient times to today; and (3) There had to be good archaeological and/or textual documentation of the vessel and its role in the world.
The oldest wreck is a 30-foot-long dugout carved from an African mahogany tree 8000 years ago and excavated in Dufuna, Nigeria. The newest is the cruise ship Costa Concordia, which ran aground off western Italy in 2012. In between are such diverse vessels as the Khufu barge, Sutton Hoo Viking ship, a Barbary war galley, Los Tres Reyes Spanish galleon, Flying Cloud clipper ship, Lusitania and Exxon Valdez.
The author links each vessel with the world in which it flourished, and shows the spread of globalization via trade, exploration or conquest. He visualizes the big picture well but also excels at details.
Describing the Uluburun shipwreck, a 3,000-year-old Eastern Mediterranean cargo ship found in waters off western Turkey, he notes that the discovery of pomegranate seeds and skin fragments in jars amid the wreckage tells us much about its trade mission. In those day, pomegranates were grown only in the Caspian region, not in the Levant, and these appealing red fruits, with a rich mythical lore behind them, were a high-value export, destined for tables of the region’s elites.
(A version of this review appeared in Aramco World, January 2016.)
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