Maritime history is the study of human interaction with and activity at sea. It covers a broad thematic element of history that often uses a global approach, although national and regional histories remain predominant. As an academic subject, it often crosses the boundaries of standard disciplines, focusing on understanding humankind's various relationships to the oceans, seas, and major waterways of the globe. Nautical history records and interprets past events involving ships, shipping, navigation, and seafarers.
Maritime history is the broad overarching subject that includes fishing, whaling, international maritime law, naval history, the history of ships, ship design, shipbuilding, the history of navigation, the history of the various maritime-related sciences (oceanography, cartography, hydrography, etc.), sea exploration, maritime economics and trade, shipping, yachting, seaside resorts, the history of lighthouses and aids to navigation, maritime themes in literature, maritime themes in art, the social history of sailors and passengers and sea-related communities.John B. Hattendorf, editor in chief, Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History, (Oxford, 2007), volume 1, introduction. There are a number of approaches to the field, sometimes divided into two broad categories: Traditionalists, who seek to engage a small audience of other academics, and Utilitarians, who seek to influence policy makers and a wider audience.Joshua M. Smith, “Toward a Taxonomy of Maritime Historians,” International_Journal_of_Maritime_History XXV:2 (December, 2013), 1–16.
Historiography Historians from many lands have published monographs, popular and scholarly articles, and collections of archival resources. A leading journal is International Journal of Maritime History, a fully refereed scholarly journal published twice a year by the International Maritime Economic History Association. Based in Canada with an international editorial board, it explores the maritime dimensions of economic, social, cultural, and environmental history.See IJMH website For a broad overview, see the four-volume encyclopedia edited by John B. Hattendorf, Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History (Oxford, 2007). It contains over 900 articles by 400 scholars and runs 2900 pages.It is online at many libraries Other major reference resources are Spencer Tucker, ed., Naval Warfare: An International Encyclopedia (3 vol. ABC-CLIO, 2002) with 1500 articles in 1231, pages, and I. C. B. Dear and Peter Kemp, eds., Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (2nd ed. 2005) with 2600 articles in 688 pages.It is online at many libraries
Typically, studies of merchant shipping and of defensive navies are seen as separate fields. Inland waterways are included within 'maritime history,' especially inland seas such as the Great Lakes of North America, and major navigable rivers and canals worldwide.
One approach to maritime history writing has been nicknamed 'rivet counting' because of a focus on the minutiae of the vessel. However, revisionist scholars are creating new turns in the study of maritime history. This includes a post-1980s turn towards the study of human users of ships (which involves sociology, cultural geography, gender studies and narrative studies);This began with the Maritime History Group,Working men who got wet: Proceedings of the fourth conference of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project, July 24–July 26, 1980, (Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John, 1980) and post-2000 turn towards seeing sea travel as part of the wider history of transport and mobilities. This move is sometimes associated with Marcus Rediker and Black Atlantic studies, but most recently has emerged from the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobilities (T2M).See Yearbooks for 2009–2012, especially in the 2009 volume, article by Gijs Mom, Colin Divall and Peter Lyth, "Towards a Paradigm Shift? A Decade of Transport and Mobility History," t2m.org
Building on earlier efforts to bring the ocean itself, rather than merely maritime activity at the surface, into historical analysis, Michael W. Jung has proposed the concept of Sub-Oceanic History. The approach shifts attention from the sea surface to the ocean's interior as a historically produced and technologically mediated space. It connects histories of diving and underwater exploration with the history of knowledge, science and technology, and infrastructure, and examines how changing forms of underwater access - from freediving and scuba diving to saturation systems, submersibles, and remotely operated vehicles - have transformed the ocean interior into a space that can increasingly be accessed, known, and controlled. Jung frames this relationship through the analytical triad of access, knowledge, and control and positions Sub-Oceanic History at the intersection of maritime history, environmental history, and Science and Technology Studies (STS).
See also: Historiography related articles below
Prehistoric times Watercraft such as rafts and boats have been used far into pre-historic times and possibly even by Homo erectus more than a million years ago crossing straits between landmasses.
Little evidence remains that would pinpoint when the first seafarer made their journey. It is known, for instance, that a sea voyage had to have been made to reach Greater Australia (Sahul) or more years ago. Functional maritime technology was required to progress between the many islands of Wallacea before making this crossing. It is unknown what seafaring predated the milestone of the first settling of Australia. One of the oldest known boats to be found is the Pesse canoe, and carbon dating has estimated its construction from 8040 to 7510 BCE. The Pesse canoe is the oldest physical object that can date the use of watercraft, but the oldest depiction of a watercraft is from Norway. The rock art in Valle Municipality in Norway depicts a carving of a more than 4 meter long boat and it is dated to be 10,000 to 11,000 years old.
Ancient times
Throughout history sailing has been instrumental in the development of civilization, affording humanity greater mobility than travel over land, whether for trade, transport or warfare, and the capacity for fishing. The earliest depiction of a maritime sailing vessel is from the Ubaid period of Mesopotamia in the Persian Gulf, from around 3500 to 3000 BCE. These vessels were depicted in clay models and painted disks. They were made from bundled reeds encased in a lattice of ropes. Remains of barnacle-encrusted bituminous amalgams have also been recovered, which are interpreted to have been part of the water-proof coating applied on these vessels. The depictions lack details, but an image of a vessel on a shard of pottery shows evidence of what could be bipod masts and a sail, which would make it the earliest known evidence of the use of such technology. The location of the sites indicate that the Ubaid culture was engaging in maritime trade with Neolithic Arabian cultures along the coasts of the Persian Gulf for high-value goods.Carter, Robert "Boat remains and maritime trade in the Persian Gulf during the sixth and fifth millennia BC"Antiquity Volume 80 No. 307 March 2006 Pictorial representation of sails are also known from Ancient Egypt, dated to circa 3100 BCE. The earliest seaborne trading route, however, is known from the 7th millennium BCE in the Aegean Sea. It involved the seaborne movement of obsidian by an unknown Neolithic Europe seafaring people. The obsidian was mined from the volcanic island of Milos and then transported to various parts of the Balkans, Anatolia, and Cyprus, where they were refined into obsidian blades. However, the nature of the seafaring technologies involved have not been preserved.
Austronesians started a dispersal from Taiwan across Maritime Southeast Asia around 3000 BCE. This started to spread into the islands of the Pacific , steadily advanced across the Pacific and culminated with the settlement of Hawaii , and New Zealand . Distinctive maritime technology was used for this, including the lashed-lug boatbuilding technique, the catamaran, and the crab claw sail, together with extensive navigation techniques. This allowed them to colonize a large part of the Indo-Pacific region during the Austronesian expansion. Prior to the 16th century Colonial Era, Austronesians were the most widespread ethnolinguistic group, spanning half the planet from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific Ocean to Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean.
The Ancient Egyptians had knowledge of sail construction.Hatshepsut oversaw the preparations and funding of an expedition of five ships, each measuring seventy feet long, and with several sails. Various others exist, also. The Greek historian Herodotus states that Necho II sent out an expedition of Phoenicians, which in two and a half years sailed from the Red Sea around Africa to the mouth of the Nile. As they sailed south and then west, they observed that the mid-day sun was to the north. Their contemporaries did not believe them, but modern historians take this as evidence that they were south of the equator as crossing the equator changes the angle of the sun resulting in the change of season.
Ancient Rome had a variety of ships that played crucial roles in its military, trade, and transportation activities. Rome was preceded in the use of the sea by other ancient, seafaring civilizations of the Mediterranean. The galley was a long, narrow, highly maneuverable ship powered by oarsmen, sometimes stacked in multiple levels such as biremes or triremes, and many of which also had sails. Initial efforts of the Romans to construct a war fleet were based on copies of Carthaginian warships. In the Punic wars in the mid-third century BCE, the Romans were at first outclassed by Carthage at sea, but by 256 BCE had drawn even and fought the wars to a stalemate. In 55 BCE Julius Caesar used warships and transport ships to invade Britain. Numerous types of transport ships were used to carry foodstuffs or other trade goods around the Mediterranean, many of which did double duty and were pressed into service as warships or troop transports in time of war. Roman ships are named in different ways, often in compound expressions with the word . These are found in many ancient Roman texts, and named in different ways, such as by the appearance of the ship: for example, (covered ship); or by its function, for example: (commerce ship), or (plunder ship). Others, like (grain), (stones), and (live fish), are about the cargo. The Althiburos mosaic in Tunisia lists many types of ships. The expression (lit. "long ships") is the plural of the noun phrase ("long ship"), following the rules for pluralization of feminine, third declension nouns in Latin, and inflectional agreement of the adjective longus to match.
Age of navigation
By 1000 BCE, Austronesians in Island Southeast Asia were already engaging in regular maritime trade with China, South Asia, and the Middle East, introducing sailing technologies to these regions. They also facilitated an exchange of cultivated crop plants, introducing Pacific coconuts, bananas, and sugarcane to the Indian subcontinent, some of which eventually reached Europe via overland Persian and Arab traders. A Chinese record in 200 AD describes one of the Austronesian ships, called kunlun bo or k'unlun po (, lit. "ship of the Kunlun people"). It may also have been the "kolandiaphonta" known to the Greeks. It had 4–7 masts and was able to sail against the wind due to the usage of tanja sails. These ships reached as far as Madagascar by c. 50–500 AD and Ghana by the eighth century AD.