Ocean: A History of the Atlantic Before Columbus

Ocean is a comprehensive history of the pre-Columbian Atlantic Ocean, tracing its formation to the mid-Atlantic ridge 200 million years ago and ending with the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century. It challenges the notion that Atlantic history begins with the first voyage of a Genoese navigator and argues that European seafaring and shipbuilding skills were learned over centuries and millennia in the Atlantic and its marginal seas. The book is based on the author's extensive travels in the Atlantic and explores the diverse cast of seafarers, fishermen, monks, merchants, and dreamers who populated the region. It fuses geology, geography, mythology, cosmology, developing maritime technologies, and the early history of exploration to narrate an enthralling and intriguing story that lies at the heart of Europe's modern history and its relationship with the rest of the world.

Format: Hardback
Length: 560 pages
Publication date: 12 September 2024
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Ocean is a comprehensive history of the pre-Columbian Atlantic Ocean, spanning from the formation of the mid-Atlantic ridge 200 million years ago to the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century. John Haywood challenges the notion that Atlantic history begins with the first voyage of the Genoese navigator and argues that the seafaring and shipbuilding skills that enabled European global exploration and expansion were not fully formed in the fifteenth century but were learned over centuries and millennia in the Atlantic and its marginal seas. The pre-Columbian history of the Atlantic is the story of how Europeans learned to master the oceans, and it is essential to understanding why it was Europeans, and not any of the world's other seafaring peoples, who 'discovered the world. "Ocean" is informed by the author's extensive travels in and around the Atlantic Ocean, crossing Newfoundlands Grand Banks, the Sea of Darkness, and the weed-covered Sargasso Sea to make landfall at locations as diverse as Vinland, Greenland, the Faroes, and the Cape Verde Islands. Populated by a heterogeneous and multi-ethnic cast of seafarers, fishermen, monks, merchants, and dreamers, this is an in-depth history of a neglected subject, fusing geology, geography, mythology, cosmology, developing maritime technologies, and the early history of exploration to narrate an enthralling and intriguing story that lies at the very heart of Europe's modern history and its relationship with the rest of the world. A history on a grand scale, "Ocean" offers the reader a feast of historical storytelling that will appeal to readers of Da.

Weight: 848g
Dimension: 241 x 160 x 46 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781801109901