Volume 53, Number 11 · June 22, 2006
The Sea Around Us
By Linda Colley
Atlantic History: Concept and Contours
by Bernard Bailyn
Harvard University Press, 149 pp., $18.95
The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661
by Carla Gardina Pestana
Harvard University Press, 342 pp., $49.95
Human beings, wrote the ancient Greek geographer Strabo, 'are in a certain sense amphibious, not exclusively connected with the land, but with the sea as well.' Yet works of history are usually landlocked. Most historians write about particular states, nations, continents, or empires, and if they glance at maritime matters at all, it is in order to trace the naval, commercial, and imperial activities of their chosen territories. Terra firma still comes first. Abandoning this perspective, and approaching the past primarily by concentrating on stretches of water, is challenging and innately subversive. Just how challenging and subversive was shown by Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Medi-terranean World in the Age of Philip II, which was originally published in French in 1949.
Review, 3848 words
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