Course Description
01:506:247 The Seas Around Us: Ocean History in Global Persepective
- Academic Credits: 3
Syllabus: Spring 2023
Syllabus Disclaimer: The information on this syllabus is subject to change. For up-to-date course information, please refer to the syllabus on your course site (Canvas, etc.) on the first day of class.
Course Description
We live in a world of water, but we are taught that most history takes place on land. The rise and fall of cities and civilizations are often portrayed as a function of controlling earth and agriculture. Yet humanity has always depended on seas and coasts – for food, for transport, for wealth, for fuel, for faith, for fun. We are often not even aware of how much our world is wrapped up in maritime spaces. To this day 90% of the world’s shipping takes place over water, hundreds of millions of people depend directly on the sea for their livelihood and we face a future of rising sea levels which will radically alter our societies.
This course is designed to expose students to an alternative way of viewing world history, by highlighting the importance of maritime spaces and the sea in our shared story. It inverts the normal story of the past to approach societies and nature from the perspective of the waves. In this course we will cover broad stretches of time and space to show how all human communities have been affected by, and themselves change, maritime space. In so doing we will look closely at key moments in history and key group who stand out as masters of maritime nature – Polynesians, Malay, Dutch and Greek mariners amongst others – and the stories they produced.