Philip de Souza - Seafaring and Civilisation

Subtitled "Maritime Perspectives on World History" Philip de Souza's Seafaring and Civilisation is intended to be examination of the role of maritime commerce and communication in shaping world history. It's an ambitious project that deserves far more than the 200 pages that the author has. Unfortunately while the book touches on a number of interesting ideas, it fails to develop these beyond a superficial argument that maritime transport allowed exploration, facilitated the exchange of ideas, disease and new commodities and allowed states to extend their influence regionally and eventually globally. Philip de Souza fails, for instance, to get to grips with why it was European explorers arrived in the Americas, and not the other way around. Nor does he explain why, beyond generalities, why the much more advanced Asian and Middle Eastern Empires did not arrive off the European coasts in sufficient numbers to mean that that their influence would dominate the world after the Middle Ages.

De Souza argues that seafaring was highly influential. He writes, for instance:

maritime networks promoted and helped to maintain highly diverse social structures in which individuals and groups were able to specialise in economic, religious, military and cultural tasks. It is important to emphasise the role of staples in the expansion of this trade. A great deal of it was bulk cargoes of food, raw materials such as metals and timber, cloth, aromatics and spices which were so throughly embedded in the urban cultures of many places in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Near and Middle East, South and East Asia, that they can be considered part of the fabric of civilisation.

He continues by arguing that the growth of large states "gave added impetus" to the development of urban civilisation in places linked by the ocean. In turn this stimulated production and taxation.

But I didn't feel that this was as profound an insight as the author seems to suggest. In fact what was key was trade, not the mechanics of trade. There is nothing here about how the expansion of trade and production shifted civilisation. Surprisingly the word capitalism isn't mentioned - because it is the capitalism's great expansion in production, with the associated need to expand and claim new resources, that means that seafaring explodes in the late 17th century. In contrast de Souza merely sees the expansion as being associated with the development of European empires.

The book contains many interesting facts and some wonderful illustrations. But there is no space for the author to develop any insights. At the same time his claim that "Many British families are, quite reasonably, proud of their ancestors' achievements in the Indian subcontinent" is very strange. I'm not sure this is a argument that stands up to any sort of scrutiny. The book also doesn't really mention the way that seafarering power became key to 19th and 20th century history, nor how this shaped industrial development.

Sadly despite the interesting premise I didn't think the book was long enough for the author to develop a coherent argument that raised it beyond merely interesting.