Oceans

• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2022
• Subjects: Arctic; Indian; Pacific; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0367

Capturing the topic of oceans is challenging because each of the world’s five oceans—Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, and Southern—are interconnected without clear geographical separations. For instance, it is unclear where the northern Atlantic ends and the Artic Oceans begin. At the same time, these large bodies of water differ by currents and winds, depth, and their relationship to the continental shelves. A prominent example emerges from the Atlantic Ocean, where the eastern continental shelf of North America extends far out into the northern Atlantic, thus creating one of the richest fishing grounds in the world off Newfoundland. This extension into the Atlantic Ocean also provides for many harbors and ports, which facilitates the sailing tasks along the eastern shores of North America. In contrast, located in the Pacific, the western edges of North and South America are near the water’s edge, allowing for fewer larger bays, thus making sailing up and down the coast a more complex undertaking. Despite such geographical differences, significant advances have been made in the historiographical treatment of the earth’s large watery basins. Historians have only recently begun to focus exclusively on exploration of ocean basins. The preference for continental historical accounts discounts the fact that oceans blanket close to 70 percent of the earth’s surface. The redirecting of investigations from terrestrial to oceanic and continental to aquatic basins promises to reveal novel insights into human development. Although maritime concerns have influenced diplomatic, military, and technological histories, such matters remained ancillary to terrestrial entities associated with kingdoms, empires, and nation-states. Nevertheless, an expanding body of knowledge during the Early Modern era allowed European expansion from the Mediterranean to the western Pacific in a little more than two centuries. Historiographically speaking, newly developed oceanic accounts seek to tackle several issues: tracking the influence of ...