Vast Expanses
A History of the Oceans
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4156397 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael J Chiarappa (Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Connecticut, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 107 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 148-148 |
| Publication date | 2020-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaaa016 |
| OpenAlex | W3037783212 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
Over the past fifteen years a steady movement on the part of maritime historians, environmental historians, and historians of science and technology has crafted a paradigm that more fully contextualizes the dynamics that mark humanity's engagement with the oceans. Vast Expanses is Helen M. Rozwadowski's contribution to this increasingly important discussion. While the book's sweeping narrative touches on every corner of the high seas, Vast Expanses's method and conceptual underpinnings are what distinguish it—offering an expansive framework for incorporating the ocean into human history. Building on a new historiographical paradigm that recognizes the inherent historical standing of the oceans over millennia, Vast Expanses frames its narrative around acknowledging people as fully immersed in the oceanic environment and as active agents in its biological and physical transformation—a legacy extending from its surface to its greatest depths. Linked to this theme are the industrial and global forces that made oceanic networks increasingly less attenuated and the process by which the acquisition of ocean knowledge empowered these developments. To underscore the longue durée of ocean history, Rozwadowski begins her discussion focusing on prehistory, clarifying how ocean geomorphology and ecosystems effected the movement of hominids and other species, shaping conditions for a maritime world that would unfold over millennia. After clarifying these antecedents, Vast Expanses charts its principal message around “questions of how, by whom and why knowledge about the ocean was created and used” (p. 9
Archaeology · Environmental ethics · Expansive · Historiography · Narrative · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,83 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |