The Suez was in the news last month. A single, massive ship passing through the canal got blown by the winds and ended up getting wedged across the canal, blocking traffic for a week. During this period it effectively blocked the passage of about 400 ships and prevented an estimated USD 9.6 billion worth of trade!
How did we end up getting so completely dependent on the Suez and Panama canals? What is it that drives us to make bigger and bigger ships that need wider, deeper shipping docks and canals that cut across continents? The simple and obvious answer is global trade, and the economy of scales that drive it. If simple answers do not satisfy you, the book you need to read is David Abulafia's "The Boundless Sea".
This book is a serious piece of work - over 800 pages of which nearly half is references and citations! And yet, it is eminently readable, especially in the e-book format where the act of picking up a book of this size does not remind you of visits to the gym :)
The book covers a wide canvas. Starting from the oldest records of those who ventured out to explore the seas and oceans, all the way to the obsessive search for trading opportunities and power-play between countries that marks our relations with the not-so-boundless seas today.
I particularly enjoyed reading the sections on Polynesian navigators and explorers, trade during the Harappan period; the spread of Buddhism by sea; the Cholas, and the spread of Omanis deep into southern coasts of Africa. Towards the end, details of the arrival of the Europeans on the scene, and their depredations in Africa, the Americas and Asia makes for depressing reading.
At the end one has to admit that if it were not for the bloody competition between the European powers that completely transformed the world through slave-trading and migrations, the world would have been a completely different place.
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LINKS & REFERENCES
* 2021 Suez Obstruction - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Suez_Canal_obstruction
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