GlobalOceans:ThemesConnection

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In the beginning there were islands and regions, each isolated from the other. Then, some five or six centuries ago, they lost their isolation as carracks and junks crisscrossed the watery highways of the world. The course looks at the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Indian, and the Pacific oceans to highlight intra- and inter-oceanic connections. It also stresses the importance of the exchange of ideas, peoples, and commodities. The course takes a longue durée view of oceanic history, stretching at least three or four millennia to understand how oceans were foundational for the development of all human civilizations. The regional oceanic systems slowly merged into a global whole starting from medieval times, developing into the mercantilism of early modern times, culminating into the capitalistic system of modernity. The linchpin of the course is the people whose agency made the world of Global Oceans, and the cost that had to be paid for it. The course dwells on themes like migration, freedom and unfreedom, trade, business practices, environment, and politics.