Landmarks Lecture, Great Portland Landmarks, Feb. 20, 2016.More
Shorter Pieces
Review of China on the Sea: How the Maritime World Shaped Modern China, by Zheng Yangwen
The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord 25:4 (2015): 464–65.
A book entitled China on the Sea: How the Maritime World Shaped China might reasonably be expected to focus on maritime affairs, especially the activities of Chinese mariners, merchants, and officials. As Zheng writes in her introduction, she wants to reassess Qing China by “putting the seas at the center of the narrative and using the oceans to elucidate the complexity of Chinese history.” While the book is full of fascinating vignettes about how an increasingly open-door policy towards foreign trade exposed the Chinese to a variety of imports, Chinese mariners and maritime trade-related institutions are all but absent from most of the book; the index contains no entries for “crew,” “port,” or “ships.”More
Review essay: Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot on and Never Will, by Judith Schalansky
World Ocean Journal 2 (2015): 16–23
According to one estimate, there are upwards of 8.8 million islands in the world. As Christian Depraetere, a leading practitioner of nissology (the study of islands) has put it, “islands are the rule rather than the exception.” From a nissological perspective, the visible land of our bluewater orb constitutes nothing more than a sprawling archipelago, dominated by the big islands of America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica to be sure, but a cluster of islands nonetheless. If this were not the case, ships would not be central to world trade.More
À l’origine de l’homme, la mer
France Forum, June 2015, 1–3.
Les animaux terrestres sont apparus dans les océans, puis, venant des profondeurs de l’océan, ont grimpé sur la terre. Cette affirmation est un classique de la théorie de l’évolution. On a aussi découvert, plus récemment, que, grâce à une alimentation composée d’eau douce, de mollusques marins et d’autres espèces aquatiques riches en acides gras et en divers nutriments, le cerveau de nos ancêtres hominidés est devenu plus grand et plus complexe, un processus connu sous le nom d’encéphalisation.More
John Batchelor Show, Part 2
May 10, 2015More
John Batchelor Show, Part 1
May 9, 2015More