Other Pieces

Bowdoin Magazine 88:2 (2017): 20–25.

Mental maps of the world sometimes change in a historical instant, as they did five hundred years ago with the establishment of permanent transatlantic and transpacific sailing routes. Most of the time, however, our worldview changes piecemeal and more modestly, through personal necessity or experience—from the opening of a new road, perhaps, or relocation for school or work. As the Arctic thaws before our eyes, it is revealing the once-frozen region’s myriad mysteries, untapped potential, and innumerable hazards in ways that are redrawing the world map more dramatically than at any time since Columbus and Magellan.More

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

Dec. 25, 2013.

When we pick up history books today what exactly do we expect from them? Historian Lincoln Paine considers what should be in our history.

The term globalization entered the popular lexicon in the 1980s, but the phenomenon of globalization, which has effects not only across space but also through time, is not a spontaneous novelty. Despite what many partisans of the present day would have us believe, most spheres of human activity—trade, culture, migration, foodways, environmental crises, disease, language, and religion, to say nothing of diplomacy and war—have been globalized for centuries. Even so, the process of globalization began thousands of years ago, thanks especially to the work of enterprising mariners. We call the study of all this world history.More

Foreign Affairs Online, Dec. 18, 2013.

There is nothing like a changing geopolitical scene coupled with fiscal uncertainty to send shudders through a nation’s military establishment, especially when that nation is, like the United States, a global power. Institutional soul-searching usually takes the form of devising new strategies that seek to redefine the military’s mission and to justify its reason for being. This is a difficult exercise for all of the services, but especially so for the navy, which operates the most complex and expensive weapon-delivery systems in the world.More

Argonauta 30:1 (2013): 8–11. 

Even without the threat of the Mayan apocalypse, which is upon me as I write, or whatever cosmic cataclysm looms ahead as you read this, anticipating the coming needs of maritime history seems a fraught exercise. It is difficult enough to make sense of the past, about which we know at least something, without having to consider the future, about which we know at most nothing. Whenever the question of “what’s next” presents itself, I retreat to the comforting paraphrase of Roche Boyle’s celebrated Irish bull, “Why should we do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done do for us?” Let the future improvise.

More

Coriolis 2:2 (2011).

In recent decades, it has become increasingly common for maritime historians to question where we are, where we are going, what we do and how we fit into the historical profession generally. Such inquiries make sense in an institutional setting, and have resulted in the creation of any number of professional organizations from the Society of Nautical Research (1910) to the International Commission for Maritime History (1960), the North American Society for Oceanic History (1973), and the International Maritime Economic History Association (1986). More recently, lobbying behind the scenes has resulted in maritime history’s being added to the American Historical Association’s “areas of scholarly interest.”More