Literary Studies on the Terraqueous Globe

Extract

At the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century, the Philosopher Francis Bacon Cited the Nautical Compass, Enabling Cross-Ocean travel, as one of three technologies that had changed “the whole face and state of things throughout the world,” more influential than any “empire … sect… or star” (the others were gunpowder and the printing press [118]). Bacon was not overstating the importance of saltwater transport networks in the forging of global modernity. Across an era spanning from Columbus and Vasco da Gama to the twentieth century, the maritime world was a frontier of capitalism and colonial expansion. Goods, people, and information moved across the oceans of the globe, exploiting what was called “the freedom of the seas,” even as nations warred on each other's ships for control of trade routes and coastal access. The immense wealth and power at stake in maritime transport led governments and companies to pour resources into research and development, making the maritime world one of modernity's ongoing frontiers of science and technology. It was also a great reservoir of books, narratives, and fantasy. Occurring in an environment that few could access yet that affected the lives of so many, sea voyages piqued the curiosity of stay-at-home audiences. As global ocean travel grew up together with the printing press, armchair sailors combed sea voyage literature, factual and fictional, for strange, surprising adventures as well as for information about world-altering developments and events recounted in what was called “news from the sea.”