Crossing The Waters: Historic Developments And Periodizations Before The 1830s

Abstract

A focus on the century from the 1830s to the 1930s provides an adequate periodization for connecting the migration systems of several seas. To show how rivers, seas, and oceans either connect or divide and how the nineteenth century seaborne migrations emerged from century-long practices, the chapter provides traveling knowledges and early seafaring and then turn to the most intensely traversed waters, the Indian Ocean and the East and Southeast Asian Seas. Beginning in the period of the early 1400s to the 1520s, the chapter describes how global changes in trade protocols and relations, in power hierarchies and early empire-building shaped macroregions far earlier than nineteenth century globalization: continuities and adaptations in the South and East Asian Seas before the 1830s' introduction of indentured and free mass migrations, the expansion of the West African-Iberian to a transoceanic Black Atlantic, the emergence of the White Atlantic and the transpacific routes. Keywords: Black Atlantic; global changes; Indian Ocean; power hierarchies; seaborne migrations; Southeast Asian Seas; trade protocols; White Atlantic