The Boundless Sea
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We are a land animal. But millions of us have taken to the sea to live, fight, travel, eat, escape and seek fame and fortune. I am obsessed with the sea. On how humans have built ever more efficient and capable ships to exploit its riches and opportunities. This is an conversation I’ve been longing to have. David Abulafia has written massive, beautiful, scholarly books about the oceans and his most recent, The Boundless Sea, is a masterpiece.
He and I chatted about why and how humans have taken to the sea in ships and why what happens on the water affects politics, economics and societies on the land.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello History Hit listeners, as you are listening to this right now at this exact second I am |
| 0:05.8 | currently on an epic cross-country road trip of England. 600 miles and 1 million years |
| 0:13.9 | of history from the first humans through to Stonehenge, Dovercastle, Hastings up to |
| 0:18.6 | Ironbridge in the Black Country and to the northeast where I'm visiting a Cold War |
| 0:22.6 | bunker in York. |
| 0:23.6 | And I want to hear from you. |
| 0:26.4 | I want to do more stops, tell me when I should stop. Any local tips or hints that you want |
| 0:30.3 | to share or you want to see me report on on my social media channels and Twitter and |
| 0:34.3 | Instagram, etc. just send me a message ds.hh at historyhit.com. That's deltacierra.hotel. |
| 0:42.8 | at historyhit.com or tweet me at the History Guy. You can keep up with the road trip this |
| 0:47.6 | week on Instagram and Twitter at the History Guy on both and then you can hear the whole |
| 0:51.7 | thing as a podcast series next week. |
| 0:54.9 | Thanks and enjoy this episode. |
| 1:24.9 | Devon Cornwall Dorset Sussex on my port bow. Never happier. |
| 1:30.9 | Well, the only thing you make me happy in doing that is while I was reading a book about |
| 1:35.5 | maritime about naval history. There have been many maritime historians on this podcast |
| 1:40.0 | but none of them have had the ambition and the grander vision of this guest I've got |
| 1:45.6 | to date. I've been trying to get him on for ages. It's incredibly exciting. It is David |
| 1:51.0 | Abilafia. He is an emeritus professor of history at Cambridge University. He has written |
| 1:57.4 | a ginormous book called The Boundless Sea about our human relationship with the oceans, |
| 2:04.5 | trading, fighting, traveling on the oceans. It's such a gigantic book. It's impossible |
| 2:09.7 | to know what to do with this conversation but it was a huge honor sitting down with him |
... |
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