The Millennium Maritime Trade Revolution, 700–1700 (Hardback)
How Asia Lost Maritime Supremacy
Imprint: Pen & Sword Maritime
Pages: 344
Illustrations: 16 mono illustrations
ISBN: 9781399060127
Published: 15th December 2023
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Following the series’ first book How Maritime Trade and the Indian Subcontinent Shaped the World, this book continues to demonstrate how maritime trade has been the key driver of the world’s wealth-creation, economic and intellectual progress. The story begins where the first book ends, when following Roman Empire collapse, 7th-century European maritime trade almost ceased, creating population collapse and poverty; the Dark Ages. In 700 stuttering, hesitant recovery was evident with new ports but Viking and Muslim maritime raiding neutered recovery until the 11th century. In Asia by contrast, short and long-haul trade thrived and accelerated from east Africa and the Persian Gulf all the way to China, encouraging Southeast Asian state formation. The book tells the story of slowly rising, gradually accelerating European maritime trade, which until the 15th century was overshadowed by far more voluminous Asian trade in much larger, more complex ships traded by more sophisticated commercial entities, contributing to innovative tolerant wealth-creating maritime societies. In Europe, Mediterranean maritime trade made most progress from about 1000 to 1450,. But by 1700 north Europeans dominated Atlantic, American and Mediterranean trade and were penetrating sophisticated Asian maritime networks, a complete reversal. This book explains how and why and how destructive continental influences destroyed Asia’s maritime supremacy. As in the first book, Nick Collins finds similar patterns; maritime inquisitiveness, invention, problem-solving and toleration and continental political suppression of those maritime traits, most dramatically in China, but destructively everywhere, allowing the millennium maritime trade revolution.
Refreshingly, this is a global history that does not centre around European successes and failures but provides a primary viewpoint from Asia looking towards Europe…the text provides an exceptionally rich array of case studies with many fascinating details of what was traded and how merchants and commodities operated across time…this is an engaging, well-written story of the supremacy of maritime trade in shaping world history.
Marion Uckelmann, New Book Chronicle. Cambridge University Press 29/10/24
‘Fascinating fact-lets jump out at you from every page…This is someone clearly familiar with today’s trading system, who really, really knows his stuff…The author’s sheer enthusiasm for this vast subject is truly inspiring-in the sense of making the reader want to know more. And that’s not something reviewers often say about other peoples’ books.’
Professor Geoffrey Till, The Naval Review
‘Why maritime history is everyone’s history... Collins uses meticulous research and engaging storytelling to highlight the pivotal role of maritime history in shaping world events [and] employs a diverse collection of sources to provide a comprehensive understanding of this transformative period.’
Nautilus International
"Perhaps the best last thing to say about this volume is that the author’s sheer enthusiasm for his vast subject is truly inspiring – in the sense of making the reader want to know more. And that’s not something that reviewers often say about other peoples’ books."
The Naval Review
Read the full review here.
Nick Collins’ latest book is a continuation of his previous work How Maritime Trade and the Indian Subcontinent Shaped the World, which was reviewed in the Telegraph in 2022.
Nautilus Telegraph - May-June 2024 edition
As before, Collins uses meticulous research and engaging storytelling to highlight the pivotal role of maritime history in shaping world events.
Delving into the dynamics of maritime commerce from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the early modern era, The Millennium Maritime Trade Revolution 700-1700 employs a diverse collection of sources to provide a comprehensive understanding of this transformative period.
‘An original incursion into and explanation of a topic that warrants examination…the scope of this work is broad and audacious and…compares very well and strongly with other recent popularized publications in the field’
’Professor George Bryan Souza
'Ambitious and strikingly well informed…based on an impressive range of scholarship, it makes connection across fields of enquiry that are rarely, if ever, linked…It is also a timely text, coming as it does at a time when Asia has recovered the dominion it once exercises over global maritime trade'
Professor Andrew Lambert
About Nick Collins
Nick Collins read history at Magdalene College Cambridge, was pressed to continue academic research and writing but chose to go into maritime trade with H Clarkson& Co, the largest company in the field with world-wide connections. He was director of of the main company and of subsidiary companies in Asia including the Far East and India, Dubai and the USA. So he has done business with many of the countries in the regions featured in the book and brings practical hands-on experience to academic research to produce a unique work.
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