Age of navigation
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Main article: History of navigation
Balatik, a large outrigger sailboat built as a replica of the Visayan paraw. It is a typical Austronesian double outrigger vessel from Island Southeast Asia used in the most ancient maritime trade routes.
By 1000 BCE, Austronesians in Island Southeast Asia were already engaging in regular maritime trade with China, South Asia, and the Middle East, introducing sailing technologies to these regions. They also facilitated an exchange of cultivated crop plants, introducing Pacific coconuts, bananas, and sugarcane to the Indian subcontinent, some of which eventually reached Europe via overland Persian and Arab traders.[failed verification][failed verification] A Chinese record in 200 AD describes one of the Austronesian ships, called kunlun bo or k'unlun po (崑崙舶, lit. "ship of the Kunlun people"). It may also have been the "kolandiaphonta" known by the Greeks.: 347  It has 4–7 masts and is able to sail against the wind due to the usage of tanja sails. These ships reached as far as Madagascar by ca. 50–500 AD and Ghana in the eighth century AD.[failed verification][full citation needed]
Austronesian proto-historic and historic maritime trade network in the Indian Ocean
Northern European Vikings also developed oceangoing vessels and depended heavily upon them for travel and population movements prior to 1000 AD, with the oldest known examples being longships dated to around 190 AD from the Nydam Boat site. In early modern India and Arabia the lateen-sail ship known as the dhow was used on the waters of the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Persian Gulf.
The Nydam boat (310–320 AD), one of the precursors of the Viking longships
China started building sea-going ships in the 10th century during the Song dynasty. Chinese seagoing ship is based on Austronesian ship designs which have been trading with the Eastern Han dynasty since the second century AD. They purportedly reached massive sizes by the Yuan dynasty in the 14th century, and by the Ming dynasty, they were used by Zheng He to send expeditions to the Indian Ocean.
Water was the cheapest and usually the only way to transport goods in bulk over long distances. In addition, it was the safest way to transport commodities. The long trade routes created popular trading ports called Entrepôts. There were three popular Entrepôts in Southeast Asia: the Malaka in southwestern Malaya, Hoi An in Vietnam, and Ayuthaya in Thailand. These super centers for trade were ethnically diverse, because ports served as a midpoint of voyages and trade rather than a destination. The Entrepôts helped link the coastal cities to the "hemispheric trade nexus". The increase in sea trade initiated a cultural exchange among traders.[page needed] From 1400 to 1600 the Chinese population doubled from 75 million to 150 million as a result of imported goods, this was known as the "age of commerce".
The mariner's astrolabe was the chief tool of Celestial navigation in early modern maritime history. This scaled down version of the instrument used by astronomers served as a navigational aid to measure latitude at sea, and was employed by Portuguese sailors no later than 1481.
The precise date of the discovery of the magnetic needle compass is undetermined, but the earliest attestation of the device for navigation was in the Dream Pool Essays by Shen Kuo (1088). Kuo was also the first to document the concept of true north to discern a compass' magnetic declination from the physical North Magnetic Pole. The earliest iterations of the compass consisted of a floating, magnetized lodestone needle that spun around in a water-filled bowl until it reached alignment with Earth's magnetic poles. Chinese sailors were using the "wet" compass to determine the southern cardinal direction no later than 1117. The first use of a magnetized needle for seafaring navigation in Europe was written of by Alexander Neckham, circa 1190 AD. Around 1300 AD, the pivot-needle dry-box compass was invented in Europe; it pointed north, similar to the modern-day mariner's compass. In Europe the device also included a compass-card, which was later adopted by the Chinese through contact with Japanese pirates in the 16th century.
The oldest known map is dated back to 12,000 BC; it was discovered in a Spanish cave by Pilar Utrilla. The early maps were oriented with east at the top. This is believed to have begun in the Middle East. Religion played a role in the drawing of maps. Countries that were predominantly Christian during the Middle Ages placed east at the top of the maps, in part due to Genesis, "the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden". This led to maps containing the image of Jesus Christ, and the garden of Eden at the top of maps. The latitude and longitude coordinate tables were made with the sole purpose[dubious – discuss] of praying towards Mecca. The next progression of maps came with the portolan chart. This was the first type of map that labeled North at the top and was drawn proportionate to size. Landmarks were drawn in great detail.
Ships and vessels[edit]
Main article: Medieval ships
Jong of Banten, early 1600s.
Various ships were in use during the Middle Ages. Jong, a type of large sailing ship from Nusantara, was built using wooden dowels without iron nails and multiple planks to endure heavy seas. The chuan (Chinese Junk ship) design was both innovative and adaptable. Junk vessels employed mat and batten style sails that could be raised and lowered in segments, as well varying angles. The longship was a type of ship developed over a period of centuries and perfected by its most famous users, the Vikings, around the 9th century. The ships were clinker-built, using overlapping wooden strakes. The knaar, a relative of the longship, was a type of cargo vessel. It differed from the longship in that it was larger and relied solely on its square rigged sail for propulsion. The cog was a design which is believed to have evolved from (or at least been influenced by) the longship[citation needed], and was in wide use by the 12th century. It too used the clinker method of construction. The caravel was a ship invented in Islamic Iberia and used in the Mediterranean from the 13th century. Unlike the longship and cog, it used a carvel method of construction. It could be either square rigged (Caravela Redonda) or lateen rigged (Caravela Latina). The carrack was another type of ship invented in the Mediterranean in the 15th century. It was a larger vessel than the caravel. Columbus's ship, the Santa María, was a famous example of a carrack.
Arab age of discovery[edit]
Main article: Islamic geography
Astrolabe from 9th century North Africa
The Arab Empire maintained and expanded a wide trade network across parts of Asia, Africa and Europe. This helped establish the Arab Empire (including the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates) as the world's leading extensive economic power throughout the 8th–13th centuries according to the political scientist John M. Hobson. The Belitung is the oldest discovered Arabic ship to reach the Asian sea, dating back over 1000 years.
Apart from the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, navigable rivers in the Islamic regions were uncommon, so transport by sea was very important. Islamic geography and navigational sciences were highly developed, making use of a magnetic compass and a rudimentary instrument known as a kamal, used for celestial navigation and for measuring the altitudes and latitudes of the stars. When combined with detailed maps of the period, sailors were able to sail across oceans rather than skirt along the coast. According to the political scientist John M. Hobson, the origins of the caravel ship, used for long-distance travel by the Spanish and Portuguese since the 15th century, date back to the qarib used by Andalusian explorers by the 13th century.
Control of sea routes dictated the political and military power of the Islamic nation. The Islamic border spread from Spain to China. Maritime trade was used to link the vast territories that spanned the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean (see also: Indo-Mediterranean). The Arabs were among the first to sail the Indian Ocean. Long-distance trade allowed the movement of "armies, craftsmen, scholars, and pilgrims". Sea trade was an important factor not just for the coastal ports and cities like Istanbul, but also for Baghdad and Iraq, which are further inland. Sea trade enabled the distribution of food and supplies to feed entire populations in the middle east. Long distance sea trade imported raw materials for building, luxury goods for the wealthy, and new inventions.
Hanseatic League[edit]
Maasilinna shipwreck from circa 1550 was discovered in 1985 and is now presented in Estonian Maritime Museum. This ship was used in the 16th century in the Baltic Sea.
Main article: Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League was an alliance of trading guilds that established and maintained a trade monopoly over the Baltic Sea, to a certain extent the North Sea, and most of Northern Europe for a time in the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period, between the 13th and 17th centuries. Historians generally trace the origins of the League to the foundation of the Northern German town of Lübeck, established in 1158/1159 after the capture of the area from the Count of Schauenburg and Holstein by Henry the Lion, the Duke of Saxony. Exploratory trading adventures, raids and piracy had occurred earlier throughout the Baltic (see Vikings)—the sailors of Gotland sailed up rivers as far away as Novgorod, for example—but the scale of international economy in the Baltic area remained insignificant before the growth of the Hanseatic League. German cities achieved domination of trade in the Baltic with striking speed over the next century, and Lübeck became a central node in all the seaborne trade that linked the areas around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.
The 15th century saw the climax of Lübeck's hegemony. (Visby, one of the midwives of the Hanseatic league in 1358, declined to become a member. Visby dominated trade in the Baltic before the Hanseatic league, and with its monopolistic ideology, suppressed the Gotlandic free-trade competition.) By the late 16th century, the League imploded and could no longer deal with its own internal struggles, the social and political changes that accompanied the Reformation, the rise of Dutch and English merchants, and the incursion of the Ottoman Turks upon its trade routes and upon the Holy Roman Empire itself. Only nine members attended the last formal meeting in 1669 and only three (Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen) remained as members until its final demise in 1862.
Italian maritime republics[edit]
Main article: Maritime republics
Left: flag of the Italian Navy. Clockwise, from upper left: the coat of arms of Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi.Right: trade routes, colonies of the Genoa and Venice.
A map with the locations and coats of arms of the maritime republics of medieval Italy: Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, Pisa, Noli, Ancona, Ragusa, Gaeta.
The maritime republics built the ships they needed in their own arsenals. Pictured is the Venetian Arsenal.
The maritime republics, also called merchant republics, were Italian thalassocratic port cities which, starting from the Middle Ages, enjoyed political autonomy and economic prosperity brought about by their maritime activities. The term, coined during the 19th century, generally refers to four Italian cities, whose coats of arms have been shown since 1947 on the flags of the Italian Navy and the Italian Merchant Navy: Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. In addition to the four best known cities, Ancona, Gaeta, Noli, and, in Dalmatia, Ragusa, are also considered maritime republics; in certain historical periods, they had no secondary importance compared to some of the better known cities.
Uniformly scattered across the Italian peninsula, the maritime republics were important not only for the history of navigation and commerce: in addition to precious goods otherwise unobtainable in Europe, new artistic ideas and news concerning distant countries also spread. From the 10th century, they built fleets of ships both for their own protection and to support extensive trade networks across the Mediterranean, giving them an essential role in reestablishing contacts between Europe, Asia, and Africa, which had been interrupted during the early Middle Ages. They also had an essential role in the Crusades and produced renowned explorers and navigators such as Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus.
Over the centuries, the maritime republics—both the best known and the lesser known but not always less important—experienced fluctuating fortunes. In the 9th and 10th centuries, this phenomenon began with Amalfi and Gaeta, which soon reached their heyday. Meanwhile, Venice began its gradual ascent, while the other cities were still experiencing the long gestation that would lead them to their autonomy and to follow up on their seafaring vocation. After the 11th century, Amalfi and Gaeta declined rapidly, while Genoa and Venice became the most powerful republics. Pisa followed and experienced its most flourishing period in the 13th century, and Ancona and Ragusa allied to resist Venetian power. Following the 14th century, while Pisa declined to the point of losing its autonomy, Venice and Genoa continued to dominate navigation, followed by Ragusa and Ancona, which experienced their golden age in the 15th century. In the 16th century, with Ancona's loss of autonomy, only the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Ragusa remained, which still experienced great moments of splendor until the mid-17th century, followed by over a century of slow decline that ended with the Napoleonic invasion.
The maritime republics reestablished contacts between Europe, Asia and Africa, which were almost interrupted after the fall of the Western Roman Empire; their history is intertwined both with the launch of European expansion towards the East and with the origins of modern capitalism as a mercantile and financial system. In these cities, gold coins, which had not been used for centuries, were minted, new exchange and accounting practices were developed, and thus international finance and commercial law were born.
Technological advances in navigation were also encouraged; important in this regard was the improvement and diffusion of the compass by the Amalfi people and the Venetian invention of the great galley. Navigation owes much to the maritime republics as regards nautical cartography: the maps of the 14th and 15th centuries that are still in use today all belong to the schools of Genoa, Venice, and Ancona.
From the East, the maritime republics imported a vast range of goods unobtainable in Europe, which they then resold in other cities of Italy and central and northern Europe, creating a commercial triangle between the Arab East, the Byzantine Empire, and Italy. Until the discovery of America they were therefore essential nodes of trade between Europe and the other continents.
The harvesting of pepper; from the 15th century French edition of Marco Polo's The Travels of Marco Polo
Among the most important products were:
Medicines: aloe vera, balsam, ginger, camphor, laudanum, cardamom, rhubarb, astragalus
Spices: black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, white sugar
Perfumes and odorous substances to burn: musk, mastic, sandalwood, incense, ambergris
Dyes: indigo, alum, carmine, varnish
Textiles: silk, Egyptian linen, sambe, brocade, velvet, damask, carpets
Luxury products: gemstones, precious coral, pearls, ivory, porcelain, gold and silver threads
The maritime republics' great prosperity deriving from trade had a significant impact on the history of art, to the point that five of them (Amalfi, Genoa, Venice, Pisa and Ragusa) are today included in UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites. Although an artistic current common to all of them and exclusive to them cannot be described, a characterizing trait was the mixture of elements of the various Mediterranean artistic traditions, mainly Byzantine, Islamic and Romanesque elements.
The modern Italian communities living in Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Gibraltar, and Crimea descend, at least in part, from the colonies of the maritime republics, as well as the language island of the Tabarchino dialect in Sardinia and the extinct Italian community of Odesa.
Somali maritime enterprise[edit]
Main article: Somali maritime history
Historical Somali commercial enterprise in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the straits of Malacca.
During the Age of the Ajuran, the Somali sultanates and republics of Merca, Mogadishu, Barawa, Hobyo and their respective ports flourished. They had a lucrative foreign commerce with ships sailing to and coming from Arabia, India, Venetia,[full citation needed] Persia, Egypt, Portugal and as far away as China. In the 16th century, Duarte Barbosa noted that many ships from the Kingdom of Cambaya in what is modern-day India sailed to Mogadishu with cloths and spices, for which they in return received gold, wax and ivory. Barbosa also highlighted the abundance of meat, wheat, barley, horses, and fruit on the coastal markets, which generated enormous wealth for the merchants.[full citation needed]
In the early modern period, successor states of the Adal and Ajuran empires began to flourish in Somalia who continued the seaborne trade established by previous Somali empires. The rise of the 19th century Gobroon dynasty in particular saw a rebirth in Somali maritime enterprise. During this period, the Somali agricultural output to Arabian markets was so great that the coast of Somalia came to be known as the Grain Coast of Yemen and Oman.[full citation needed]
