The Water Margins
CIVILIZATIONS SHAPED
BY THE SEA
From Time Immemorial many fine things have been said and sung of the sea. And the days have been, when sailors were considered veritable mermen; and the ocean itself, as the peculiar theatre of the romantic and wonderful. But of late years there have been revealed so many plain, matter-of-fact details connected with nautical life that at the present day the poetry of salt water is very much on the wane.
—HERMANMELVILLE,“Etchings of a Whaling Cruise”
The first and most obvious light in which the sea presents itself from the political and social point of view is that of a highway; or better, perhaps, of a wide common, over which men may pass in all directions, but on which some well-worn paths show that controlling reasons have led them to choose certain lines of travel rather than others. These lines of travel are called trade routes; and the reasons which have determined them are to be sought in the history of the world.
—A. T. MAHAN,The Influence of Sea Power upon History