NETWORKS IN THE FIRST GLOBAL AGE: 14001800

This volume views waterscapes as conduits of much economic and cultural sharing between peoples and lands, focussing on oceans and seasthe Indian, the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Seaand economic, military and cultural transmissions within and across them. It shows how conventional arguments in history writing about the rise of the West, the hegemon of the State and the might of overseas colonial empires can be overturned by emphasizing on dynamic, collaborative, nonlinear networks as opposed to formal networks based on hierarchy. Such networks signal a completely different picture about global interactions in the period , emphasizing the centrality of peoples and commodities at different times in different parts of the world.