Oceans, Seas, and Shorelines – serie

While humans have successfully exploited the Earth’s land surfaces, the seventy percent of our planet covered by water has confronted them with greater challenges and many seemingly insoluble mysteries. Oceans and seas, and the shorelines that connect them with land, continue to escape human grasp, and that elusiveness persists despite unrelenting and multifaceted human engagement with the great waters. Oceans, seas and shorelines have been harvested to meet every kind of human need, and they have also been appropriated in art, literature, music and human representations of cultural identity throughout human history, across every means of expressing thought and feeling. They continue to be central to economic prosperity, and at the same time sites of entertainment and leisure that sustain tourism and boost economies across the planet. And yet these environments remain unpredictable and elemental: forces to be reckoned with and an enduring challenge to human invention and innovation.This book introduces the Routledge Oceans, Seas and Shorelines: Cultural, Environmental and Natural Histories multidisciplinary series. Chapters approach issues affecting these environments from different disciplinary perspectives with the aim of increasing our understanding of, and respect for, ocean, sea and shoreline environments.The volume will be of interest to specialists in relevant fields, to students working on marine and oceanographic courses, and on others which touch upon the history, literature and administration of seas and littorals, and to a general readership engaged with the transcendent challenges facing our planet in the twenty-first century.

This book introduces non-specialist readers to the history of how human societies have sought to control, use and exploit our oceans, seas and shorelines over time in different geographical and cultural contexts.The Unruly Ocean examines the development of the modern international legal regime – the law of the sea, maritime law, marine environmental and pollution law, fisheries regulation, and underwater cultural heritage law – and considers how effective these laws have been in addressing the many challenges facing marine and coastal environments ranging from piracy and war to oil spills and the extraction of marine resources. It concludes by discussing the socio-ecological crises facing the world’s oceans, seas and shorelines, and explores current ideas for reimagining a legal regime that restores the health of our oceanic realm and offers a more holistic, transboundary, rights-based approach to ocean governance.This book will be of value to law and non-law undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as research scholars and other educated audiences interested in a legal history of the world’s oceans, seas and shorelines.

For as long as humanity has ventured on the seas, naval warfare has been an integral part of their activities and the focal point for many histories and ideas of heritage. This book presents a rarely explored aspect: the long‑term impact of those battles on shorelines, seas and oceans.Dramatic and altering, the physical scars of battles remain with us today in the form of cultural landscapes and archaeological sites, while the geopolitical consequences of warfare have been world‑changing. The migrations of peoples across the seas, accompanied by violence, have done more to shape the demographic and cultural map of the modern world than almost anything else. Both seaborne opportunities and threats have influenced the way of life of coastal communities. Today, technology has seen these threats extend far into the deepest ocean and reach across continents. This book shows how, despite being virtually invisible to an increasing percentage of the world’s population, the ocean is more significant now than it has ever been.Ranging from the world of antiquity to the present day with a global perspective, the volume is intended to appeal to those interested in history, archaeology, social sciences and the environment.

For as long as humanity has ventured on the seas, naval warfare has been an integral part of their activities and the focal point for many histories and ideas of heritage. This book presents a rarely explored aspect: the long‑term impact of those battles on shorelines, seas and oceans.Dramatic and altering, the physical scars of battles remain with us today in the form of cultural landscapes and archaeological sites, while the geopolitical consequences of warfare have been world‑changing. The migrations of peoples across the seas, accompanied by violence, have done more to shape the demographic and cultural map of the modern world than almost anything else. Both seaborne opportunities and threats have influenced the way of life of coastal communities. Today, technology has seen these threats extend far into the deepest ocean and reach across continents. This book shows how, despite being virtually invisible to an increasing percentage of the world’s population, the ocean is more significant now than it has ever been.Ranging from the world of antiquity to the present day with a global perspective, the volume is intended to appeal to those interested in history, archaeology, social sciences and the environment.