Aquatic views of the past are gaining prominence in historical analysis, at least among world and global historians. Perhaps reminded by Derek Walcott's oft-invoked poem that ‘The sea is history’, scholars are increasingly turning to the study of oceans as ‘watery site[s] of cross-cultural exchange and struggle’ (Donna Gabaccia, ‘A long Atlantic in a wider world’, Atlantic Studies, 1, 1, 2004, p. 1). This oceanic ‘turn’ has been influenced by a growing interest in superseding intellectual frameworks for the study of the past defined by notions of bounded territoriality. It has found expression in recent projects, of which the best known is the NEH-sponsored ‘Oceans Connect’ project. And, in that clearest sign of a sub-field's growing importance, there was an American Historical Review forum, ‘Oceans of history’, in 2006.

With this short book, Buschmann contributes to these endeavours, aiming to explore ‘the global interconnections created by the exploration and charting of the world's largest oceans: the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific’ (xiii). The author has produced a synthetic work dealing with aspects of the histories of these three oceans and ‘oceanscapes’, or oceanic spaces, managing to compress much material into a slim volume. Part of a McGraw-Hill series entitled ‘Explorations in World History’, which ‘seeks to convey the results of recent research in world history in a form wholly accessible to beginning students’ (xi), this book targets first-year undergraduates, and is designed as a complementary text for world and maritime history classes. The pedagogical thrust of the book is unmistakably conveyed by the useful ‘getting started’ questions, chapter outline, and timeline at the start of each chapter, the introduction having only a timeline. There is also a ‘suggested readings’ section at the end of each chapter.

The introduction discusses the origin and formation of the world's oceans, and explores how certain geophysical features, such as currents and winds, affect their flow. Buschmann makes a case for a ‘global history of oceans’, which allows for an analysis of the ‘development of human societies’ (p. 6). Chapter One discusses the Indian Ocean as ‘a first maritime crossroads’ (p. 11). The author takes the reader through nearly two millennia of history in just twenty-four pages, focusing on the traditional themes of commercial and religious exchange. Both retell the familiar story of the expansion of Islam, the development and dissemination of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, and the dynamics of long-distance trade. Buschmann adds an important corrective to the view, still widely held in some quarters, that commercial exchange was confined to luxury commodities, by highlighting that trade for ‘bare necessities’ (p. 14) has existed throughout the ocean's history and regions. Students will find the comparative discussion of the familiar travels of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta useful, because it draws out similarities and differences of experience in the itineraries of two travellers separated by about a century. The chapter ends with an overview of Chinese and Iberian expansion into the Indian Ocean, a comparison of two distinct maritime powers. While the Ming dynasty did not develop sustained interest in oceanic expansion, its seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433, as far as the Swahili coast, reflected the technical knowledge, labour, and wealth to which the state had access. Portuguese expansion was to be of much longer duration, and Buschmann competently recounts the entry of these first Europeans into the ocean.

Chapter Two turns to the ‘making’ of the Atlantic world. By challenging narratives that accord undue importance to Europeans in this process, the author stresses the participation of Native Americans and Africans in its development. The latter also figure in the discussion of how the Mediterranean and the ‘Sahara’ Atlantic came to be linked by the fourteenth century, and are included in the analysis of the challenges faced by navigators and sailors in negotiating winds and currents. Much of this section, however, is devoted to how the ‘people inhabiting the Mediterranean Atlantic’ (p. 43) developed the oceanographic knowledge and shipping technology, acquired piecemeal though commercial exchange in and through the northern seas, to sail westward into the open waters of the Atlantic. Buschmann's discussion of the Columbian Exchange(s), in which plants, animals, and diseases were exchanged between the ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Worlds is of no surprise. This section includes a brief analysis of how Portuguese and Spanish ‘power’ was articulated across the Atlantic, a salutary reminder of the multifaceted nature of European rule. Equally unsurprising is the space devoted to the Atlantic slave trade, curiously headed ‘African migrations to the Americas’. The author usefully complicates the ‘triangular trade’ formulation of textbooks by showing its inadequacies when viewed from an African perspective. The last part of the chapter is devoted to the dynamics of the revolutions in North America, France, Haiti, and South America, and discussing them together provides a sense of how they were connected.

A long chapter brings the Pacific into the analysis. Buschmann provides a wide-ranging overview of the human settlement of this ocean, in which winds and ocean currents played a critical role. The author deftly weaves his way through thousands of years of history, and highlights the shift in focus by historians in according greater attention ‘to regional connections between and among different islands’ (p. 74). While it is true that supra-regional links in the Pacific were not forged before the sixteenth century, this perspective gets away from the misperception (and misconception) of the ocean as lacking in human dynamism and interaction before the arrival of Europeans. One thinks here of Epeli Hau'ofa's ‘Our sea of islands’, with its reminder of the long histories of inter-island voyaging in the Pacific. For much of the rest of the chapter, Buschmann recapitulates the familiar story of the entry of Europeans into these waters, discussing the establishment of the galleon trade in silver that linked China to Manila, Acapulco, and beyond. He also outlines the dynamics of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch involvement in a Pacific connected to insular Southeast Asia and the South China Sea, but it is regrettable that, while making a valuable point about the resilience of Asian trade, the author characterizes it as a ‘peddling trade’ (p. 83), reinforcing a dated view of it as small-scale and trifling. In the ‘Encounters’ section of the chapter, Buschmann recounts the development of the European imagery of, and encounters with, the Pacific through to the nineteenth century.

The final chapter discusses a number of themes across oceans for the period 1800–2000. The development of shipping technologies allowed for more and faster travel between and across oceans, and facilitated imperial conquest, particularly for Britain and the United States. The shift away from slavery led to the widespread use of South Asian and Chinese indentured labour. Also covered are the migration of Europeans across the Atlantic and the introduction of oil tankers and container ships in the second half of the twentieth century, although Buschmann's account overstates the extent to which steamships replaced sailing vessels, particularly if we think of the Indian Ocean, where ‘dhows’ remained important. The chapter also explores the emergence of a ‘transoceanic consciousness’ (p. 102), which he sees as emerging from the late nineteenth century, specifically around suffrage movements, workers’ internationals, and pan-Africanism. These movements are deemed to demonstrate that oceans ‘did not serve only as waterways for international control’, because ‘the same tools that connected the large transoceanic empires of the New Imperialism’ could also be harnessed by ‘people critical of imperial thought to organize on an international basis’ (p. 116). The chapter ends with a well-considered discussion of the claims by states over marine resources, the exploitation of these, and the environmental damage that this new ‘scramble’ has inevitably caused.

Buschmann is to be commended for seeking to expose students to an ocean-centric approach to world history. First-year students will no doubt appreciate the clarity of the writing and the engaging material, and will understand that oceans have mattered in the making of the past. While interpreting the past through an aquatic lens is increasingly bearing fruit for those who wish to move beyond nation-state and area studies frameworks to explore the ‘connected histories’ that these have elided, it is not always clear in this book how doing so challenges traditional narratives, or even turns our understanding of the past on its head. This problem is clear in Buschmann's discussion of ‘transoceanic consciousness’, where there is no sense of the role that oceans themselves played in these movements, other than as spaces across which ideas and information were transmitted. It is surely the case that incorporating the ocean into analyses of the past, or historicizing the ocean, requires greater attention to particular oceanic experiences and sensibilities, and how these manifested themselves through, for instance, the lives of sailors and port workers of various kinds, or how they found voice in literary expression. One is thus left wondering, in parts of the book, if what is being presented is not simply ‘repackaged’ material, for which the author claims a fresh perspective. Admittedly, this is a supplementary and short first-year text, but Buschmann might have grabbed students’ imaginations with a more novel approach, which could have fundamentally challenged their limited understanding of the past.