The seafarer peoples of the past who mastered the oceans were crucial in laying the foundations upon which civilizations were built. Seafaring brought together people and cities that were miles apart, unable to communicate by land. Civilizations were connected, and goods were introduced that people would never have known about if it weren’t for the brave people who crossed the seas.
In prehistoric times, seafaring peoples discovered new, virgin lands where they settled. Long before Magellan and Christopher Columbus, ancient seafaring people developed sea trade. They exchanged goods and ideas, widened territorial and mental horizons, and forged relations. Yet, along with the good, seafarer peoples were sometimes invaders and conquerors, plunderers and tyrants. Nevertheless, their historic importance is undeniable.
The sea crossing by humans to modern Australia and New Guinea from the Sundaland peninsula occurred around 53,000 to 65,000 years ago. The seafaring people of Island Southeast Asia were likely to have used large bamboo rafts, possibly with a sail of some sort.
Up until 58,000 BCE, the winds during the Northern Australian wet season were particularly favorable for making this crossing with sails. According to archaeologist Sue O’Connor, the reduction in favorable winds after that date aligns well with the colonization phase of Australia during prehistory.
Around 3000 BCE, population growth in the Island of Southeast Asia forced people to migrate, sailing south from the coast of modern-day Taiwan. The migrants crossed the oceans of the Indo-Pacific to settle in Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Madagascar. To facilitate this large-scale migration, the Austronesians developed new sailing techniques and new sea vessels such as the catamaran, the outrigger ship, the tanja sail, and the crab claw sail.
This allowed them to travel long distances across the Indo-Pacific and beyond, settling on islands and lands across all hemispheres.
This mass migration is known as the Austronesian Expansion, spreading the Austronesian-speaking peoples’ language, culture, and technology to new parts of the world. Demographic and environmental changes occurred, permanently changing the demographics and environments of these areas in ways that can still be seen today.
The Arabian Peninsula is bordered by the Red Sea, the Arabian-Persian Gulf, and the Arabian Sea, so maritime contacts constituted important links with the outside world. Arabian seafarers ventured overseas, and visitors and traders came to Arabian ports from most of the wider Indian Ocean world.
Ancient Arab seafaring peoples had links with Mesopotamia, the Indian Subcontinent, and Egypt. With the establishment of Hellenistic rule after Alexander the Great’s conquests in the northern Red Sea and Gulf, Arabia emerged as a transit hub for western Indian Ocean commerce.
The Greek-language text of the Roman period, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (“The circumnavigation of the Red Sea”) cites Aden as a former meeting point for shipping from India and Egypt (Periplus 26). The Periplus also describes South Arabian activity in the Horn of Africa, on Socotra, and along the East African coast.
After the Roman takeover in Egypt and the Levant, literary sources describe increased Arabian sea trade, especially in Arabian aromatics, which were popular in Rome.
The Phoenicians took pride in their seafaring dominance in the Mediterranean as great traders. They were an ancient Semitic group, and Phoenicia was a long coastal strip of city-states in the Levant region, mainly in modern Lebanon. The most important Phoenician cities were Tyre, Byblos, Sidon, and Berot (now Beirut). The Mediterranean seafarer people flourished between 1550 and 300 BCE when the Persians and Greeks conquered Tyre.
The Greeks named the Mediterranean civilization Phoenicia (Φοινίκη) in the Late Bronze Age (1500-1200 BC). They directly succeeded the Bronze Age Canaanites, continuing their cultural tradition. However, ti is debated among historians and archaeologists whether they were actually distinct from the broader group of Semitic-speaking peoples known as Canaanites.
Phoenicians were trading between Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Greece. They traded timber, metals, and textiles across these regions and established colonies throughout the Mediterranean, including Carthage in North Africa and Gadir (Cádiz) on Spain’s Atlantic coast.
In Homer’s Odyssey, the Phoenicians are depicted as masterful seafarers and shrewd traders, though at times portrayed with a hint of deceit.
The Phoenicians were not only master seafarers; they also developed the first alphabetic writing system—a consonant-based script later adopted and modified by the Greeks, who added vowels to create the first true alphabet by modern definition.
These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus…brought with them to Greece, among many other kinds of learning, the alphabet, which had been unknown before this, I think, to the Greeks.—Herodotus 5.58
After the Phoenicians, the ancient Greeks, a seafaring people surrounded by water, took over dominance of the Mediterranean. However, Mycenaean vases were found in Spain before the Phoenicians arrived in Iberia.
The ancient Greeks built ships to transport goods and as a naval force to fight wars. With a long coastline and hundreds of islands, they had the advantageous position to encourage the growth of trade and transportation to lands and islands beyond the Mediterranean, expanding their network and resources and establishing colonies in Asia Minor, Egypt, North Africa, and modern-day Italy.
The ancient Greek seafarers continuously advanced their naval technology, creating the trireme, a mighty warship instrumental in fighting historic battles that deterred the Persians from invading Europe.
Between 700 to 200 BCE, the ancient Greeks established new cities that strengthened and expanded their lands. Greek civilization expanded in size and population, creating a greater need for foreign trade. Sturdy merchant ships reached as far as the Black Sea and Spain, carrying wine, olive oil, food, grains, flax, luxury items, precious metals, and even stones where construction materials were needed.
It was also crucial that the Greek seafarers brought Hellenistic culture to all the countries they colonized, creating the foundations upon which Western Civilization was built.
The Vikings were Norse seafaring people from modern-day Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The noun Viking in Norse means “pirate raid.” Between 700 and 1100 CE, the Vikings raided and traded in England, Scotland, the Black Sea, reaching Constantinople, which they (unsuccessfully) sieged, and modern-day Canada.
In their book The Vikings and Their Age, professors Angus Somerville and Russell Andrew McDonald describe the Vikings: “The word is a job description, but it applied only to a small minority of the population,” as many people in Scandinavia would not have taken part in raids.
“Being a Viking was a part-time job since Viking expeditions were undertaken seasonally by small farmers, fishermen, merchants, chieftains, and aristocrats as a means of supplementing their income and winning fame,” they write.
The Viking Age in Scandinavian history is taken to have been the period from the earliest recorded raids by Norsemen in 793 until the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Vikings used the Norwegian and Baltic Seas for routes to the south.
The Vikings depended on their ships, which had flexible, clinker-built hulls that followed the waves. They compared their best ships with dragons, birds, and sea serpents. The Viking ships could easily be drawn up on a beach and return to sea for a fast getaway. They had long, narrow vessels for war and wide vessels for cargo.
Portugal commenced the period known as the Age of Discovery in the mid-1400s. As the westernmost seafaring people of Europe, they were the first to explore the Atlantic Ocean significantly. The Portuguese first colonized the Azores and other nearby islands, then moved toward the west coast of Africa. Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was the first to sail around the southern tip of Africa in 1488.
In 1498, another Portuguese seafarer, Vasco da Gama, repeated the experiment, making it as far as India. Soon, Portugal would establish ports as far west as Brazil, as far east as Japan, and along the coasts of Africa, India, and China. For some historians, that was a shy step toward globalization.
The Portuguese were not only daring sea explorers. They were fearless seamen who fought many victorious naval battles against their European rivals and suppressed the people of the lands they conquered.
For Vasco da Gama and later Portuguese captains and royals, their naval might was used to tax and subvert the trade of others, and to build an empire. An empire that had some blood in its foundations. There were many atrocities committed in Portugal’s name, such as moving great numbers of African slaves to boost Brazil’s economy or setting ablaze a boatful of Muslims by Vasco da Gama himself.
It didn’t take long for Portugal’s rivals, the Spaniards, also a great seafaring people, to explore and conquer. The most famous of the Spanish discoveries was Central America by Christopher Columbus, an Italian navigator and explorer who sailed under a Spanish flag, appointed by the Queen of Spain, Isabella I of Castile.
From then on, the Spanish began to build a colonial empire, starting with the Caribbean, establishing the colonies of Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Puerto Rico as their main bases. In 1519, Hernán Cortés led the war to conquer the Aztec Empire, ruled by Moctezuma II. From there, the conquistadors expanded Spanish rule to northern Central America and parts of what is now the southern and western United States, and from Mexico, sailing the Pacific Ocean to the Spanish East Indies.
The next empire to be conquered was the Incas. The conquistadors moved to take over the Incas after crossing the Isthmus of Panama and sailing the Pacific to northern Peru. In 1532, Francisco Pizarro succeeded in subduing the empire like Cortés.
Subsequently, other Spanish conquistadores used Peru as a base for conquering much of Ecuador and Chile. Colombia, Bolivia, and Argentina followed. These conquests founded the basis for modern Hispanic America and the Hispanosphere.
The English were seafaring people, but arrived late in the Age of Exploration, making eastward and westward leaps. The English East India Company was founded in 1600, focusing on India and China. Their presence in India increased when the ruling Mughal Empire began to collapse in 1707.
Other than trade, the English had religious goals as well. Following England’s religious reformation in the 16th century, the desire to export Protestantism through overseas exploration resulted from rivalry with Catholic Spain and Portugal.
Another motive for exploration and expansion was an emerging national pride and interest. Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe (1577-1580) fueled English confidence in the quest to master the seas with great ships and a strong navy. The importance of trade and trade routes in diplomatic relations was also a factor.
By the end of the 17th century, England increasingly exploited the new trade resources available in the New World, particularly tobacco and sugar.
First cultivated in the Caribbean in the 16th century, tobacco farming in Virginia began in 1612. The crop was produced and exported back to England in such quantities that by the mid-17th century, it became significantly cheaper. What had formerly been a luxury for the wealthy only became a widespread habit. Likewise, after the introduction of sugar in Barbados in 1640, English plantations in India quickly started making it the dominant crop.
English colonization and the introduction of new crops benefited the merchants and the British Crown, establishing England as a strong colonial power until the 20th century.
