Networks in the First Global Age, 1400-1800

The dynamics of the maritime world has held the fascination of researchers and scholars of history for long. Viewing the waterscapes as conduits of much economic and cultural sharing between peoples and lands, the focus of Networks in the First Global Age: 1400-1800 is on the oceans and seas--the Indian, the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea--and economic, military and cultural transmissions within and across them.The book shows how conventional arguments in history writing about the rise of theWest, the hegemon of the State and the might of overseas colonial empires can beoverturned by emphasizing on dynamic, collaborative, nonlinear networks as opposed toformal networks based on hierarchy. Such networks signal a completely different pictureabout global interactions in the period 1400-1800, emphasizing the centrality of peoples andcommodities at different times in different parts of the world. More importantly, the bookchallenges chronological readings and urges us to think spatially instead.With contributions from Indian, American, French and Iberian scholars, Networks in the First Global Age: 1400-1800 tells us what happens when the sea of history meets the sea ofnetwork analysis.

Rila Mukherjee is Professor and Head, Department of History, School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India. While she specialized on the silk trade and traders in eighteenth century Bengal for her doctoral dissertation, she remains deeply interested in Bengal's prior commercial and cultural interactions within the Bay of Bengal. She has recently edited Networks in the First Global Age: 1400-1800 (2011).