Between 700 and 1700 AD, the dominant story of global trade shifted from Asia to northern Europe — not because Europe was stronger, but because continental political forces destroyed what had made Asian maritime societies work. Nick Collins picks up where his first volume left off, tracing how European trade, stunted by Viking and Muslim raiding through the early medieval period, slowly recovered while Asia's vast, sophisticated networks were dismantled from within.
The span is enormous — east Africa and the Persian Gulf to China, the Mediterranean to the Atlantic — but Collins keeps the argument tight. Asian merchants in 1400 were trading in larger, more complex ships through more sophisticated commercial arrangements than anything Europe had yet produced. By 1700, north Europeans had not only dominated the Atlantic and American trade but were penetrating Asian networks. This book is the explanation for how that reversal happened, and what role continental political suppression of maritime enterprise played across every civilisation it touched — most catastrophically in China, but not only there.
Nominated for the Maritime Foundation Awards for Best Book of 2024 and praised by Professors Andrew Lambert and George Bryan Souza, the book draws on Collins's decades as a director of H. Clarkson and Co, the world's largest shipping services company. The result is global history written from sea level, not from the top down.
-:ABOUT THE BOOK:- Ambitious and strikingly well informed...based on an impressive range of scholarship, it makes connection across fields of enquiry that are rarely, if ever, linked...It is also a timely text, coming as it does at a time when Asia has recovered the dominion it once exercises over global maritime trade. - Professor Andrew Lambert An original incursion into and explanation of a topic that warrants examination...the scope of this work is broad and audacious and...compares very well and strongly with other recent popularized publications in the field. - Professor George Bryan Souza Acclaim for How Maritime Trade and the Indian Subcontinent Shaped the World: I am utterly astonished by it...clearly a most important work... the control of details is remarkable...most enlightening. - Dr Ronald Hyam Following the series' first book How Maritime Trade and the Indian Subcontinent Shaped the World, this book continues to demonstrate how maritime trade has been the key driver of the world's wealth-creation, economic and intellectual progress. The story begins where the first book ends, when following Roman Empire collapse, 7th-century European maritime trade almost ceased, creating population collapse and poverty; the Dark Ages. In 700 stuttering, hesitant recovery was evident with new ports but Viking and Muslim maritime raiding neutered recovery until the 11th century. In Asia by contrast, short and long-haul trade thrived and accelerated from east Africa and the Persian Gulf all the way to China, encouraging Southeast Asian state formation. The book tells the story of slowly rising, gradually accelerating European maritime trade, which until the 15th century was overshadowed by far more voluminous Asian trade in much larger, more complex ships traded by more sophisticated commercial entities, contributing to innovative tolerant wealth-creating maritime societies. In Europe, Mediterranean maritime trade made most progress from about 1000 to 1450,. But by 1700 north Europeans dominated Atlantic, American and Mediterranean trade and were penetrating sophisticated Asian maritime networks, a complete reversal. This book explains how and why and how destructive continental influences destroyed Asia's maritime supremacy. As in the first book, Nick Collins finds similar patterns; maritime inquisitiveness, invention, problem-solving and toleration and continental political suppression of those maritime traits, most dramatically in China, but destructively everywhere, allowing the millennium maritime trade revolution. nick collins read history at Magdalene College Cambridge, thereafter pursuing a career in maritime trade, becoming a director of H. Clarkson and Co, the world's largest shipping services company and various subsidiaries, including MD and CEO in Singapore, COO in Dubai and wrote The Essential Guide to Chartering and the Dry Freight Market. He has done business throughout the world, advising many large companies and brings practical knowledge and experience to academic research, to produce a unique work. "Nominated for the Maritime Foundation Awards for Best Book of 2024" "Refreshingly, this is a global history that does not centre around European success and failures but provides a primary viewpoint from Asia looking towards Europe...this is an engaging, well written story of the supremacy of maritime trade in shaping world history." Marion Uckelmann "Why maritime history is everyone's history." Nautilus International "Fascinating fact lets jump out from every page...This is someone clearly familiar with today's trading system who really, really knows his stuff...The author's enthusiasm for his subject is truly inspiring." Prof Geoffrey Till
