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Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps, and Maritime Travel

Name: Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps, and Maritime Travel
Brand: University of Chicago Press
SKU: 9780226845548
Price: 19.99 USD
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Contributors:

Sara Caputo

Publisher:

University of Chicago Press

Binding:

Paperback

Book Category:

History, Social Science

Book Subcategory:

Social History, Modern, Human Geography

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The product is eligible for a complimentary return within 30 days from the date of purchase. Furthermore, individual items are shipped within 24 hours of receiving the order.

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Release Date:

9/25/2025

ISBN 13:

9780226845548

Weight:

1 lbs

Size:

5.80 x 9.00 x 0.90 inches

Pages:

352

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product description

Description

An engaging look at ocean routes' complicated beginnings and elusive impact.

Sara Caputo's Tracks on the Ocean is a sweeping history of how we have understood routes of travel over the ocean and how we came to represent that movement as a cartographical line. Focusing on the representation of sea journeys in the Western world from the early sixteenth century to the present, Caputo deftly argues that the depiction of these lines is inextricable from European imperialism, the rise of modernity, and attempts at mastery over nature. Caputo recounts the history of ocean tracks through an array of lively stories and characters, from the expeditions of Captain James Cook in the eighteenth century to tracks depicted in Moby Dick and popular culture of the nineteenth century to the use of navigational techniques by the British navy. She discusses how tracks evolved from tools of surveying into tools of surveillance and, eventually, into paths of environmental calamity. The impulse to record tracks on the ocean is, Caputo argues, reflective of an ongoing desire for order, schematization, and personal visibility, as well as occupation and permanent ownership--in this case over something that is unoccupiable and impossible to truly possess. Both beautifully written and deeply researched, Tracks on the Ocean shares how the lines drawn on maps tell the audacious and often tragic and violent stories of ocean voyages.

About the Author
Sara Caputo is a senior research fellow and director of studies in history at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. She is the author of Foreign Jack Tars: The British Navy and Transnational Seafarers during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps, and Maritime Travel

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