I recently read a book that purported to be a Pacific Ocean-based historical work of the West Coast of the United States that was written in contrast to the generally European-focused and Anglophile works of Atlantic history written by Bernard Bailyn and other historians like that. The attempt was not successful, and to date, Atlantic history by far has been the most successful framework for people to write historical works about, even though the framework of Atlantic history currently only extends some six hundred years or so into the past, with the efforts of the Portuguese and then the Spaniards, and then a whole host of peoples after that, to become involved in the complicated nature of trade, population flows (some voluntary, some not), exploration, colonization, and military efforts being extended around the Atlantic littoral.

While Atlantic history already has sufficient historical remit and an active research program, there are certainly aspects of Atlantic history that are not as well-focused on that deserve the attention of the historical community. Perhaps the most notable of these elements is a deeper examination of Atlantic prehistory, or the historical research of how the Atlantic world was already a going concern, albeit a more intermittent one, in the period before the rise of the Iberian monarchies and their efforts at exploration starting in the 15th century AD. Whether one looks at the Norse world, the evidence of prehistorical copper trade in the Labrador region extending to the area of Peterborough, Ontario, as well as the presence of voyages of trade and discovery from Romans as well as Malians, this evidence of at least suggestive of there being the raw materials of an Atlantic world before it was made through European, African, and North and South American efforts in more recent times.

While I was dissatisfied with the effort at Pacific history that I read, there is certainly enough material for a genuine discipline of Pacific history to develop. While admittedly European and American involvement in the Pacific basin is either more recent or less pervasive (at least initially) than in the Atlantic basin, the trade from Veracruz to Manilla, the efforts at the British and American to build fur trade bases in the Western regions of the United States and Canada, and more contemporary efforts at uniting the region through trade as well as the efforts of the American (and earlier the Japanese and British navies) helped to develop a Pacific world. Perhaps the most notable of the population transfers in this region was the settlement of nearly the entire island region of the Pacific world by Austronesian-speaking peoples who apparently started out in Taiwan and then settled, in turn, the Philippines, Guam, Indonesia (and from there Madagascar, shockingly), and then the more remote areas of Oceania extending as far as Hawaii, Easter Island, New Zealand, with the likelihood of some contact with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Besides that, the development of the Pacific as a place of romance, whether one thinks of films like South Pacific or of the tourism industries of Hawaii and French Polynesia (Tahiti), mining (New Caledonia, Bougainville, and Nauru), or the role of the British navy in setting up the dramatic contact between rough and sometimes imprisoned Europeans and local peoples in Australia and Pitcairn Island are also fertile historical questions for the basin to explore. For those interested in military history, there is the imperiogenesis of the Māori and Hawaiian peoples, plenty of colonial empires, and involvement in the Seven Years’ War, Spanish-American War, and World Wars I and II. There is also the question of Chinese settlement extending from Southern China to the large Chinese diaspora in the region and the important role of the Indians in giving early models of civilization to states on the Pacific periphery. More needs to be done here.

If more needs to be done to develop the basin history of the Pacific Ocean, at least there are works which purport to be basin histories of the area. At least as far as I know, efforts at a basin history of the Indian Ocean are even less well-developed. And this is a great shame, not least because there is evidence of a longstanding ocean basin world in the Indian Ocean that existed and was already vibrant by the time that the Europeans inserted themselves into that world starting in the late 1400s and early 1500s. Whether one looks at the logistics of the hajj or the long-term trade and political connections between Oman and the Swahili coast, or the development of the trade ports of the Horn of Africa and that same Swahili coast or the connection of areas from Zanzibar to Calabar through trade, diplomacy, and politics, there was a recognizable Indian ocean basin world that locals had created without European prompting. To be sure, once Europeans got involved the basin has known a great deal of colonization and efforts at domination that extend to the efforts of the American, British, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, and Indian navies over the course of the last century or so. There is the fascinating bit role that our friends the Austronesian speakers played in the settlement of Madagascar, a bit part the region had in the Atlantic slave trade through the area that is now Mozambique, as well as its own starring role in the East African slave trade under Muslim traders to Cairo and the Persian Gulf region. As a student of piracy, the area has a rich piratical tradition going back to at least the 1700s and is at present the home of Somali piracy in the Horn of Africa. It would not be hard to see a strong research program develop around the lengthy history and complexity of the Indian Ocean basin.

Considerably more peripheral than the three basin histories discussed so far, the Arctic Ocean is a basin history that nevertheless could be written, even if the ice of the ocean has prevented the sort of trade ties and imperial rivalries that have characterized other more accessible basins. An important theme of the Arctic Ocean basin has been its remoteness, and that remoteness had made it a repeated refuge for peoples as diverse as the people of Beringia and the Finno-Ugric peoples of northern Eurasia who settled along the southern coast of the Arctic Ocean and remain there to this day. Even the Arctic Ocean has not been without its stories of imperial or demographic expansion, whether one looks at the fateful contest that has existed between the Inuit settlers of the Arctic basin or Russians, English-speaking, and Scandinavian settlers and rulers. While the region had a bit part in military history during World War II in the Aleutian Islands and Scandinavia itself, as well as a starring role in the efforts at finding various passages along its southern edge, it is the area’s potential as an area of conflict between Russia and other European nations (especially Norway and Denmark) and settler colonies (the USA, Canada, and Greenland) that dominates contemporary concerns, while other historians would find a great deal worthy of interest in efforts of Russian minority peoples and the First Nations of Greenland, Canada, and the United States to maintain some sort of freedom within and from domination by outsiders to the region.

The most peripheral ocean region of all is that of the Antarctic Ocean. While human settlement of this area is extremely limited, except for a few hardy scientists and the settlers of the Falkland Islands and French Antarctic lands, and the Chileans and Argentines of the Tierra del Fuego. It is striking that while the continent of Antarctica remains largely uninhabited, that it is subject to a large amount of claims from nations in the Atlantic world, divided between European nations (UK, France, Norway, Russia), and their settler colonies (USA, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina). With the exception of the native penguin empire of the Antarctic basin (with its extension into neighboring areas of Oceania, South America, and Africa), involvement in Antarctica has generally required a strong oceanic presence that has mostly come to those nations which were able to thrive in the Atlantic world or its peripheries, and that presence remains light enough on the ground for the penguins to maintain their imperial holdings throughout the region. This too is worth studying, though so far the basin history of the Antarctic has been most focused on efforts at exploration in the 20th century and scientific missions in present times.