The Great Windships: How Sailing Ships Made the Modern World

The great merchant sailing ships were the original apparatus of globalisation. They brought the East and West together, carrying goods back and forth to the benefit of both, and turning world’s oceans into marine highways. Along them would travel all manner of goods in unheard of volumes – gold, silver, gems, spices coffee, tea and other foodstuffs – as well as ideas, attitudes, religion and disease. Besides their superior armament, the ships’ masters felt they were racially and religiously...