A sweeping account of how the sea routes of Asia have transformed a vast expanse of the globe over the past five hundred years, powerfully shaping the modern world

In the centuries leading up to our own, the volume of traffic across Asian sea routes-an area stretching from East Africa and the Middle East to Japan-grew dramatically, eventually making them the busiest in the world. The result was a massive circulation of people, commodities, religion, culture, technology, and ideas. In this book, Eric Tagliacozzo chronicles how the seas and oceans of Asia have shaped the history of the largest continent for the past half millennium, leaving an indelible mark on the modern world in the process.

Paying special attention to migration, trade, the environment, and cities, In Asian Waters examines the long history of contact between China and East Africa, the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism across the Bay of Bengal, and the intertwined histories of Islam and Christianity in the Philippines. The book illustrates how India became central to the spice trade, how the Indian Ocean became a British lake between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, and how lighthouses and sea mapping played important roles in imperialism. The volume ends by asking what may happen if China comes to rule the waves of Asia, as Britain once did.

A novel account showing how Asian history can be seen as a whole when seen from the water, In Asian Waters presents a voyage into a past that is still alive in the present.

‘Drawing on years of travel, many archives, and countless dockside conversations, Eric Tagliacozzo’s masterpiece shows how the connected past of maritime Asia has shaped our world. This is an epic yet intimate history of Asia’s seas: alive with the drama of port cities, and told with grace and empathy by a natural storyteller.’ - Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts, and Seas Have Shaped Asia’s History

‘Skillfully navigating the overlapping themes of environment and religion, imperial power and technology, and urbanism and trade, Eric Tagliacozzo has written a magnificent oceanic history of a continent. In Asian Waters takes its readers on an adventurous voyage of discovery, tracing historical connections from the Arabian Sea through the Bay of Bengal to the South China Sea.’ - Sugata Bose, author of A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire