Knowing the Littoral: Heights and Depths along the World’s Coast

Littorals are interfaces between worlds, where land and sea meet and mingle. The production of knowledge about these areas, pivotal for trade, travel, and interaction, as well as their graphic depiction and narrative representation, has had a crucial role throughout human history. Of particular interest is that they can be seen and visualized from radically diverging perspectives: for instance, very different aspects will be registered depending on whether littorals are observed from land or sea. In conjunction with peculiar local traditions regarding the way in which geographical reference systems are set up, this had affected the way knowledge about the boundary region between sea and land has been produced and registered. This panel aims, in particular, at offering a first attempt at a global comparison of the ways in which the vertical dimension has been perceived and represented along the world’s coasts. How have littorals been depicted and described historically in different cultural settings and how have changes and variations along the vertical axis been illustrated? The topics discussed include the mapping of dangers at sea in early Qing China, the understanding of the Atlantic Ocean’s depth and shallowness in the Age of Exploration, the conceptualization of the level of the sea as an average since the 18th century, and the marking of the memory of tsunamis along the coasts of Japan. The discussion will be rounded up by a commentary that will touch upon the scant knowledge available about pre-European representations of the vertical in the Indian Ocean.