ABSTRACT
There have been long traditions of maritime scholarship on human history at sea, tracing movements of people, ideas and objects across oceans. This work has however been human-centred and concerned only with the ocean as a backdrop. New versions of ocean studies asks us to engage with both human and non-human aspects of the ocean, with both the depth and the surface. This paper explores both approaches: taking a social and cultural history approach, the first outlines the ways in which the Atlantic and Indian oceans have been conjoined and separated and the modes of work which toggle across both. The second part heads for the open sea and provides some speculation on what a post-humanist oceanic enterprise might look like. A third concluding section returns to Africa and asks what these various historiographical developments might mean for African studies.
