::-Dana survived the attack. But his career never quite recovered from the social ostracism and the economic boycott of his practice. Dana's influence on national governm ent and the state and federa l judiciary would continue to be significant, however, including his establishment that steamships must give right of way to sa iling vessels as a genera l rule of safe navigation- no small thing to the readers of Sea History. Though D ana never achieved his political aims, over the course of his life he met wirh John Q uincy Adams, provided crucial legal arguments to support Abraham Lincoln's strategy to bring the C ivil War to its end, and influenced the fiction of Herman Melville and Harrier Beecher Stowe. Mosr inspiring in light of today's political climate is how Richard Henry Dana Jr. earned rhe respect and gratitude of disenfranchised sailors and men and women of color. Dana so ught ideals and truth, rather than political gain. Amestoy writes: "Dana was not a calculating man-he was a romantic one." RICHARD KING, PttD Mystic, Connecticut
The Ma ritime Landscape ofthe Isthmus of Panama by James P. Delgado, Tomas Medizabal, Frederick H. H anselmann, and Dominique Rissolo (University Press of Florida, Ga inesville, 2016 , 283pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, ISBN 978-0-8130-62877; $84.95hc) The Maritime Landscape ofthe Isthmus ofPanama is an ambitious scholarly monograph rhat delivers both much more and somewhat less than wh at is suggested in its preface. Although rhe authors state that the book is "not a maritime history, nor is it a comprehensive review of Panamanian archaeology,'' it is acrually both. The book covers the maritime history and archaeology connected w irh rhe Isthmus from preEuropean times up through rhe present day; the authors shift back and forth between historical context and archaeological sires and evidence. Drawing on an impressive range of published primary sources, classic and recent research, rhe book offers a wealth of murually reinforcing historical and archaeological details about the maritime environmental and culrural history associated wirh rhe Isthmus of Panama. The Maritime Landscape documents large-scale human-influenced changes to SEA HISTORY 159, SUMMER2017
th e region's physical landscape and ties them cogently to important large-scale economic, technological, and political events and processes rhar have, at specific times, resh aped this "grand maritime interaction zone." The distinguishing maritime culrural characteristic of rhe Isthmus is irs long history as a place of inrernarional economic significance. The arrival of the Spanish and the expansion of Spain's maritime empire into the Pacific made the Isthmus a physical nexus poinr in the growing global economy. Despite m assive global ch anges, the Isthmus remained a strategic cenrer of economic exchange and potential conflict zone for nearly five cenruries. The tension between the Isthmus's geographic conflicting roles as borh barrier and bridge is amply revealed through descriptions and correlations of historical evidence, the conremporary physical landscape, and archaeologica l record. The book's linkage of individual si res, specific localities, maritime region, and global processes is impressive and will be of substantial value to currenr and futu re scholars. The authors' efforts to produce a volume gro unded in theory prove less effective rhan rheir excellenr documenrarion and correlation of history and regional archaeology. Their observation rhar rhe vasr flow of commerce that p assed through the Panama Canal Zone, "wasn't very beneficial, economically or oth erwise to the residents of the Isthmus" is consisrenr with Immanuel W allers rein's World's System Theory, bur in this statemenr and throughout the book, the overall application of Wallerstein's theory is more implied than robustly applied . By contrast, the book's embrace of Maririme C ulrural Landscape theory pioneered by anthropologist Crister Westerdahl seems forced in places, and inconsistently applied ; iris unclear whether there is one maritime landscape fo r the Isthmus of Pan ama or many. The book rakes it borh ways witho ut addressing this tension. In their discussion of rhe Pacific Mail Route, rhey apply Wesrerdah l's concept of cognitive landscape in describing the acquisition, inrernalizarion, and codification of shipmasrers' navigational knowledge. While their explanation of Wesrerdahl's concept is accurate, their application adds little new to our understanding of rhe intel-
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lectual processes of maritime knowledge acquisition. G iven rhe richness of the material, the authors could have done much with the text and refined ideas such as maritime cognitive landscape. In general, the authors' application of maritime landscape theory yielded mostly empirical lists of impo rtant human- made landscape fearures . Whi le these such lists are useful for scholars srudying the Isthmus of Panama region, they do nor contribute to a larger scholarly understa nding of m aritime culrural process. C ultu ral landscape theo ry offers a promising but muddy and difficulr-to navigate avenue for pursuing interdisciplinary- based coastal and m aritime history and archaeology. Although rhe authors applied ir wirh some success in this volume, rhey ultimately fai led to establish a clear methodological parh for furure scholars to follow. Delgado, Mendizabal, H ansel mann, and Rissolo have produced an important contribution to the scholarship of rhe Isthmus of Panama, one of most important patches of maritime space in modern global history. The inrermixrure of history,
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