My book, Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area, hopefully will be of interest to readers of the Port Towns & Urban Cultures blog. The title proclaims its basic thesis. Though many folks are unaware of it, including a surprising number of labor and maritime historians, the very term […]
Why Naval History Matters First, we should establish what, in fact, is history. Is it the recitation of strings of dates, glorious military and naval victories, lists of kings and queens: or is it, as has been said, simply ‘one f…..g thing after another’?[1] E H Carr asked the question ‘What is history?’ He defined […]
By now – after many years of work in the ‘Port Towns & Urban Cultures’ project – it’s probably old hat to say that port towns are important intersections between land and water, liminal zones and crossing points for people, goods and ideas. These transient places are of great interest to a range of historians, […]
Why maritime history matters: Maritime highways – A personal journey. In his Pulitzer Prize winning book aptly titled The Prize, Daniel Yergin quotes Admiral ‘Jacky’ Fisher as telling Winston Churchill, on the latter’s appointment to First Lord of the Admiralty in September 1911, ‘east of Suez oil is cheaper than coal.’[1] It later became clear […]
In 1832 the Fourth Sea Lord of the Admiralty suggested there was a need for ‘theoretical instruction’ in gunnery. Thus what had been previously considered an art became a science.[1] Marine artillery embraced the science and technology of the age, and this modernisation of gunnery was aligned with a transition from sail to steam ships. […]
I’m delighted to introduce our seventh guest post, by Madison Heslop. She is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Washington. While there is a well-known and rich literature on “the idea of the city” or “the image of the city,” there’s a surprising shortage of smart, thoughtful pieces on where waterfronts and […]
