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The Coastal History Blog 15: Imperial Russia Salutes Its Navy

Today, I’m happy to introduce The Coastal History blog’s first guest post.  Julia Leikin is a Ph.D. candidate at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.  Recent events involving Russia and Ukraine have prompted many op-ed pieces and impromptu reflections on lessons from the past.  Some commentators have drawn attention to Russia’s religious […]

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The Coastal History Blog 13: “Gérard Le Bouedec’s sociétés littorales”

This weekend, I broke out the French dictionary and made my way—slowly—through an impressive article that belongs alongside Michael Pearson’s “Littoral Society: The Concept and the Problems,” and Danny Vickers’ book Young Men and the Sea. [1] At the Port Towns and Urban Cultures conference this past July, Oliver Le Gouic wrote down a name […]

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The Coastal History Blog 12: “Women as Tavern Keepers”

Taverns and other drinking establishments occupy a privileged place in the iconography of ports and sailortowns.  Who could forget the free-and-easy multicultural egalitarianism of ALL-MAX, the East End dive immortalized by Pierce Egan? [1] In The Many-Headed Hydra, Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh speculated about what sorts of conversations sailors, slaves, sex workers, and assorted […]

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The Coastal History Blog 11: “Women in Port”

This will be the first of several posts about a promising new volume edited by Douglas Catterall and Jodi Campbell entitled Women in Port: Gendering Communities, Economies, and Social Networks in Atlantic Port Cities, 1500-1800.  [1] Catterall and Campbell point out a familiar problem: “The iconic Atlantic-world figure is a traveler, explorer, or merchant, certainly […]

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The Coastal History Blog 10: “Crossing the Bay of Bengal”

Sunil Amrith’s impressive new book, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants, captures the strengths of oceanic history, with its bold comparative and border-crossing sweep, but also remains attentive to the fine textures and variations of locality that I’ve argued should be a key feature of coastal history. […]

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