On a recent trip to New York City, I visited South Street Seaport Museum (SSSM), located almost in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. There is more maritime heritage associated with this location than I can easily enumerate here.[1] It was once the “Street of Ships” where transatlantic steamers and passenger liners anchored. It also […]
Our first post of 2018 is a guest post by Harry Brennan, who recently completed a MA History degree at Cardiff University, focusing on early modern and Atlantic history. This is the fifth guest post that has appeared in the Coastal History blog. This contribution continues to stretch the geographical, regional, and comparative range of […]
Apologies to regular Coastal History blog readers—I’ve been quiet for a while. I’ve been busy with conferences, and also with getting some “thought pieces” into print. The last year and a half has been about giving presentations, getting introduced, introducing people to each other, and alerting them to the possibilities of organizing around the new […]
Why Maritime History Matters Maritime history can be broadly defined as the study of humanity and its relationship to the seas and oceans of the world in the past. It is a huge topic with tendrils creeping into many nooks and crannies of other, seemingly far removed, branches of the historian’s craft. Its gambit includes […]
The tide creeps in: why maritime history matters Can we even imagine a world without the sea and its influence? Trying to define maritime history in his introduction to ‘The Sea and Civilization’, Lincoln Paine asks the opposite question: what exactly is ‘terrestrial history’? He tries to re-imagine the story of mankind as a land-bound […]
Why Naval History Matters Have you ever wondered why English is the world’s most widely spoken language; reflected on why a small island nation on the fringe of northern Europe could come to control roughly both a quarter of the world’s population and its land mass at the height of a racially and socially diverse […]
