Michael Pearson, in his book The Indian Ocean, emphasizes that littoral societies have markedly different attitudes from their more parochial neighbors inland. He quotes Ross Dunn on the “cosmopolitan frame of mind” of Muslims in East Africa, southern India, and Malaysia and adds: “This was reinforced by the coastal location and the fact that most […]
When nineteenth-century Britons stood facing the ocean, what did they think about? Did they rejoice in the healthy sea breezes? Fret about a French invasion? Did they daydream about travel, worry about stock market crashes, plot the conversion of unbelievers in far-flung colonies? Or, watching the waves themselves, did they marvel at the scientific achievement […]
After my blog post on “Gérard Le Bouëdec’s sociétés littorales” appeared in April, Olivier Le Gouic wrote me to point out that much more had been published in this area. An entire edited volume, Entre terre et mer, appeared in 2004. [1] I will continue, albeit gradually, to explore and review the French scholarship in […]
In her book Cornish Wrecking, Cathryn Pearce relates an incident from 1755 in which Customs Officers opened fire on a pilchard sloop caught in the act of fishing two casks of brandy out of the water. The sloop fled, but was intercepted at the quay, where combat continued and blood was spilled. It emerged, however, […]
In 1925, J. Stanley Gardiner, a Cambridge don and fisheries expert, made a public statement of regret that the Great Barrier Reef existed. “It is the greatest pity in the world,” he told the Royal Geographical Society, “… a tragedy so far as the people of Queensland are concerned.” Gardiner explained that the reef was […]
When my father was seventeen years old, he lied about his age and joined the U.S. Merchant Marine. He got a lowly job in the engine room (his official job title was “wiper”) and spent several years as the misfit sailor who haunted used book shops in every port. He was one of those working-class […]
