Why Does Naval History Matter? As a student of history, I have often met with the question ‘but why does history matter?’ Naval history, a specialised and unique branch of academic study, is met with a stronger question about its relevance, even amongst historians, being dismissed as simply ships, scurvy and sea dogs. Naval history […]
Studying the history of port cities and their relationship to maritime endeavour and enterprise is a diverse and interdisciplinary practice, which draws on research methods from literary studies, sociology, anthropology and archaeology, and brings together aspects of social, economic and cultural history. In April 2017, the Centre for Port and Maritime History will hold its […]
Why Does Naval History Matter? The first question to consider before approaching a response to why naval history matters is: why does any history matter? Before the professionalization of the field in the nineteenth century, the answer to this question seemed fairly obvious; historians “took it for granted that history furnished the basis for a […]
This is a new “table of contents” for the blog. I posted one of these a little more than a year ago, and it was time to update it! You may find this useful to bookmark, or share with someone unfamiliar with the blog. 2016 has been a great year for guest posts and new […]
‘Sailortown’ is often described as a liminal space, the border between land and sea, work and home. Writing in 1923, C. Fox Smith highlighted this with ‘Dockland, strictly speaking, is of no country—or rather it is of all countries.’[1] There are few places where one can see the rise and fall of this phenomenon so […]
I’m delighted to introduce the Coastal History blog’s fifth guest post (and the third guest post in the last twelve months!). Elsa Devienne is a Fellow at the Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities. She also holds a position as ‘maîtresse de conferences’ in the department of American studies at Université Paris […]
