The first time I considered sailors in port as an academic subject was back in 1993, when—as a graduate student in search of a dissertation topic—I read the first chapter of Marcus Rediker’s Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Reactions to Devil varied, to be sure, but few have offered a coherent alternative […]
Many historians, young and old, nurse the lingering hope that their next round of research will uncover that career-making revelation, their personal equivalent of Carlo Ginzburg’s benandanti or Robert Darnton’s Great Cat Massacre. But if it turned up right in front of you, would you notice it? Don’t be so sure. Consider the sad case […]
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 […]
April 2016 14th – 15th April – International Postgraduate Port and Maritime History Conference, University of Strathclyde. The study of port cities and their relationship to maritime endeavour and enterprise is a diverse and interdisciplinary practice, which draws on research methods from sociology, anthropology and archaeology, and brings together aspects of social, economic and cultural […]
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 […]
