In Mediterranean studies, does the cosmopolitan port town rank alongside “sun and sea… olives and myrtle… the commonplaces pervading the literature, all description and repetition”?[1] Articles with titles like “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered” and “The Cosmopolitan Mediterranean: Myth and Reality” have raised doubts about the whole project.[2] It’s one thing to state that that two or more […]
To kick off 2016 on the best possible note, here is the Coastal History blog’s fourth guest post, grounded firmly in the Southern Hemisphere. I was in Sydney for a conference a few years back and left very impressed with the nearly ubiquitous signposting and commemoration of the Aboriginal past (and present) in diverse and […]
The long nineteenth century was a period of substantial trial and error and steady development by the Admiralty in its efforts to create a centralised, well-trained and reliable naval reserve, which could be called upon to augment the fleets during an emergency. Between 1831 and 1903 the Admiralty undertook a variety of measures, with the […]
I started this blog in October 2013. I would like to thank the Port Towns and Urban Cultures group for continuing to host it! It might be a good time to look back and consider the range of themes and topics that have come across these pages so far. There wasn’t a single, convenient web […]
The Syrian refugee crisis has brought forth a broad humanitarian response and also some thoughtful pieces from historians. On the “refugee or migrant” question, Le Monde interviewed Gérard Noiriel in a conversation that harked back all the way to the sixteenth century.[1] In the Guardian, Mary Beard commented on how the Roman Empire handled borders […]
The practice of gibbeting, also known more specifically as hanging in irons, or hanging in chains, was a particularly macabre punishment for a variety of convicted felons, and yet it is the image of the pirate cadaver swinging eerily in the breeze, which appears to have become most engrained in popular culture since the eighteenth […]
