By the Qing (1644-1912 CE) dynasty, the term ‘Tanka’ (pinyin: Danjia) became a common designation for people who lived on boats in the provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian. Throughout the development of the term ‘Tanka’, its various usages and iterations were always denigrating and alienating. Considered a base people, the Tanka were largely excluded […]
Submission deadline: 1st December 2017 Conference: 13-15 September 2018, The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, UK. To mark the opening of its new exploration wing in September 2018, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, invites proposals for papers centred on the role and significance of memory in histories of maritime exploration. Over the last few decades maritime […]
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 […]
I’ve observed before in this blog that some of the best scholarship on port towns and urban cultures is written by people who arrive at this subject matter by a circuitous route, almost in spite of themselves. Maud Mandel’s recent book, Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict, does not present itself as […]
