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 […]
Book Review by James H. Thomas: Viveka Hansen, The Textile History of Whitby 1700-1914 (The IK Foundation & Company: London and Whitby, 2015), 454 pp. £80 www.ikfoundation.org Limited to a run of 350 copies, and weighing 1.8 kilograms (4 lbs), this detailed volume will cost the reader £80. Given that it is a work at the […]
The city of Hull, East Yorkshire enjoyed the status of ‘third port’ with a booming, world-renowned fishing industry on the outbreak of war on 4 August 1914. This industry, employing many thousands of local men and women in trawling and peripheral works, was fundamentally altered by ‘total war’, as civilian fishing vessels and their men […]
As recent investigations into London’s ‘Sailortown’ have shown we now have to re-consider previous accounts of London east of the Tower and take into account the cosmopolitan mix of its communities. Perhaps we would do better to describe this part of London as being a vibrant cosmopolitan place with a not inconsiderable intellectual life. Many […]
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 […]
Port Towns and Urban Cultures’ Dr Rob James is a project partner on a Heritage Lottery Funded bid with the Portsdown U3A (University of the Third Age). The project will establish the impact of the Battle of Jutland on the people of Portsmouth. It will identify those sailors who lost their lives at the battle […]
