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 […]
Tag Archives | University of Portsmouth
The Coastal History Blog 40: Three Years of the Coastal History Blog
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 […]

Cardiff’s ‘Sailortown’; Butetown or ‘Tiger Bay.’
‘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 […]

Latest News!
On the 11th November Britain will be commemorating Remembrance Day. To mark the event Brad Beaven and Mel Bassett will be talking about their research project ‘Mapping Jutland casualties’ at a ‘Gateways to the First World War’ Conference at the University of Kent. See the programme here: 11th-november-programme This project investigates the impact of the Battle […]

Black Preachers in Georgian Portsmouth – Public Lecture, 31st October 2016
We are delighted to welcome Dr Ryan Handley of the University of Oxford to give a talk on Black Preachers in Georgian Portsmouth. The talk is supported by Dr Jodi Burkett’s Citizenship, ‘Race’ and Belonging (CRaB) network and raises some interesting ideas about migration and cultural clashes in a naval port town. This is especially […]

Maritime Masculinities conference – book now
Registration is open for the Maritime Masculinities conference which takes place at St Anne’s College Oxford on the 19th and 20th December. Maritime Masculinities covers the period from 1815 – 1940, which saw the demise of the sail ship, the rise of steam and oil-powered ships, the erosion of British naval and maritime supremacy […]