Author: Constantin Ardeleanu

Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism by Philip J. Stern
Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society remained invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial companies were also relentlessly controversial, frequently in debt, and prone to failure. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was an elusive contradiction: public and private; person and society; subordinate and autonomous; centralized and diffuse; immortal and precarious; national and cosmopolitan—a legal fiction with very real power.
Breaking from traditional histories in which corporations take a supporting role by doing the dirty work of sovereign states in exchange for commercial monopolies, Philip Stern argues that corporations took the lead in global expansion and administration. Whether in sixteenth-century Ireland and North America or the Falklands in the early 1980s, corporations were key players. And, as Empire, Incorporated makes clear, venture colonialism did not cease with the end of empire. Its legacies continue to raise questions about corporate power that are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.
Challenging conventional wisdom about where power is held on a global scale, Stern complicates the supposedly firm distinction between private enterprise and the state, offering a new history of the British Empire, as well as a new history of the corporation.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674988125
Read the review by Gijs Dreijer in the August 2024 issue of the IJMH
https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241261804

Bjørn Tore Rosendahl writes on “Semi-militarized in war and lack of recognition in peace: Norwegian and other Allied seafarers in the Second World War”

Ship transport was a decisive factor for the outcome of the Second World War and resulted in many casualties among merchant seafarers. A lesser-known consequence of the war was the challenges to the seafarers’ position as civilians, not least through the militarization of merchant ships. This article investigates how this took place and its consequences during and after the war. Both the seafarers’ questionable legal status in relation to the rules of war and the character of their situation are analysed. This is done by studying how the wartime seafarers were treated by their governments, the enemies’ perspective and the seafarers’ own identity, using empirical examples from the Norwegian and other Allied nations’ merchant fleets. An unclear and changing position between being a military and a civilian person, probably contributed to the lack of recognition of the seafarers’ long and dangerous wartime effort in the post-war era.

Check it (requires subscription) at this link:

https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241261828

“From a free horizon to autonomous ships: The School of Navigation in Svendborg and imagined maritime futures, 1865–2023” by Nils Valdersdorf Jensen

As navigation developed from the nineteenth century onwards so did the education of navigators in Svendborg, the heartland of maritime Denmark. Svendborg’s School of Navigation has occupied three different buildings, each of which was built for the purpose of navigational education. The buildings from 1865, 1952 and 2023 were all designed according to the technological needs of the current time but also reflected visions of the maritime future. The aim of this article is to use the schools, their architecture and their educational practices to decipher the imagined maritime futures in Svendborg from 1865 to 2023. It is found that the sense of future change has grown stronger as the schools have changed, from valuing a free horizon and sextants to preparing students for autonomous ships.

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https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241261825

Mark Howards published an article on “The voyage of the London whaler Lusitania, 1826–1829”

The British whaling ship Lusitania left London in 1826 on a three-year voyage to the South Seas. During the course of its long voyage, the vessel spent much of its time in the waters off the Indonesian archipelago and among the islands of western Melanesia. British whalers had been driven to this challenging region because sperm whales had been severely depleted in other less difficult whaling grounds. In those tropical waters, the hot climate, endemic diseases and high death rate among the crew, as well as the routine dangers of the trade, were to try the Lusitania and her crew to the utmost. One of them kept a journal during the voyage. It chronicles the many challenges faced by this and other vessels working this whaling ground, which until recent times has been poorly documented.

Check it out (requires subscription) at this link:

https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241262671

British Slaves and Barbary Corsairs is the first comprehensive study of the thousands of Britons captured and enslaved in North Africa in the early modern period, an issue of intense contemporary concern but almost wholly overlooked in modern histories of Britain. The study charts the course of victims’ lives from capture to eventual liberation, death in Barbary, or, for a lucky few, escape. After sketching the outlines of Barbary’s government and society, and the world of the corsairs, it describes the trauma of the slave-market, the lives of galley-slaves and labourers, and the fate of female captives. Most captives clung on to their Christian faith, but a significant minority apostatized and accepted Islam. For them, and for Britons who joined the corsairs voluntarily, identity became fluid and multi-layered. Bernard Capp also explores in depth how ransoms were raised by private and public initiatives, and how redemptions were organised by merchants, consuls, and other intermediaries. With most families too poor to raise any ransom, the state came under intense pressure to intervene. From the mid-seventeenth century, the navy played a significant role in ‘gunboat diplomacy’ that eventually helped end the corsair threat. The Barbary corsairs posed a challenge to most European powers, and the study places the British story within the wider context of Mediterranean slavery, which saw Moors and Christians as both captors and captives.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/british-slaves-and-barbary-corsairs-1580-1750-9780192857378?cc=ro&lang=en&#

Read the review by Jake Dyble in the August 2024 issue of the IJMH
https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241261822

Karel Davids writes about “Changing ways to learn seamanship in Europe circa 1600–1920: Books, institutions and sociopolitical contexts” in the August 2024 issue of the IJMH.

Seamanship is the art of handling and manoeuvring a ship. For centuries, seamanship skills were transmitted not in writing, but by hands-on instruction on board. However, between circa 1600 and 1920, this ‘tacit’ knowledge was increasingly made ‘explicit’ in printed literature. Why did this happen? To answer this question, this article analyses dozens of books on seamanship produced in Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy. It discusses the different genres, the background of the authors and the intended reading publics. It shows that the transformation occurred almost simultaneously across Europe and that it was not triggered by technological change. The article argues that the explanation instead can be found in the rise of new institutions for the education and selection of seamen, which was linked with the growing aspirations of states and other organizations to gain more control over the quality of the personnel needed to man their ships.

Check it (requires subscription) at this link:

https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241262174

“The roles of Dutch skippers as partners and principals in colonial endeavours: Lessons from Amsterdam to New Netherland (1639–1664)”, by Julie van den Hout in the August 2024 issue of the IJMH

Read it at this link (requires subscription):

https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241262258

While Atlantic skippers were vital to seventeenth-century Dutch imperial expansion, few histories address the roles of skippers in colonial ventures. Drawing on archival records in Amsterdam and New York, this study examines the activities of skippers along roughly 200 voyages between Amsterdam and New Netherland from 1639 to 1664. In Amsterdam, skippers in relationships with voyage outfitters functioned as trusted partners who offered continuity for operations. As principals at sea, skippers navigated hazards and managed contingencies during inherently risky transatlantic passages. In the colony, skippers collaborated with local merchants to facilitate trade, and with colonial authorities to provide maritime support. With an impact on every stage of the endeavour, skippers were key players in the colonial complex, which depended on them for its functioning. Beyond New Netherland, these findings have applications for evaluating other European colonial undertakings, and for understanding the wider mechanisms of imperial expansion into the Atlantic.

“Memory and whaling: Commemorations of whale deaths in early modern Japan”, by Michelle Damian in August 2024 issue of the IJMH
Read it at this link (requires subscription)

https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241260988

Encounters with whales in early modern (seventeenth- to nineteenth-century) Japan were often memorialized through artwork such as scrolls or woodblock prints, permanent monuments such as steles or grave sites, and even in ritual practices such as annual Buddhist memorial ceremonies. Whaling groups used the commemorations of their interactions with whales to teach hunting techniques, display their prowess to outsiders, and atone for the Buddhist sin of killing another living creature. Non-whaling communities, which usually encountered whales through limited beachings or strandings, also found those situations worthy of commemoration. Their memorials celebrated the spectacle of the whale from the observer’s viewpoint, or expressed gratitude for the financial windfall the dead whale brought to the community. This article examines how a community’s relationship to whaling determined how it memorialized the encounter. These early modern memorial practices inform commemorations of whales even to the present day.

The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World by Patrick Griffin

Book Details

The Age of Atlantic Revolution was a defining moment in western history. Our understanding of rights, of what makes the individual an individual, of how to define a citizen versus a subject, of what states should or should not do, of how labor, politics, and trade would be organized, of the relationship between the church and the state, and of our attachment to the nation all derive from this period (c. 1750–1850).

Historian Patrick Griffin shows that the Age of Atlantic Revolution was rooted in how people in an interconnected world struggled through violence, liberation, and war to reimagine themselves and sovereignty. Tying together the revolutions, crises, and conflicts that undid British North America, transformed France, created Haiti, overturned Latin America, challenged Britain and Europe, vexed Ireland, and marginalized West Africa, Griffin tells a transnational tale of how empires became nations and how our world came into being.

Read the review by Brian Rouleau in the August 2024 issue of the IJMH

https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241261784

“Ship pictures on the municipal seals of medieval seaports: Ship seals show notices to mariners on tokens of municipal identity”, by Dolph Blussé in the August 2024 issue of the IJMH
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https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241260503

Many late-medieval western European seaports showed a ship in the central image of their municipal seal (a ship seal). Municipal seals to identify and authorize documents ranging from important supra-regional charters to local ephemera were widely used at the time, and probably also on trade contracts and (predecessors to) maritime bills of lading. This study of 115 ship seals from 80 seaports between AD 1200 and AD 1450 reveals that the central image of all ship seals contained striking details, strongly reminiscent of semiotic pictorial signals that conveyed information. The supposed signals were assigned a probable meaning by linking them to nautical aspects of the approach to each seaport and to the state of the harbour at the time. The results strongly suggest that the signals provided information about the risks and hazards in the approach to port, the water depth, and the facilities at the port in question. Compelling evidence comes from ports issuing successive ship seals over an extended period of time: updated images with properly adjusted signals were shown on subsequent seals when significant changes in the approach or port facilities had occurred, but the signals remained the same as long as the local situation stayed unchanged. These findings provide a clear explanation for the divergent ship portraits; ship seals served a dual purpose: first, to confirm the identity of the seaport and the authority of the council in its various actions and tasks, and, second, to provide up-to-date insight into the nautical challenges when approaching the port and in the local port facilities, in a manner similar to the current ‘notices to mariners’ from hydrographic offices. The rapidly increasing number of ports using ship seals in the thirteenth century and their continued use for two centuries supports the success of this late-medieval nautical information system. The study results also provide up-to-date impressions of the 80 seaports involved and of various nautical aspects of the hazardous maritime traffic in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, about which written archival information is scarce. The results may help to put the rare yield of maritime archaeology of this period into perspective. The ship seals lost their appeal as buoys and beacons made approaches safer, harbours became deeper and better equipped, and written information (‘rutters’) became widely available.