“The German naval strategy for the Atlantic islands between 1940 and 1943”, by Juan José Díaz Benítez can be read (requires subscription) at this link:
Although the strategic value of the Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic islands for the Third Reich during the Second World War has been the subject of several studies, certain issues remain unknown. One is the link between the strategic re-evaluation of these islands and Spain and Portugal’s neutrality. The other is the role of the different Atlantic archipelagos in the German strategy after 1940. To respond to these questions, the author consulted primary sources in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv and other archives elsewhere, as well as the most relevant bibliographical references. Worth highlighting among the conclusions is that the Spanish policy of non-belligerence significantly influenced German interests concerning the Atlantic islands during both the summer and autumn of 1940, as well as in later periods during the conflict.
This is the first interdisciplinary history of Lake Tanganyika and of eastern Africa’s relationship with the wider Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth century. Philip Gooding deploys diverse source materials, including oral, climatological, anthropological, and archaeological sources, to ground interpretations of the better-known, European-authored archive in local epistemologies and understandings of the past. Gooding shows that Lake Tanganyika’s shape, location, and distinctive lacustrine environment contributed to phenomena traditionally associated with the history of the wider Indian Ocean World being negotiated, contested, and re-imagined in particularly robust ways. He adds novel contributions to African and Indian Ocean histories of urbanism, the environment, spirituality, kinship, commerce, consumption, material culture, bondage, slavery, Islam, and capitalism. African peoples and environments are positioned as central to the histories of global economies, religions, and cultures.
“Sisters at sea: Travel experiences of missionary sisters to the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” by Ron Brand and Kirsten Kamphuis is published in the May 2024 issue of the IJMH.
This article compares three travel reports of missionary sisters to the Dutch East Indies. The oldest travelogue was written by Mère Stanislas. In 1872 she travels with the SS Conrad of the Stoomvaart Maatschappij ‘Nederland’. The second travelogue was written by Sister Leonie Wilbers. She travels in 1900 on board the SS Bromo of the Rotterdamsche Lloyd. Finally, the third travelogue dates from the years 1955–1956. Sister Jeanne Marie (‘Jo’) Oomen travels with the MS Oranje of the Stoomvaart Maatschappij ‘Nederland’. These travelogues offer a fascinating look at life on board, seen through the eyes of three mission sisters over a period of about 80 years. What do the mission sisters write about the departure, the ship’s journey and life on board, the view of other cultures and the arrival at the mission post? What did they notice on board and what did they write about? Does this include a gender aspect?
Maritime Musicians and Performers on Early Modern English Voyages aims to tell the full story of early English shipboard performers, who have been historically absent from conversations about English navigation, maritime culture, and economic expansion. Often described reductively in voyaging accounts as having one function, in fact maritime performers served many communicative tasks. Their lives were not only complex, but often contradictory. Though not high-ranking officers, neither were they lower-ranking mariners or sailors. They were influenced by a range of competing cultural practices, having spent time playing on both land and sea, and their roles required them to mediate parties using music, dance, and theatre as powerful forms of nonverbal communication. Their performances transcended and breached boundaries of language, rank, race, religion, and nationality, thereby upsetting conventional practices, improving shipboard and international relations, and ensuring the success of their voyages.
“The double capture of the Danish frigate Tranquebar in 1763” by Jorge Simón Izquierdo Díaz and Jørgen Mikkelsen in the May 2024 issue of the IJMH. Read it here (subscription needed):
This article discusses the capture of a single ship in 1763, which involved an unusually complicated sequence of events that illuminates the distinction between piracy and privateering. The vessel in question was the frigate Tranquebar, which belonged to the Danish Asiatic Company – a trading company that, in the years 1732–1772, had a monopoly over Danish shipping in Asia. The episode involving the Danish frigate, which ended up in Portuguese hands after its capture by Maratha ships, raises questions about the nature of piracy and prize law in the context of international relations between maritime powers in times of change.
Three intertwined stories that reveal the challenges faced by the US Navy in its evolution between the Civil War and the First World War.
Hard Aground brings together three intertwined stories documenting the US Navy’s strategic and matériel evolution from the end of Civil War through the First World War. These incidents had lasting consequences for how the navy would modernize itself throughout the rest of the twentieth century.
The first story focuses on the reconstruction of the US Navy following the swift and near-total dismantling of the Union Navy infrastructure after the Civil War. This reconstruction began with barely enough time for the navy’s campaigns in the Spanish-American War, and for its role in the First World War. Jampoler argues that the federal government discovered that the fleet requested by the navy, and paid for by Congress, was the wrong fleet. Focus was on battleships and cruisers rather than destroyers and other small combat vessels needed to hunt submarines and serve as convoy escorts.
The second story relates the short, tragic life of the USS Tennessee (later renamed Memphis), one of the steel-hulled ships of the new Armored Cruiser Squadron that was a centerpiece of the navy’s modernization effort. The USS Tennessee was ordered on two unusual missions in the early months of the First World War, long before the United States formally entered the war. These little-known missions and the ship’s shocking destruction in a storm surge in the Caribbean serve as the centerpiece of the story. Threaded through the narrative are biographical sketches of the principal players in the drama that unfolded following the ship’s demise, including two of Tennessee’s commanding officers: Vice Admiral Sims, who commanded the US Navy squadrons deployed to Europe in support of the Royal Navy; Rear Admiral William Caperton, who commanded the Caribbean squadron before the Memphis (formerly the Tennessee) was lost; Charles Pond, squadron commander during the wreck; and the American ambassador to the Ottoman court, President Wilson’s enthusiastic supporter, Henry Morgenthau.
Jampoler rounds out this fascinating account with the story of how the USS Tennessee’s destruction prompted fierce deliberations about the US Navy’s operations and chains of command for the remainder of the First World War and the high-level political wrangling inside the Department of the Navy immediately after the war, as civilian appointees and senior officers wrestled to reshape the department in their image.
“The maritime consequences of peace: The impact of treaties with the Barbary states on Venetian shipping in the eighteenth century”, published by Pierre Niccolò Sofia in the May 2024 issue of the IJMH
From a maritime-history perspective, little is still known about eighteenth-century Venice, especially in non-Italian literature. Classic interpretations of eighteenth-century Venetian shipping suggest that the Venetians never regained a significant role as carriers in the Mediterranean after the sixteenth century. Although Venetian shipping was heavily impacted by the arrival of the ‘Northerners’ in the Mediterranean at the end of the sixteenth century, its capacity for long-term recovery has yet to be clarified. The primary impediment to Venetian maritime activity was the high threat of attacks by the so-called ‘Barbary corsairs’ on their merchant ships, which drove up transport costs. The Republic of Venice signed treaties with Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli and Tunis from 1763 onwards, but historians remain sceptical about the effects of this peace. This article seeks to demonstrate that the treaties with the Barbary states represented a groundbreaking turning point for eighteenth-century Venetian shipping: from the 1760s onwards, liberated from the burden of high risks and high protection costs, Venetian shipping made a vigorous and lasting resurgence on all routes in the Mediterranean and beyond. Following the treaties, the Venetians became significant carriers in the Mediterranean sea trade and were able to rival other competitors in international markets. From this standpoint, the Venetian shipping sector not only recovered but also flourished until the ultimate dissolution of the Republic in 1797.
In historiography, Spanish maritime and naval history has undoubtedly received the least attention, not only in relation to the European states that played an important role in the oceans of the Modern Age (especially France and England), but even if we compare the existing bibliography for territories that played a very secondary role with that published on Spain. This scarcity of research is slowly beginning to be alleviated in recent years, thanks to articles, monographs and doctoral theses that have become new reference titles. The subject matter is diverse, but the main focus is on institutional analysis, centred on naval policy, particularly on aspects such as the supply of manpower for the arsenals, crews, shipbuilding, supplies, etc.
“The problem of winter navigation in the medieval Black Sea” by Andrei Mirea in the May 2024 issue of the IJMH
Unlike the pre-industrial practice of winter navigation in the Mediterranean Sea, which has been the subject of numerous studies, winter seafaring on the medieval Black Sea has not previously been the subject of thorough scholarly investigation, not least because the available sources are relatively few and fairly circumstantial. Being aware of the limitations of the present survey, the author attempts to gather together and reinterpret several instances dating from the period of the Byzantine and Italian domination over the Black Sea, which can shed some light on the seamen’s often complicated relation with the winter season. The majority of the extant sources date from the last two centuries of the Middle Ages, an era that witnessed substantial technological developments which contributed to the amelioration of winter navigation. This study chiefly aims to highlight the unresolved issues and address the challenges that such a topic of inquiry presents.
In July 1588 the Spanish Armada sailed from Corunna to conquer England. Three weeks later an English fireship attack in the Channel—and then a fierce naval battle—foiled the planned invasion. Many myths still surround these events. The genius of Sir Francis Drake is exalted, while Spain’s efforts are belittled. But what really happened during that fateful encounter?
Drawing on archives from around the world, Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker also deploy vital new evidence from Armada shipwrecks off the coasts of Ireland and Scotland. Their gripping, beautifully illustrated account provides a fresh understanding of how the rival fleets came into being; how they looked, sounded, and smelled; and what happened when they finally clashed.
Looking beyond the events of 1588 to the complex politics which made war between England and Spain inevitable, and at the political and dynastic aftermath, Armada deconstructs the many legends to reveal why, ultimately, the bold Spanish mission failed.
IMHA 