IMHA

“May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth: Letters of the Lost Franklin Arctic Expedition” by Russell A. Potter, Regina Koellner, Peter Carney and Mary Williamson, eds.

Read the review (requires subscription) by Edward Armston-Sheret in the November 2024 issue of the IJMH

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/08438714241272691

A description of the book is available here:

https://www.mqup.ca/may-we-be-spared-to-meet-on-earth-products-9780228011392.php

May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth is a privileged glimpse into the private correspondence of the officers and sailors who set out in May 1845 on the Erebus and Terror for Sir John Franklin’s fateful expedition to the Arctic.

The letters of the crew and their correspondents begin with the journey’s inception and early planning, going on to recount the ships’ departure from the river Thames, their progress up the eastern coast of Great Britain to Stromness in Orkney, and the crew’s exploits as far as the Whalefish Islands off the western coast of Greenland, from where the ships forever departed the society that sent them forth. As the realization dawned that something was amiss, heartfelt letters to the missing were sent with search expeditions; those letters, returned unread, tell poignant stories of hope. Assembled completely and conclusively from extensive archival research, including in far-flung family and private collections, the correspondence allows the reader to peer over the shoulders of these men, to experience their excitement and anticipation, their foolhardiness, and their fears.

The Franklin expedition continues to excite enthusiasts and scholars worldwide. May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth provides new insights into the personalities of those on board, the significance of the voyage as they saw it, and the dawning awareness of the possibility that they would never return to British shores or their families.

“Melding technologies? Shipbuilding around the Indian Ocean after the arrival of European ships” by Richard W. Unger in the November 2024 issue of the IJMH

https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241272548

When Portuguese sailors confirmed that there was an all-sea route to South Asia from Europe, they introduced new ship designs and building methods to the Indian Ocean World. They found sophisticated maritime skills and a long history of trade over water, both local and long distance. The meeting of the two successful technologies led to some borrowing of different methods and materials, and European use of vessels of Asian design. There were cases of borrowing specific design features, mostly by Asian shipbuilders, but there was surprisingly little melding of aspects of construction. There was some specialization, with Europeans concentrating on building and using larger seagoing cargo carriers. The arrival of steam propulsion for ships after 1800 changed all maritime technologies beyond recognition.

The Magnetism of Antarctica: The Ross Expedition 1839–1843 by John Knight

Read the review (requires subscription) by Christian Drury in the November 2024 issue of the IJMH

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/08438714241272714

A description of the book is available here:

https://www.whittlespublishing.com/The_Magnetism_of_Antarctica

This under-documented expedition was a pivotal moment in the annals of polar exploration and was the starting point, in historical terms, of revealing the great unknown continent of Antarctica. It was the first time in nearly 70 years since Captain James Cook had circumnavigated Antarctica, that a Royal Naval voyage of discovery had ventured so far South. They set a new ‘furthest south’ record in the process beating the one set up by James Weddell in a whaling ship in 1823.

The expedition set sail from Greenwich in 1839. It consisted of two wooden sailing ships commanded by Captain James Clark Ross and Commander Francis Crozier. The ships were manned exclusively by Royal Naval personnel and each ship had a complement of 64 men and officers. Their primary task was of a scientific nature to study the Earth’s magnetic field and build up a set of results that could provide a greater understanding of the effects of magnetism on compasses and their use in navigating the world’s oceans. This voyage had a set of planned targets and all were accomplished. In the process a vast amount of scientific information was collected.  

Many exotic places were visited during the voyage amongst them Madeira, St. Helena, Cape Town, Kerguelen Island, New Zealand, Australia and the Falkland Islands but the pinnacle was the discovery of the Ross Sea, the Ross Ice Shelf and the mighty volcanoes of Erebus and Terror (named after the two ships). The crews experienced the dangers of navigating in ice-strewn waters and narrowly escaping being crushed by icebergs. Illness was kept at bay although several lives were lost due to accidents.

It would be another 60 years before the scenes of their greatest discoveries were visited again and then the Golden Age of Discovery was ushered in with the likes of Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen.

Archa Neelakandan Girija writes in the latest issue of the IJMH on “Stories of resistance and resilience: The role of the port city of Calicut in the seventeenth-century Indian Ocean trade”

Read the text (open access) at https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241272506

The Dutch East India Company attempted to control the pepper trade in the seventeenth-century Indian Ocean trade. Attempting to control pepper-growing areas such as the Malabar Coast (south-western coast of India) was part of this plan. Calicut was an important port city in Malabar and a vital player in the Indian Ocean trade. Unlike many port cities that were controlled by the European companies, the rulers and merchants of Calicut attempted to sustain a free trading port on their own instead of accepting a European company monopoly. In short, Calicut offered an alternative emporium for Indian Ocean trade in Malabar by resisting imperial endeavours. This article explores the ways in which Calicut participated in the Indian Ocean pepper trade despite the Dutch attempts to control it.

Boundaries of Belonging: English Jamaica and the Spanish Caribbean, 1655–1715 by April Lee Hatfield

Read the review (requires subscription) by Christos Giannatos in the November 2024 issue of the IJMH

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/08438714241272559

A description of the book is available here:

Book Details

In the decades following England’s 1655 conquest of Spanish Jamaica, the western Caribbean became the site of overlapping and competing claims—to land, maritime spaces, and people. English Jamaica, located in the midst of Spanish American port towns and shipping lanes, was central to numerous projects of varying legality, aimed at acquiring Spanish American wealth. Those projects were backdrop to a wide-ranging movement of people who made their own claims to political membership in developing colonial societies, and by extension, in Atlantic empires.

Boundaries of Belonging follows the stories of these individuals—licensed traders, smugglers, freedom seekers, religious refugees, pirates, and interlopers—who moved through the contested spaces of the western Caribbean. Though some were English and Spanish, many others were Sephardic, Tule, French, Kalabari, Scottish, Dutch, or Brandenberg. They also included creole people who identified themselves by their local place of origin or residence–as Jamaican, Cuban, or Panamanian.

As they crossed into and out of rival imperial jurisdictions, many either sought or rejected Spanish or English subjecthood, citing their place of birth, their nation or ethnicity, their religion, their loyalty, or their economic or military contributions to colony or empire. Colonial and metropolitan officials weighed those claims as they tried to impose sovereignty over diverse and mobile people in a region of disputed and shifting jurisdictions. These contests over who belonged in what empire and why, and over what protections such belonging conferred, in turn helped to determine who would be included within a developing law of nations.

Amélia Polónia and Rosa Capelão write in the latest issue of the IJMH on “Practices and representations of gender: Autochthone women in the Portuguese State of India, 1500s–1600s”

Read the text (open access) at https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241272520

Interactions between Europeans and the societies and cultures of contact during the early modern process of empire-building depended on the agency of women. This seems particularly apparent in the Portuguese case. Even if many of these interactions were imposed, women were crucial elements in the dynamics and outcomes of European colonization. This affected Portuguese and autochthone women alike, even if on different scales and levels. This article focuses on the latter. Between resistance, conflict, cheating, defection, intermingling and assimilation, those women performed as intermediaries between different worlds. Their presence and agency were vital to economic flows, as they were essential in negotiation processes. They were influential in social organization, through their role in the family, and in the reconfiguration of colonial settings. The concept of intersectionality underlines this analysis by describing the ways by which systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity and other forms of discrimination intersected to create unique historical dynamics.

Atlantic Venture Accounts of Eighteenth-Century Bristol by Alison Brown and Jonathan Harlow, eds.

Read the review (requires subscription) by Heather Freund in the November 2024 issue of the IJMH

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/08438714241272745

The ebook is available here:
https://archive.org/details/bristol-record-society-74

The Pirates’ Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship by Rebecca Simon

Read the review (requires subscription) by Nathan Jopling in the November 2024 issue of the IJMH

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/08438714241272623

A description of the book is available here:

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo199165757.html

Pirates have long captured our imaginations with images of cutlass-wielding swashbucklers, eye patches, and buried treasure. But what was life really like on a pirate ship? Piracy was a risky, sometimes deadly occupation, and strict orders were essential for everyone’s survival. These “Laws” were sets of rules that determined everything from how much each pirate earned from their plunder to compensation for injuries, punishments, and even the entertainment allowed on ships. These rules became known as the “Pirates’ Code,” which all pirates had to publicly swear by. Using primary sources like eyewitness accounts, trial proceedings, and maritime logs, this book explains how each one of the pirate codes was the key to pirates’ success in battle, on sea, and on land.

Richard W. Unger on “Empire and economy in the premodern Indian Ocean, 1400–1800” in the latest issue of the IJMH (November 2024)

Read the introduction to the “Forum: Indian Ocean 1400-1800: Empires and Economy” (in open access at) https://doi.org/10.1177/08438714241272597

The maritime history of the Indian Ocean in the years from 1400 to 1800 is very different from that of the Atlantic. Examining the two uncritically can, and does, lead to a misunderstanding of the practices and institutions – called empires generally, as if they were the same – that dominated in Asia and the Americas in the period. A group of six invited scholars examine different aspects of contact between Europeans and Asians, which stretched from cooperation to conflict.

Japan’s Ocean Borderlands: Nature and Sovereignty by Paul Kreitman

Read the review (requires subscription) by Niki J. P. Alsford in the November 2024 issue of the IJMH

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/08438714241272663

A description of the book is available here:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/japans-ocean-borderlands/64281F32932F694911B51BA0097AD1B9#fndtn-information

Desert islands are the focus of intense geopolitical tensions in East Asia today, but they are also sites of nature conservation. In this global environmental history, Paul Kreitman shows how the politics of conservation have entangled with the politics of sovereignty since the emergence of the modern Japanese state in the mid-nineteenth century. Using case studies ranging from Hawai’i to the Bonin Islands to the Senkaku (Ch: Diaoyu) Isles to the South China Sea, he explores how bird islands on the distant margins of the Japanese archipelago and beyond transformed from sites of resource extraction to outposts of empire and from wartime battlegrounds to nature reserves. This study examines how interactions between birds, bird products, bureaucrats, speculators, sailors, soldiers, scientists and conservationists shaped ongoing claims to sovereignty over oceanic spaces. It considers what the history of desert islands shows us about imperial and post-imperial power, the web of political, economic and ecological connections between islands and oceans, and about the relationship between sovereignty, territory and environment in the modern world.