Maritime Empires: British Imperial Maritime Trade in the Nineteenth Century

by David Killingray (Editor)

Britain's overseas Empire pre-eminently involved the sea. In a two-way process, ships carried travellers and explorers, trade goods, migrants to new lands, soldiers to fight wars and garrison colonies, and also ideas and plants that would find fertile minds and soils in other lands. These essays, deriving from a National Maritime Museum (London) conference, provide a wide-ranging and comprehensive picture of the activities of maritime empire. They discuss a variety of maritime trades, among them the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Honduran mahogany for shipping to Britain, the movement of horses across the vast reaches of Asia and the Indian Ocean; the impact of new technologies as Empire expanded in the nineteenth century; the sailors who manned the ships, the settlers who moved overseas, and the major ports of the Imperial world; plus the role of the navy in hydrographic survey.
Published in association with the National Maritime Museum.
DAVID KILLINGRAY is Emeritus Professor of Modern History, Goldsmiths College London; MARGARETTE LINCOLN and NIGEL RIGBY are in the research department of the National Maritime Museum.

Table of Contents

Introduction -
From Slaves to Palm Afro-European Commercial Relations in the Bight of Biafra, 1741-1841 - Paul Lovejoy
`Pirate Water': Sailing to Belize in the Mahogany Trade - Daniel Finamore
Cape to the Indian Ocean and China Sea Trade in Equids - William G Clarence-Smith
Aden, British India and the Development of Steam Power in the Red Sea, 1825-1839 - R J Blyth
The Heroic Age of the Tin Technology and Ideology in British Arctic Exploration, 1818-1835 - Carl Thompson
The Proliferation and Diffusion of Steamship Technology and the Beginnings of `New Imperialism' - Robert Kubicek
Lakes, Rivers and Technology, Ethnicity and the Shipping of Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century - John Mackenzie
Making Imperial Settlement, Surveying and Trade in Northern Australia in the Nineteenth Century - Jordan Goodman
Hydrography, Technology, Mapping the Sea in South-East Asian Imperialism, 1850-1900 - Eric Tagliacozzo
Pains, Perils and Emigrant Voyages in the Nineteenth Century - Marjory Harper
Ordering Policing a Treaty Port, 1854-1900 - Robert Bickers
Towards a People's History of the Sea - Marcus Rediker

242 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2004

About the author

David Killingray is is Professor Emeritus of History, Goldsmiths, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.