Robert Blyth
Profile
Curator of 19th Century Imperial and Maritime Studies
My job is to try to understand the significance of Britain’s imperial and maritime history, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, and to explain this vast subject to the Museum’s audiences. This involves researching and writing about the NMM’s diverse collections, giving lectures and talks, and helping with the Museum’s exhibition and display programme.
My favourite part of the job
My favourite part of the job is revealing the hidden stories behind the objects in the Museum’s collections. Sometimes the most ordinary object can have an extraordinary past or link to a much bigger episode in history. Opening up these stories and associations not only provides new and unexpected perspectives on people and events but is also fun!
The question I'm asked most often
I am often asked if I am a descendent of Captain William Bligh of mutiny on the Bounty fame, but my surname is both spelt and pronounced differently, so I have to disappoint on that front. Other than that, I always seem to be asked questions I don’t immediately know the answer to, which is a good thing as it’s an excuse to find out more.
Academic profile
Curator of 19th Century Imperial and Maritime Studies
Biography
I studied history at the University of Aberdeen, gaining my PhD in 1998. I started work at the National Maritime Museum in 2000. I taught African, British and imperial history at Queen’s University Belfast in 2006–08 before rejoining the Museum.
Areas of research interest
The history of the Indian Ocean, especially British India’s involvement with the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and eastern Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries; the history of the British empire and British imperialism; the history, material culture and representation of slavery and the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades; and the history, material culture and representation of the East India Company.
Current projects
- Co-ordinating the activities of the Museum’s Centre for Imperial and Maritime Studies.
- Editor of the Journal for Maritime Research.
- Co-editing a collection of essays with A. Lambert and J. Rüger, The Dreadnought and the Edwardian age (forthcoming).
External fellowships/honorary positions/membership of profession bodies
- NMM Trustee of the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth
- Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
- Member of the Hakluyt Society
Select publications
- The British Empire and its Contested Pasts: Historical Studies XXVI, edited with K. Jeffery (Dublin, 2009).
- Representing Slavery: Art, Artefacts and Archives in the Collections of the National Maritime Museum, edited with D. Hamilton (Aldershot, 2007).
- ‘Aden, British India and the Development of Steam Power in the Red Sea, 1825–1839’, in D. Killingray, M. Lincoln and N. Rigby (eds), Maritime Empires: British Imperial Maritime Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 68–83.
- The Empire of the Raj: India, Eastern Africa and the Middle East, 1858–1947 (Basingstoke, 2003).
- ‘Redrawing the Boundary between India and Britain: the Succession Crisis at Zanzibar, 1870–1873’, International History Review, 22 (2000), pp. 785–805.
- ‘Britain versus India in the Persian Gulf: the Struggle for Political Control, c. 1928–48’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 28 (2000), pp. 90–111.