Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

Mr. Smith goes to China : three Scots in the making of Britain's global empire /Jessica Hanser. "This book delves into the lives of three Scottish private traders - George Smith of Bombay, George Smith of Canton, and George Smith of Madras - and uses them as lenses through which to explore the inner workings of Britain's imperial expansion and global network of trade, revealing how an unstable credit system and a financial crisis ultimately led to greater British intervention in India and China."--Provided by the publisher. 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 382/.0941/051

British art and the East India Company / Geoff Quilley. "This book examines the role of the East India Company in the production and development of British art during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when a new 'school' of British art was in its formative stages with the foundation of exhibiting societies and the Royal Academy in 1768. It focuses on the Company's patronage, promotion and uses of art, both in Britain and in India and the Far East, and how the Company and its trade with the East were represented visually, through maritime imagery, landscape, genre painting and print-making. It also considers how, for artists such as William Hodges and Arthur William Devis, the East India Company, and its provision of a wealthy market in British India, provided opportunities for career advancement, through alignment with Company commercial principles. In this light, the book's main concern is to address the conflicted and ambiguous nature of art produced in the service of a corporation that was the 'scandal of empire' for most of its existence, and how this has shaped and distorted our understanding of the history of British art in relation to the concomitant rise of Britain as a self-consciously commercial and maritime nation, whose prosperity relied upon global expansion, increasing colonialism and the development of mercantile organisations."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 709.4109033

Looking for longitude : a cultural history /Katy Barrett. "Why make a joke out of a niche and complex scientific problem? That is the question at the heart of this book, which unearths the rich and surprising history of trying to find longitude at sea in the eighteenth century. Not simply a history on water, this is the story of longitude on paper, of the discussions, satires, diagrams, engravings, novels, plays, poems and social anxieties that shaped how people understood longitude in William Hogarth's London. We start from a figure in one of Hogarth's prints - a lunatic incarcerated in the madhouse of A Rake's Progress in 1735 - to unpick the visual, mental and social concerns which entwined around the national concern to find a solution to longitude. Why does longitude appear in novels, smutty stories, political critiques, copyright cases, religious tracts and dictionaries as much as in government papers? This sheds new light on the first government scientific funding body - the Board of Longitude - established to administer vast reward money for anyone who found a means of accurately measuring longitude at sea. Meet the cast of characters involved in the search for longitude, from famous novelists and artists to almost unknown pamphleteers and inventors, and see how their interactions informed the fate of longitude's most famous pursuer, the clockmaker John Harrison"--Provided by the publisher. 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 526/.62021

The untold war at sea : America's revolutionary privateers /Kylie A. Hulbert. "Sailing in the waters of the Atlantic and the Caribbean throughout the eighteenth-century, privateers played a vital role in numerous European and Anglo-American conflicts. This book extends that story to the role of privateers in the American Revolution. Privateer operations provide a fresh perspective on the impact and influence of the Revolution as a global conflict. Revolution-era engagements are not only between British Regulars, German mercenaries, and colonial patriots, but also privateers, include international crews operating in international waters on an international stage. These merchant marines understood that the war not only consisted of battlefields on American soil but required foreign support and aid. International recognition was imperative. The process of revolution and winning independence was global in nature and privateers operated at its core. Their experiences, rather than being unfamiliar and unknown, are an integral part of the story which this book highlights, reintegrating their story into the popular, patriotic narrative"--Provided by publisher. 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 973.3/5

Tempest : the Royal Navy and the Age of Revolution /James Davey. "The French Revolutionary Wars catapulted Britain into a conflict against a new enemy: Republican France. Britain relied on the Royal Navy to protect its shores and empire, but as radical ideas about rights and liberty spread across the globe, it could not prevent the spirit of revolution from reaching its ships. In this insightful history, James Davey tells the story of Britain's Royal Navy across the turbulent 1790s. As resistance and rebellion swept through the fleets, the navy itself became a political battleground. This was a conflict fought for principles as well as power. Sailors organized riots, strikes, petitions, and mutinies to achieve their goals. These shocking events dominated public discussion, prompting cynical - and sometimes brutal - responses from the government and naval command."--Provided by the publisher. 2023 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.0094109033

Opera inedita, vol. I : commentationes societati regiae scientiarum oblatas, quae integrae supersunt, cum tabula selenographica complectens /Tobiae Mayeri ; Edidit et observationum appendicem adiecit Georgius Christophorus Lichtenberg. Mayer, Tobias, 1775. • RARE-FOLIO • 1 copy available. 5:094

Address before the American association for the advancement of science : August, 1859 /by Professor Alexis Caswell Caswell, Alexis, 1859 • RARE-BOOK • 1 copy available. 5:094

Chasing a dream : the exploration of the imaginary Pacific /John Dunmore. "Early Europeans may have believed the world was flat, but by the Middle Ages there was widespread acceptance that it was, in fact, a globe. What remained a mystery, however, was what lay on the "other side". Some believed it was a source of riches, an ocean harbouring countries where gold and unimaginable riches could be found, including islands from which King Solomon had obtained his wealth. In addition, the belief in a vast southern continent went back centuries, and many expeditions set out to find it, sometimes in search of wealth, sometimes to convert its inhabitants to Christianity. This is the story of the voyages into this great unknown, by the Chinese and early Americans, the Dutch, Spanish, French and English; it recounts the exploits of pirates and scientists, and even the impact of popular fiction on popular imagination, leading to the debunking of many myths, from the sunken Great Southern Continent, to the idea that in the "antipodes", people walked upside down"--Provided by the publisher 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.4(265/266)

Hero in the footnotes : the life and times of Richard Cadman Etches : entrepreneur and British spy /Michael Etches. "The book tells the story of Richard Cadman Etches, born in Warwickshire in 1753, who left home while still a youth to seek his fortune in London. He set up a successful liquor and wine importing business and soon acquired his own ship to deal directly with European suppliers. When, in 1784, news came from James Cook's fatal expedition that huge profits could be made from buying sea otter pelts from local tribes on the North Pacific coast of America and selling them in China, he seized his opportunity and set up a trading base in Nootka Sound. Unfortunately, one of his vessels was captured by Spanish forces who believed they controlled the coast, and this almost led to a war with Britain. Richard then became a full time British agent during the turbulent times of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars and, among his many exploits was the organisation of Sir Sidney Smith's escape from a Paris gaol. He died in penury in a debtors' prison in London in 1817."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 942.07092

From Ushant to Gibraltar : the Channel Fleet, 1778 -1783 /Quintin Barry. "In 1778, when the expected war finally broke with France, Lord Sandwich, the long serving First Lord of the Admiralty, had to find the resources to match the French fleet not only in the Channel but in other theaters of war such as the West Indies, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In addition, the Royal Navy had to protect Britain's extensive maritime commerce, covering the large inbound and outbound convoys on which the country's economy depended. This book is a study of the men who led and the men who managed, both afloat and ashore, the Channel Fleet."-- 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.009

London and the Georgian Navy / Philip MacDougall. "At a time when the Royal Navy was the biggest and best in the world, Georgian London was the hub of this immense industrial-military complex, underpinning and securing a global trading empire that was entirely dependent on the navy for its existence. Philip MacDougall explores the bureaucratic web that operated within the wider city area before giving attention to London's association with the practical aspects of supplying and manning the operational fleet, and shipbuilding, repair and maintenance. His supremely detailed geographical exploration of these areas includes a discussion of captivating key personalities, buildings and work. The book examines significant locations as well as the importance of Londoners in the manning of ships and how the city memorialised the navy and its personnel during times of victory. An in-depth gazetteer and walking guide complete this fascinating study of London and her Royal Navy." 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.10942109033

A dark inheritance : blood, race, and sex in colonial Jamaica /Brooke N. Newman. "Focusing on Jamaica, Britain's most valuable colony in the Americas by the mid-eighteenth century, this book explores the relationship between racial classifications and the inherited rights and privileges associated with British subject status. Brooke Newman reveals the centrality of notions of blood and blood mixture to evolving racial definitions and sexual practices in colonial Jamaica and to legal and political debates over slavery and the rights of imperial subjects on both sides of the Atlantic. Weaving together a diverse range of sources, Newman shows how colonial racial ideologies rooted in fictions of blood ancestry at once justified permanent, hereditary slavery for Africans and barred members of certain marginalized groups from laying claim to British liberties on the basis of hereditary status. This groundbreaking study demonstrates that challenges to an Atlantic slave system underpinned by distinctions of blood had far-reaching consequences for British understandings of race, gender, and national belonging."--Provided by the publisher. 2018 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 325.46

Blood waters : war, disease and race in the eighteenth-century British Caribbean /Nicholas Rogers. "This book paints a picture of the eighteenth-century British Caribbean as a frontier zone in which war, international rivalry, disease and slavery are paramount themes. It explores the lure of the region as a vaunted site of potential wealth and derring-do, the fragility of tropical campaigns, the nature of slave insurrection, and the efforts of indigenous peoples (here, the Miskito of the Mosquito Coast and the Black Caribs of St Vincent) to carve out some autonomy from the British and Bourbon powers. It also explores the mutiny of a slave-ship and its unsuccessful raiding ventures in order to show how the dominant European powers sought to contain piracy in an expanding plantation complex. The book emphasizes the contrarieties of struggle, the difficulties preventing subaltern groups, whether slaves, free blacks, indigenous peoples or soldiers and sailors, from forging broader alliances, and the importance of tropical disease in shaping military outcomes. It warns against romanticizing resistance in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, showing that it was instead a 'marchlands' in which violence was a way of life and where solidarities were transitory and highly volatile."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 972.9/03

Cook and the Pacific : with essays /by John Maynard, Susannah Helman and Martin Woods. Maynard, John, 2018 • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 306.09

Admirals in court : discipline, honour and naval justice, 1778-1814 /John Morrow. Morrow, John,-Ph. D., 2025. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 343.41014309033

Tables for the use of nautical men, astronomers and others; intended particularly as supplementary to the National almanac, and White's coelestial atlas.By Olinthus Gregory, Esq., LL.D., F.R.A.S., &c. ; W.S.B. Woolhouse, Esq., F.R.A.S. ; and James Hann, Esq., of King's College Gregory, Olinthus 1846. • RARE-BOOK • 1 copy available. 527(083.5):094

Siebenstellige gemeine Logarithmen der Zahlen von 1 bis 108000 und der Sinus, Cosinus, Tangenten und Cotangenten aller Winkel des Quadranten von 10 zu 10 Secunden / von Dr. Ludwig Schrèon. Schrèon, Ludwig, 1864. • RARE-BOOK • 1 copy available. 519.662(083.5):094

Uranometria nova : stellae per mediam Europam solis oculis conspicuae secundum veras lucis magnitudines e coelo ipso discriptae /a Fr. Argelandro = Neue uranometrie :bdarstellung der im mittlern Europa mitblossen augen sichtbaren sterne nach ihren wahren, unmittelbar vom himmel entnommenen grèossen /von Fr. Argelander. Argelander, Fr.-(Friedrich), [1843] • RAREPAM-OS • 1 copy available. 524.3(084.4)

William Kennish : Manninagh Dooie : Manx inventor, american pioneer, explorer, poet and forgotten genius : the life and career of a Victorian Royal Navy master carpenter /Robert W. Stimpson. Stimpson, Robert W. 2011. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92KENNISH

Observationes astronomicae : in specula universitatis li'tterariae fennicae factae Argelander, Fr.-(Friedrich), 1830-2 • RARE-FOLIO • 2 copies available. 520.1:094

Abson & Company : slave traders in eighteenth-century West Africa /Stanley B. Alpern. "Yorkshireman Lionel Abson was the longest surviving European stationed in West Africa in the eighteenth century. He reached William's Fort at Ouidah on the Slave Coast as a trader in 1767, took over the English fort in 1770, and remained in charge until his death in 1803. He avoided the 'white man's grave' for thirty-six years. Along the way he had three sons with an African woman, the eldest partly schooled in England, and a bright daughter named Sally. When Abson died, royal lackeys kidnapped his children. Sally was placed in the king's harem and pined away; her brothers vanished. That king became so unpopular as a result that the people of Dahomey disowned him. Abson also mastered the local language and became an historian. After only two years as fort chief, he was part of the king's delegation to make peace with an enemy, a unique event in centuries of Dahomean history. This singular book recounts the remarkable life of this key figure in an ignominious period of European and African history, offering a microcosm of the lives of Europeans in eighteenth-century West Africa, and their relationships with and attitudes towards those they met there."--Provided by the publisher. 2018. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92ABSON

Life after the harem : female palace slaves, patronage and the imperial Ottoman court /Betèul Ipsirli Argit. "The first study to explore the lives of female slaves of the Ottoman imperial court, including the period following their manumission and transfer from the imperial palace. Through an analysis of a wide range of hitherto unexplored primary sources, Betèul Ipsirli Arg¸t demonstrates that the manumission of female palace slaves and their departure from the palace did not mean the severing of their ties with the imperial court; rather, it signaled the beginning of a new kind of relationship that would continue until their death. Demonstrating the diversity of experiences in non-dynastic female-agency in the early-modern Ottoman world, Life After the Harem shows how these evolving relationships had widespread implications for multiple parties, from the manumitted female palace slaves, to the imperial court, and broader urban society. In so doing, Ipsirli Arg¸t offers not just a new way of understanding the internal politics and dynamics of the Ottoman imperial court, but also a new way of understanding the lives of the actors within it."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.3/6208209561

Captivity's collections : science, natural history, and the British transatlantic slave trade /Kathleen S. Murphy. "Cashews from Africa's Gold Coast, butterflies from Sierra Leone, jalap root from Veracruz, shells from Jamaica--in the eighteenth century, these specimens from faraway corners of the Atlantic were tucked away onboard inhumane British slaving vessels. Kathleen S. Murphy argues that the era's explosion of new natural knowledge was deeply connected to the circulation of individuals, objects, and ideas through the networks of the British transatlantic slave trade. Plants, seeds, preserved animals and insects, and other specimens were gathered by British slave ship surgeons, mariners, and traders at slaving factories in West Africa, in ports where captive Africans disembarked, and near the British South Sea Company's trading factories in Spanish America. The specimens were displayed in British museums and herbaria, depicted in published natural histories, and discussed in the halls of scientific societies. Grounded in extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Captivity's Collections mines scientific treatises, slaving companies' records, naturalists' correspondence, and museum catalogs to recover in rich detail the scope of the slave trade's collecting operations. The book reveals the scientific and natural historical profit derived from these activities and the crucial role of specimens gathered along the routes of the slave trade on emerging ideas in natural history"-- [2023] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 508.0941

The Wager : a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder /David Grann. "On 28 January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, which had left England two years earlier on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain and had been wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. Six months, another even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who had landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court-martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death - for whomever the court found guilty could hang. The Wager is a grand tale of human behaviour at the extremes told by one of our greatest non-fiction writers. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound. Most powerfully, he unearths the deeper meaning of the events, showing it was not only the Wager's captain and crew who were on trial - it was the very idea of empire."--Provided by the publisher. 2023. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.91641

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