Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

The Amistad rebellion : an Atlantic odyssey of slavery and freedom /Marcus Rediker. "The dramatic story of a courageous rebellion against slavery On 28 June 1839, the Spanish slave schooner La Amistad set sail from Havana to make a routine delivery of human cargo. After four days at sea, on a moonless night, the captive Africans that comprised that cargo escaped from the hold, killed the captain, and seized control of the ship. They attempted to sail to a safe port, but were captured by the US navy and thrown into a Connecticut jail. Their legal battle for freedom eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, where former president John Quincy Adams took up their cause. In a landmark ruling, they were freed and eventually returned to Africa. The rebellion became one of the best-known events in the history of American slavery, celebrated as a triumph of the US legal system in books and films, most famously Steven Spielberg?s Amistad. These narratives reflect the elite perspective of the judges, politicians, and abolitionists involved. In this powerful and highly original account, Marcus Rediker reclaims the rebellion for its instigators: the African rebels who risked death to stake a claim for freedom. Using newly discovered evidence, Rediker reaches back to Africa to find the rebels? roots, narrates their cataclysmic transatlantic journey, and unfolds a prison story of great drama and emotive power. Featuring vividly drawn portraits of the Africans, their captors, and their abolitionist allies, The Amistad Rebellion shows how the rebels captured the popular imagination and helped to inspire and build a movement that was part of a grand global struggle for emancipation. The actions of that distant July night and inthe days and months that followed were pivotal events in American and Atlantic history, but not for the reasons we have always thought. The successful Amistad rebellion changed the very nature of the struggle against slavery. As a handful of Africans steered a course to freedom, they opened a way for millions to follow. This stunning book honours their achievement."--Provided by the publisher. 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.133"1839"

William Cuffay : the life & times of a Chartist leader /Martin Hoyles. "William Cuffay (1788-1870) was one of the leaders of Chartism, which was the largest political movement ever seen in Britain. His grandfather was an African slave and his father was a West Indian slave, from St Kitts, who managed to gain his freedom and settle in Chatham, Kent. Cuffay trained as a tailor and moved to London where, in 1834, he was involved in the tailors' strike for shorter hours. In 1839 he joined the Chartist movement and soon became well known for his oratory and sense of humour. At the final mass demonstration for the Charter on Kennington Common on 10 April 1848, he protested strongly at the decision to call off the march to the House of Commons to present the petition. He called the national leadership a set of cowardly humbugs. In August 1848 Cuffay became involved in a secret revolutionary committee which was planning an uprising in London. He was arrested, tried and convicted, on the evidence of two police spies, of levying war against the Queen. He was sentenced to transportation for life in Tasmania. In Hobart he carried on working as a tailor and remained actively involved in Tasmanian politics for twenty years. His wife was able to join him in 1853 and he was granted a free pardon in 1856. In 1870 he died a pauper in the workhouse. William Cuffay's reputation during the Chartist years was immense, yet he was subsequently forgotten for over 130 years. This book aims to set him in his historical context and restore him to his rightful place as one of the key figures in British history."--Provided by the publisher. 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 322.44094109034

Black out : silhouettes then and now /Asma Naeem ; with contributions by Penley Knipe, Alexander Nemerov, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, and Anne Verplanck. "Before the advent of photography in 1839, Americans were consumed by the fashion for silhouette portraits. Economical in every sense, the small, stark profiles cost far less than oil paintings and could be made in minutes. Black Out, the first major publication to focus on the development of silhouettes, gathers leading experts to shed light on the surprisingly complex historical, political, and social underpinnings of this ostensibly simple art form. In its examination of portraits by acclaimed silhouettists, such as Auguste Edouart and William Bache, this richly illustrated volume explores likenesses of everyone from presidents and celebrities to everyday citizens and enslaved people. Ultimately, the book reveals how silhouettes registered the paradoxes of the unstable young nation, roiling with tensions over slavery and political independence. Primarily tracing the rise of the silhouette in the decades leading up to the Civil War, Black Out also considers the ubiquity of the genre today, particularly in contemporary art. Using silhouettes to address such themes as race, identity, and the notion of the digital self, the four featured living artists - Kara Walker, Kristi Malakoff, Kumi Yamashita, and Camille Utterback - all take the silhouette to unique and fascinating new heights. Presenting the distinctly American story behind silhouettes, Black Out vividly delves into the historical roots and contemporary interpretations of this evocative, ever popular form of portraiture."--Provided by the publisher. [2018] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 741.7 qN139 2018

Eastern fortress : a military history of Hong Kong, 1840-1970 /Kwong Chi Man and Tsoi Yiu Lun. "Celebrated as a trading port, Hong Kong was also Britain's 'eastern fortress'. Likened by many to Gibraltar and Malta, the colony was a vital but vulnerable link in imperial strategy, exposed to a succession of enemies in a turbulent age and a troubled region. This book examines Hong Kong's developing role in the Victorian imperial defence system, the emerging challenges from Russia, France, the United States, Germany, Japan and other powers, and preparations in the years leading up to the Second World War. A detailed chapter offers new interpretations of the Battle of Hong Kong of 1941, when the colony succumbed to the Japanese invasion. The remaining chapters discuss Hong Kong's changing strategic role during the Cold War and the winding down of the military presence. The book not only focuses on policies and events, but also explores the social life of the garrison in Hong Kong, the struggles between military and civil authorities, and relations between the armed forces and civilians in Hong Kong. Drawing on original research in archives around the world, including English, Japanese, and Chinese sources, this is the first full-length study of the defence of Hong Kong from the beginning of the colonial period to the end of British military interests East of Suez in 1970. Illustrated with images and detailed maps, Eastern Fortress will be of interest to both students of history and general readers."--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.48(512.317)

The hospital on the Island del Rey : the King's Island, Port of Mahon /Amics de l'Illa de l'Hospital Fundacion Hospital de la Isla del Rey. "This book is a selection of 21 short, extremely readable and interesting published texts, their authors all being connoisseurs of Menorca's 18C history. Each author tells his story about the most important naval hospital in the Mediterranean from a different perspective. Together with the history of the Isla del Rey, fascinating anecdotes are found throughout the book and readers will be entertained and suprised to learn how the island was bought and eventually paid for, of advanced medical expertise and of how the island was use by other nations. Lastly a photographic tribute to the Friends of Hospital Island whos the trials and triumphs of the restoration programme over the last six years."--Provided by the publisher. • BOOK • 1 copy available.

Business and financial papers, 1780-1939: Series 1, Part 1: Colonial Gazette, • MICROFILM • 8 copies available.

Small boats and daring men : maritime raiding, irregular warfare, and the early American Navy /Benjamin Armstrong. "Two centuries before the daring exploits of Navy SEALs and Marine Raiders captured the public imagination, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps were already engaged in similarly perilous missions: raiding pirate camps, attacking enemy ships in the dark of night, and striking enemy facilities and resources on shore. Even John Paul Jones, father of the American navy, saw such irregular operations as critical to naval warfare. With Jones's own experience as a starting point, Benjamin Armstrong sets out to take irregular naval warfare out of the shadow of the blue-water battles that dominate naval history. This book, the first historical study of its kind, makes a compelling case for raiding and irregular naval warfare as key elements in the story of American sea power. Beginning with the Continental Navy, Small Boats and Daring Men traces maritime missions through the wars of the early republic, from the coast of modern-day Libya to the rivers and inlets of the Chesapeake Bay. At the same time, Armstrong examines the era's conflicts with nonstate enemies and threats to American peacetime interests along Pacific and Caribbean shores. Armstrong brings a uniquely informed perspective to his subject; and his work-with reference to original naval operational reports, sailors' memoirs and diaries, and officers' correspondence-is at once an exciting narrative of danger and combat at sea and a thoroughgoing analysis of how these events fit into concepts of American sea power. Offering a critical new look at the naval history of the Early American era, this book also raises fundamental questions for naval strategy in the twenty-first century."--Provided by publisher. 2019 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.353(73)

Tales from the Captain's Log : from Captain Cook to Charles Darwin, Blackbeard and Nelson - accounts of great events at sea from those who were there "For centuries, ships' commanders kept journals that recorded their missions. These included voyages of discovery to unknown lands, engagements in war and sea and general trade. Many of their logs, diaries and letters were lodged at The National Archives and give a vivid picture of the situations that they encountered. Entries range from Captain James Cook's notes of his discovery of the South Pacific and Australia, to logs of the great naval battles, such as Waterloo and Trafalgar. From the ships that attempted to stop piracy in the Caribbean, to the surgeons who recorded the health of the men they tended and naturalists who noted the exotic plants and animals they encountered, comes a fascinating picture of life at sea, richly illustrated with maps, drawings and facsimile documents found alongside the logs in the archives."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.4(100)

J.F. Encke's astronomische Abhandlungen : zusammengestellt aus den Jahrgèangen 1830 bis 1862 des Berliner astronomischen Jahrbuches nebst drei in diesen Jahrgèangen enthaltenen Abhandlungen /von Bessel, Olbers, und Bremicker. 1866. • RARE-BOOK • 3 copies available. 52"1830/1862":094

Russian California, 1806-1860 : a history in documents /compiled and edited by James R. Gibson and Alexei A. Istomin. "This two-volume book is a documentary history of Russia's 19th-century settlement in California. It contains 492 documents (letters, reports, travel descriptions, censuses, ethnographic and geographical information), mostly translated from the Russian for the first time, very fully annotated, and with an extensive historical introduction, maps, and illustrations, many in colour. This broad range of primary sources provides a comprehensive and detailed history of the Russian Empire's most distant and most exotic outpost, one whose liquidation in 1841 presaged St Petersburg's abandonment of all of Russian America in 1867. Russia from the sixteenth century onwards had steadily expanded eastwards in search of profitable resources. This expansion was rapid, eased not only by the absence of foreign opposition and disunity of the native peoples but also by Siberia's river network and the North Pacific's convenient causeway of the Aleutian chain leading to Alaska. It was paid for largely by the 'soft gold' of Siberian sables and Pacific sea otters. By the end of the 1700s, however, on the Northwest Coast of North America the Russians met increasing opposition from the indigenous people (Tlingits) and foreign rivals (American and English fur-trading vessels). This combination soon depleted the coast of sea otters, and at the same time the Russians were finding it ever more expensive to obtain supplies from Europe by overland transport across Siberia or round-the-world voyages, so under the aegis of the monopolistic Russian-American Company (1799) they leapfrogged southward to the frontera del norte of the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. Here, in 1812, they founded Russian California (officially, Ross Counter) as a base for hunting the Californian sea otter, growing grain and rearing stock, and trading with the Spanish missions. Eventually the exclave comprised a fort (Ross), a port (Bodega), five farms, and a hunting and birding station on the Farallon Islands, as well as a shipyard, a tannery, and a brickworks. The successes and failures of these enterprises, the perils of navigation, experiments in agriculture, the personal, political and economic problems of the colony, and Russian engagement with the indigenous population all come to life in these pages."--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 061.22HAKLUYT

Britain's empire : resistance, repression and revolt /Richard Gott. This revelatory new history punctures the widely held belief that the British Empire was an imaginative and civilizing enterprise. Instead, BRITAIN'S EMPIRE reveals a history of systemic repression and almost perpetual violence, showing how British rule was imposed as a military operation and maintained as a military dictatorship. For colonized peoples, the experience was a horrific one, of slavery, famine, battle and extermination. Yet, as Richard Gott shows, the Empire's oppressed peoples did not go quietly into this good night. Wherever Britain tried to plant its flag, it met with opposition. From Ireland to India, from the American colonies to Australia, Gott traces the rebellions and resistance of subject peoples whose all-but-forgotten stories are excluded from traditional accounts of empire. He shows, too, how the British Empire provided a blue print for the annihilation of peoples in twentieth-century Europe, and argues that its leaders must rank alongside the dictators of the twentieth century as authors of crimes against humanity on an infamous scale. -- Publisher description. 2011. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 941-44"17/18"

Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836, describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagle's circumnavigation of the globe King, P Parker 1839 • RARE-BOOK • 9 copies available. 094:910.4(100)"1826/1836"

Astronomical observations made at the Observatory of Cambridge Challis, James 1834-1890 • RARE-FOLIO • 17 copies available. 520.1

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