Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

Liverpool a history of 'The Great Port' / Adrian Jarvis. "This book by internationally-recognised port historian, Dr. Adrian Jarvis, is the first new comprehensive history of the Port of Liverpool to have been written for over forty years. Whilst Liverpool was founded by King John in 1207, it was only in the last quarter of the 17th century that Liverpool really began the process that was to take it to the level where it arguably became the No 1 export port in the whole British Empire. Liverpool the port and Liverpool the city have always been inextricably linked and this comes across strongly in Adrian's highly readable narrative. All the big themes are covered - from the creation of the world's first enclosed wet dock to the part played by the slave trade, privateering, cotton and the great shipping lines such as Cunard, White Star, Blue Funnel, Ocean Steamship, Leyland etc. The great entrepreneurs, the merchant class and the dockers who made it all happen are given their due too. The development of the Port's dock system ? stretching for nearly seven miles along both banks of the Mersey, and one of the wonders of the 19th century world - is looked at in some detail. You may already be familiar with the names of some of these great docks - Albert, Princes, Gladstone and Royal Seaforth to name just a few. The book concentrates on the crucial 300 years between 1672 and 1972, the year that the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board virtually abandoned the entire South Docks system. By then the Port of Liverpool had faced decades of decline caused by two World Wars, changing patterns of world trade, dock labour problems and containerisation, and more besides. Comprising 280 pages, the book is lavishly illustrated throughout in colour and black and white."--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 627.2(427.2)

The Bright-Meyler papers : a Bristol-West India connection, 1732-1837 /edited by Kenneth Morgan. "These documents illuminate the conduct of British trade in the Caribbean when slavery was at its height and Jamaica was the wealthiest territory in Britain's Atlantic empire. Pertaining to the commercial and plantation interests of two Bristol families connected through marriage and business, the volume sheds light on how fortunes were created by merchants striving for improvement, independence, and social mobility. The documents include correspondence, wills and inventories, partnership agreements, insurance policies and property deeds. The introduction addresses issues of the slave trade and sugar cultivation, capital accumulation, the ways in which a West India fortune was created, the risk environment of the Caribbean, and social, economic and demographic conditions in 18th-century Bristol and Jamaica."--Provided by the publisher. 2007. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1:382"1732/1837"

Sailing for the Empire : the life of Admiral Sir John Corbett in letters and paintings. "This is the first major account of an important part of the life of the naval officer who rose to be the eminent Admiral Sir John Corbett, KCB, (1822-1893) and became Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies and at the Nore. He played significant roles in the expansion and management of the British Empire and ending the slave trade. His exploits are visually captured by the full-colour and black and white illustrations, many from his own skilled sketches and paintings. Corbett's informative detailed letters in particular provide an important insight into life in the Victorian navy in many parts of the world, and how senior officers recorded and communicated their experiences."-- 2024. • FOLIO • 1 copy available.

England's shipwreck heritage : from logboats to U-boats /by Serena Cant. What do characters as diverse as Alfred the Great, the architect Sir Christopher Wren, diarist Samuel Pepys and the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins have in common? All had some involvement in shipwrecks: in causing, recording or salvaging them. This book examines a variety of wrecks from logboats, Roman galleys and medieval cogs to East Indiamen, grand ocean liners, fishing boats and warships - all are woven into the history of shipwrecks along the coastline of England and in her territorial waters. Wrecks are not just physically embedded in this marine landscape - they are also an intrinsic part of a domestic cultural landscape with links that go beyond the navy, mercantile marine and fishing trade. Evidence of shipwrecks is widespread: in literature, in domestic architecture and as a major component of industrial archaeology. Shipwrecks also transcend national boundaries, forming tangible monuments to the movement of goods and people between nations in war and peace. In peacetime they link the architecture and monuments of different countries, from shipyards to factories, warehouses to processing plants; in time of war wrecks have formed a landscape scattered across the oceans, linking friend and foe in common heritage. England's Shipwreck Heritage explores the type of evidence we have for shipwrecks and their causes, including the often devastating effects fo the natural environment and human-led disaster. Ships at war, global trade and the movement of people - such as passengers, convict transports and the slave trade - are also investigated. Along the way we meet the white elephant who perished in 1730, the medieval merchant who pursued a claim for compensation for nearly 20 years, the most famous privateer for the American revolutionary wars and the men who held their nerve in the minesweeper trawls of the First World War. 2013. • FOLIO • 2 copies available. 656.61.085.3(42)"05/19"

Navigations : the Portuguese discoveries and the Renaissance /Malyn Newitt. "Navigations re-examines the Portuguese voyages of discovery by placing them in their medieval and Renaissance settings. It shows how these voyages grew out of a crusading ethos, as well as long-distance trade with Asia and Africa and developments in map-making and ship design. The slave trade, the diaspora of the Sephardic Jews and the intercontinental spread of plants and animals gave these voyages long-term global significance. The voyages of discovery are narrated within the context of Portuguese politics, and this book describes the role of the Portuguese ruling dynasty - including its female members - in the flowering of the Portuguese Renaissance and the distinctive ideology of the Renaissance state, and in the cultural changes that took place within a wider European context."--Provided by the publisher. 2023. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 946.902

Gender, war and politics : transatlantic perspectives, 1775-1830 /edited by Karen Hagemann, Gisela Mettele, Jane Rendall. "This volume addresses war, developing political and national identities and the changing gender regimes of Europe and the Americas between 1775 and 1820. Military and civilian experiences of war and revolution, in free and slave societies, both reflected and shaped gender concepts and practices, in relation to class, ethnicity, race and religion"-- 2010. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.02(261)-055.2

The interest : how the British establishment resisted the abolition of slavery /Michael Taylor. "For two hundred years, the abolition of slavery in Britain has been a cause for self-congratulation - but no longer. In 1807, Parliament outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire, but for the next quarter of a century, despite heroic and bloody rebellions, more than 700,000 people in British colonies remained enslaved. And when a renewed abolitionist campaign was mounted, making slave ownership the defining political and moral issue of the day, emancipation was fiercely resisted by the powerful 'West India Interest'. Supported by nearly every leading figure of the British establishment - including Canning, Peel and Gladstone, The Times and Spectator - the Interest ensures that slavery survived until 1833 and that when abolition came at last, compensation worth ¹340 billion in today's money was given not to the enslaved but to the slaveholders, entrenchign the power of their families to shape modern Britian to this day. Drawing on major new research, this long-overdue and groundbreaking history provides a gripping narrative account of the tumultuous and often violent battle - between rebels and planters, between abolitionists and the pro-slavery establishment - that divided and scarred the nation during these years of upheaval. The Interest reveals the lengths to which British leaders went to defend the indefensible in the name of profit, showing that the ultimate triumph of abolition came at a bitter cost and was one of the darkest and most dramatic episodes in British history."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.3620941

Women, dissent and anti-slavery in Britain and America, 1790-1865 / edited by Elizabeth J. Clapp and Julie Roy Jeffrey. 2011. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.8(42:73)"17/18"-055.2

Black flag of the north : Bartholomew Roberts, king of the Atlantic pirates /Victor Suthren. "He was tall, dark, and handsome, he wore fine velvets and lace, and in four tumultuous years he tore the guts out of the Atlantic. Bartholomew Roberts took over 400 ships and rarely lost a fight at sea in his short, spectacular reign. He set the Atlantic aflame from the Grand Banks to Brazil, and by blood and fire won his reputation as the fearless and feared King of the Pirates. Cast in a gripping narrative that combines historical accuracy with a novelist's flowing prose, Black Flag of the North tells the story of Roberts's dramatic life, from his boyhood in rural South Wales through his days at sea during the slave trade, culminating in the stunning events in Canada that opened his four-year piratical career, to his fiery end beneath British guns off the coast of West Africa."-- [2018] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.4/5

Outsourcing empire : how company-states made the modern world /Andrew Phillips and J. C. Sharman. "From Spanish conquistadors through to pith-helmeted British colonialists, the prevailing vision of European empire-builders has been staunchly statist. But from the early 1600s through to the early twentieth century, from the East Indies to North America to Africa and the South Pacific, it was company states - not sovereign states - that played the most important role in driving European worldwide commercial and colonial expansion. In Asia, the Dutch and English East India Companies ingratiated themselves with mighty Asian rulers such as the Mughal and Qing Emperors to infiltrate Asian markets. In North America, the Hudson's Bay Company maintained a network of forts and factories across the continent closely integrated with American Indian trading routes and practices. And in Africa, the company states were first key intermediaries in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and later the colonial vanguards of the 'scramble for Africa.' Notwithstanding their central importance for both International Relations scholars and students of global history, company states remain largely ignored in studies of the modern international system's evolution and expansion. Beholden to an outdated historiography, most scholarship on the expansion of the international system looks only at sovereign states. Historians and historical sociologists have done more to acknowledge company states' pioneering role. But these studies have typically focused on individual company states in isolation, and have thus missed the significance of company states as key progenitors of the modern international system. As a result of this neglect, we lack an understanding of what defined the company states as a distinctive form of international actor, and how they served as crucial but now largely forgotten builders of the world's first truly global international system. Existing works struggle to account for rise, fall and fleeting nineteenth century resurrection of company states as agents of long distance commerce and conquest, as well as their sharply contrasting fortunes in different regions. Finally, unless we understand the nature and significance of company states, we cannot understand how inter-civilizational relations were mediated across trans-continental distances and deep cultural differences for the majority of the modern era. These are the vital gaps in our knowledge which the authors seek to address in this book."-- 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 909.08

Jeopardy of every wind : the biography of captain Thomas Bowrey /Sue Paul. "In 1669, fleeing a London decimated by the plague and the Great Fire, a young English child arrived, alone, at Fort St. George, the first English fortress in Mughal India. The boy survived to become a maverick merchant-mariner, an 'independent' trading on the fringes of the East India Company. Captain Thomas Bowrey gained renown in numerous fields. Operating throughout the East Indies and speaking Malay, the lingua franca of diplomacy and trade in the region, he would write and publish the first ever Malay-English dictionary, a seminal work that even a century later would be used by the likes of Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. It has also been claimed Bowrey wrote the earliest first-hand account of the recreational use of cannabis. Bowrey's shipping interests, however, were plagued by pirates, privateers and mutiny and included the tragic Worcester, which played a pivotal role in the union of England and Scotland. Subsequent projects included the east African slave trade and his collaboration with Daniel Defoe in the founding of the South Sea Company. Despite everything, Bowrey succeeded in amassing sufficient fortune for alms-houses to be built in his name following his death, but his true legacy is his papers that lay hidden in an attic for two centuries and which now shed light not only on the exploits of this remarkable man but also on life and commerce at the start of globalisation."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. txt

Murder on the high seas / Martin Baggoley. "Great Britain has for many centuries been one of the world's great sea-faring nations. The Royal Navy has defended her territory and the merchant fleet has been instrumental in creating the nation's wealth. The courage, industry and exploits of many of her sailors and the names of the ships in which they served have become legends. However, the sea has also provided the backdrop to great crimes and for Murder on the High Seas, the author has selected murders that have been committed in many parts of the globe over a period of more than one hundred years. The motives behind these crimes have included revenge, lust, greed and survival. Nevertheless, they share one common feature as all of those accused of responsibility were brought back to Great Britain to stand trial. Among these fascinating accounts is a description of the trial of the survivors of a shipwreck who killed and fed on a shipmate. Also included is the murder by slavers of several Royal Navy seamen who were part of the West Africa Squadron, formed to put an end to the slave trade of the South Atlantic."--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 629.12.07

Black salt : seafarers of African descent on British ships /by Ray Costello. "In this fascinating work, Ray Costello examines the work and experience of seamen of African descent in Britain's navy, from impressed slaves to free Africans, British West Indians, and British-born black sailors. Seamen from the Caribbean and directly from Africa have contributed to both the British Royal Navy and Merchant Marine from the Tudor period and by the end of the period of the British slave trade at least three percent of all crewmen were black mariners, and their experiences run the gamut of sorrow and tragedy, heroism, victory, and triumph. This is an important look at a neglected area of study, filled with many powerful, previously untold stories."--From Amazon. 2012. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 656.61.071.22(=96)(42)

Equiano's daughter : the life of and times of Joanna Vassa, daughter of Olaudah Equiano, Gustavus Vassa, the African /by Angelina Osborne. "The Life and Times of Joanna Vassa' is a remarkable achievement and adds another ripple in the trail to discover more about a great man and his legacy, in this year of the 200th anniversary since the act to abolish the transatlantic slave trade in Britain came into effect. This book honours the legacy of the relentless journey of an abolitionist and the journey to discover what happened to Joanna following his death on the 31st March 1797." 2007. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 305.805092

Human migration and the refugee crisis : origins and global impact /Eliot Dickinson. "This book examines the complex forces behind international migration and the enormous impact it is having on our globalized world. Chapters cover both the challenges and opportunities associated with migration in a broad selection of countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania. Readers will find in-depth analysis of such recent events as the Ukrainian refugee crisis, violence against immigrants in South Africa, support for right-wing political parties in Germany, Australia's use of offshore detention centers, and the Trump administration's efforts to curb immigration. Readers will also uncover the historical antecedents to the modern landscape of human migration, including the push for colonization and the exploitation and horrors of the slave trade. The book also investigates the profound impact that climate change will have on patterns of human migration in the coming years. Taken together, the chapters offer candid and compelling coverage of a dynamic subject that affects millions of people worldwide. For readers wishing to delve even deeper into this multifaceted and often contentious subject, a comprehensive list of recommended readings serves as a gateway to further exploration."-- 2023. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 325/.2

Britain and the ocean road : shipwrecks and people, 1297-1825 /Ian Friel. "Britain and the Ocean Road uses new firsthand research and unconventional interpretations to take a fresh look at British maritime history in the age of sail. The human stories of eight shipwrecks serve as waypoints on the voyage, as the book explores how and why Britain became a global sea power. Each chapter has people at its heart - sailors, seafaring families, passengers, merchants, pirates, explorers, and many others. The narrative encompasses an extraordinary range of people, ships and events, such as a bloody maritime civil war in the 13th century, a 17th-century American teenager who stepped from one ship to another - and into a life of piracy, a British warship that fought at Trafalgar (on the French side), and the floating hell of a Liverpool slave-ship, sunk in the year before the slave trade was abolished. The book is full of surprising details and scenes, including England's rudest and crudest streetname, what it was like to be a passenger in a medieval ship (take a guess), how a fragment of the English theatre reached the Far East during Shakespeare's lifetime, who forgave who after a deadly pirate duel, why there were fancy dress parties in the Arctic, and where you could get the best herring. Britain and the Ocean Road is the first of two works aimed at introducing a general audience to the gripping (and at times horrifying) story of Britain, its people and the sea. The books will also interest historians and archaeologists, as they are based on original scholarship. The second book, Black Oil on the Waters, will take the story from the age of steam to the 21st century."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.00941

Mutiny on the Black Prince : slavery, piracy, and the limits of liberty in the revolutionary Atlantic world /James H. Sweet. "In 1768, the slave ship Black Prince departed the port of Bristol, bound for West Africa. It never arrived. Before reaching Old Calabar, the crew mutined, murdering the captain and his officers. The mutineers renamed the ship Liberty, elected new officers, and set out for Brazil. By the time the ship arrived there, the crew had disintegrated into a violent mob and fired into the port city. After the Black Prince wrecked off the coast of Hispaniola, the rebels fled to outposts around the Atlantic world. An eight-year manhunt ensued. This book follows the crew's turn to piracy and the merchant-owners' response to the uprising. At the very moment that the American Revolution unfolded in North America, the Black Prince's owners conducted a 'shadow' revolution, mobilizing the power of the British Crown to seek justice and restitution on their behalf. These private merchants used state surveillance, policing, extradition, capital punishment, international diplomacy, and warfare in order to protect their wealth. During an era of professed liberty and freedom, the privatization of state power was already emerging, replacing monarchies with corporate oligarchies, presaging a new kind of political power in the Atlantic world. The eighteenth-century Bristol slave merchants and subsquent generations of their families accrued great fortunes from the trade and invested it in early British banks, railroads, insurance companies, and industrial manufacturing, and even the Anglican Church. Mutiny on the Black Prince narrates the dramatic story of the events onboard and the merchant owners' efforts to capture the rebels from around the Atlantic world, as well as the way that British slavery shaped the industrializing Atlantic economy and the evolution of the modern corporate state."-- 2025. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.3/620942393

Colonialism : a moral reckoning /Nigel Biggar. "A new assessment of the West's colonial record. In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989, many believed that we had arrived at the 'End of History' - that the global dominance of liberal democracy had been secured forever. Now however, with Russia rattling its sabre on the borders of Europe and China rising to challenge the post-1945 world order, the liberal West faces major threats. These threats are not only external. Especially in the Anglosphere, the 'decolonisation' movement corrodes the West's self-confidence by retelling the history of European and American colonial dominance as a litany of racism, exploitation, and massively murderous violence. Nigel Biggar tests this indictment, addressing the crucial questions in eight chapters: Was the British Empire driven primarily by greed and the lust to dominate? Should we speak of 'colonialism and slavery' in the same breath, as if they were identical? Was the Empire essentially racist? How far was it based on the theft of land? Did it involve genocide? Was it driven fundamentally by the motive of economic exploitation? Was undemocratic colonial government necessarily illegitimate? and, Was the Empire essentially violent, and its violence pervasively racist and terroristic? Biggar makes clear that, like any other long-standing state, the British Empire involved elements of injustice, sometimes appalling. On occasions it was culpably incompetent and presided over moments of dreadful tragedy. Nevertheless, from the early 1800s the Empire was committed to abolishing the slave trade in the name of a Christian conviction of the basic equality of all human beings. It ended endemic inter-tribal warfare, opened local economies to the opportunities of global trade, moderated the impact of inescapable modernisation, established the rule of law and liberal institutions such as a free press, and spent itself in defeating the murderously racist Nazi and Japanese empires in the Second World War. As encyclopaedic in historical breadth as it is penetrating in analytical depth, Colonialism offers a moral inquest into the colonial past, forensically contesting damaging falsehoods and thereby helping to rejuvenate faith in the West's future"--Publisher's description. 2023. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 325/.341

Imperial legacies : the British Empire around the world /Jeremy Black. "Britain yesterday; America today. The reality of being top dog is that everybody hates you. In this provocative book, noted historian and commentator Jeremy Black shows how criticisms of the legacy of the British Empire are in part criticisms of the reality of American power today. He emphasizes the prominence of imperial rule in history and in the world today, and the selective way in which certain countries are castigated. Imperial Legacies is a wide-ranging and vigorous assault on political correctness, its language, misuse of the past, and grasping of both present and future"--Provided by publisher. 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 909/.0971241

Fifty years later : antislavery, capitalism and modernity in the Dutch orbit /edited by Gert Oostindie. "The Dutch slave trade, slavery and abolitionism have long remained unduly neglected issues in the burgeoning international debate on capitalism, modernity, and antislavery. Fifty Years Later now offers a thoroough and wide-rabnging discussion of antislavery in the Netherlands and in the Dutch colonial world, and also provides a fresh contribution to the ongoing debate on the relationship between abolitionism and economic, political and cultural modernisation in the Western world at large. The contributors to this volume are Seymour Dreschner, Pieter C. Emmer, Stanley L. Engerman, Edwin Horlings, Gerrit J. Knaap, Maarten Kuiten-brouwer, Gert Oostindie, Robert Ross, Angelie Sens, and Alex van Stirpriaan."--Prodived by the publisher. 1995. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.36209492

An African's life : the life and times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1797 /James Walvin. A biography of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), known as Gustavus Vassa for much of his life. Enslaved at the age of about eleven, Equiano learned to read and write and converted to Christianity, eventually buying his freedom in 1766. Thereafter, much of his life was spent in London and at sea on British ships. He was an early campaigner against the slave trade, was employed by the British Government as an agent in their efforts to ship the black poor from London to Sierra Leone and was a leading member of the Sons of Africa, a campaigning group of educated black Londoners. Frequently called on as a spokesman for the black community, Equiano became a public figure in his own lifetime, publishing his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, in 1789 which became one of the first examples of published writing by an African writer to be widely read. 2000. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92EQUIANO

Fishers and plunderers : theft, slavery and violence at sea /Alastair Couper, Hance D. Smith, and Bruno Ciceri. "In Fishers and Plunderers, Alastair Couper, Hance D. Smith and Bruno Ciceri focus on the exploitation of fish and fishers alike in a global industry driven by profits, with little consideration given to either resource conservation or human rights. With vast overprovision of vessels and shortages of fish, labour costs are targeted and young men are trafficked from poor areas onto vessels in virtual slavery. The resultant poverty and debt bonding pushes many towards trafficking drugs and piracy - although the criminality linked to the industry extends far beyond the level of the individual, vessel or fleet. The book provides evidence of these crimes and injustices, with the authors arguing for regulations which if implemented could protect the rights of fishers across the board. In doing so, the authors shed a much needed light on a largely hidden world. Those wishing to better the lives of fishers both at sea and ashore will find it to be a persuasive and essential guide." 2015. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 341.362.1

American yachts in naval service : a history from the Colonial Era to World War II /Kenneth Howard Goldman. "Before there was a U.S. Navy, several Colonial navies were all-volunteer -- both the crews and the vessels. From its beginnings through World War II, the Navy has relied on civilian sailors and their fast vessels to fill out its ranks of small combatants. Beginning with the birth of the yacht in 17th century Netherlands, this illustrated history traces the development of yacht racing, the advent of combustion-engine power and the contribution privately owned vessels have made to national defense. Vessels conscripted during the Civil War served both the Union and Confederacy -- sometimes changing sides after capture. The first USS Wanderer saw the slave trade from both sides of the law. Aboard the USS Sylph, Oscar-winning actor Ernest Borgnine fought the Third Reich's U-boats under sail. USS Sea Cloud made history as the first racially integrated ship in the Navy, three years before President Truman desegregated the military."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.8/3

African Europeans : an untold history /Olivette Otele. "As early as the third century, St Maurice--an Egyptian--became leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion. Ever since, there have been richly varied encounters between those defined as 'Africans' and those called 'Europeans'. Yet Africans and African Europeans are still widely believe to be only a recent phenomenon in Europe. Olivette Otele traces a long African European heritage through the lives of individuals both ordinary and extraordinary. She uncovers a forgotten past, from Emperor Septimius Severus, to enslaved Africans living in Europe during the Renaissance, and all the way to present-day migrants moving to Europe's cities. By exploring a history that has been long overlooked, she sheds light on questions very much alive today--on racism, identity, citizenship, power and resilience. African Europeans is a landmark account of a crucial thread in Europe's complex history."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 305.89604

Explore our Collection