Bernhard Klein is Professor Emeritus at the University of Kent. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Fictions of the Sea: Critical Perspectives on the Ocean in British Literature and Culture.Gesa Mackenthun is Professor in American Studies at Rostock University in Germany. In addition to numerous essays on the topics of nineteenth-century American literature, colonialism, and postcolonial studies, she is the author of Metaphors of Dispossession: American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire, 1492-1637.

"This terrific collection makes major contributions to several dynamic fields of historical inquiry, as it decisively demonstrates the centrality-not marginality-of an oceanic perspective to our understanding of the past. The volume is exciting both for what it achieves and the possibilities it suggests." -- Lisa Norling, University of Minnesota"Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean builds upon recent theoretical developments in Maritime Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Postcolonial Studies, and Cultural Studies to place our understanding of the sea in a deeply historicized, complex, nuanced, and dynamic context. It joins important works like Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic and Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh's The Many-Headed Hydra in extending and radically reshaping our understanding of a significant arena of contemporary scholarship." -- Jim Miller, George Washington University

• Introduction, 1. Deep Times, Deep Spaces: Civilizing the Sea, 2. Costume Changes: Passing at Sea and on the Beach, 3. The Global Economy and the Sulu Zone: Connections, Commodities and Culture, 4. Ahab's Boat: Non-European Seamen in Western Ships of Exploration and Commerce, 5. Staying Afloat: Literary Shipboard Encounters from Columbus to Equiano, 6. The Red Atlantic; or, 'a terrible blast swept over the heaving sea', 7. Chartless Voyages and Protean Geographies: Nineteenth-Century American Fictions of the Black Atlantic, 8. 'At Sea-Coloured Passenger', 9. Slavery, Insurance and Sacrifice in the Black Atlantic, 10. Cast Away: The Uttermost Parts of the Earth