Maritime Humanities, 1400-1800 – serie

The Iberian conquest of the Atlantic at the beginning of the sixteenth century had a notable impact on the formation of the new world order in which Christian Europe claimed control over most a considerable part of the planet. This was possible thanks to the confluence of different and inseparable factors: the development of new technical capacities and favorable geographical conditions in which to navigate the great oceans; the Christian mandate to extend the faith; the need for new trade routes; and an imperial organization aspiring to global dominance. The author explores new methods for approaching old historiographical problems of the Renaissance—such as the discovery and conquest of America, the birth of modern science, and the problem of Eurocentrism—now in reference to actors and regions scarcely visible in the complex history of modern Europe: the ships, the wind, the navigators, their instruments, their gods, saints, and demons. The book offers convincing evidence to incorporate the Catholic world of early modernity into the history of modern science. The research is supported by the analysis of not widely studied primary sources such as the sixteenth century Iberian nautical manuals. Through the use of theoretical frameworks such as the Actor Network Theory, the book sheds light on the need to incorporate the role of heterogeneous human actors and artifacts (ships, navigation tools, sails, cannons), natural and geographical agents (ocean currents, winds, the sun, the moon and the stars), and divine entities (gods, daemons and saints) into the political history of early modernity.

Following recent historiographical appeals on the need to study knowledge exchanges between European maritime rivals and their impact on overseas expansionist processes, this book makes this study for the Portuguese overseas empire between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. As the first European maritime power to systematically launch long-distance voyages, Portugal became a model worth emulation when Spain, France, England and the Dutch Republic started their own overseas enterprises. In different chapters that each adopt a case study relation (Portugal-Spain, Portugal-England, Portugal-France and Portugal-Dutch Republic), this book documents how Portuguese maritime knowledge was outsourced by its maritime rivals. The impact that Portuguese nautical knowledge had is evaluated, resorting particularly to a wide range of diplomatic and espionage documents. Finally, the book discusses the alleged Iberian secrecy policies regarding maritime knowledge, explaining why there is no serious reason to consider their success.

Maritime Musicians and Performers on Early Modern English Voyages aims to tell the full story of early English shipboard performers, who have been historically absent from conversations about English navigation, maritime culture, and economic expansion. Often described reductively in voyaging accounts as having one function, in fact maritime performers served many communicative tasks. Their lives were not only complex, but often contradictory. Though not high-ranking officers, neither were they lower-ranking mariners or sailors. They were influenced by a range of competing cultural practices, having spent time playing on both land and sea, and their roles required them to mediate parties using music, dance, and theatre as powerful forms of nonverbal communication. Their performances transcended and breached boundaries of language, rank, race, religion, and nationality, thereby upsetting conventional practices, improving shipboard and international relations, and ensuring the success of their voyages.

Drawing on a broad theoretical range from speculative realism to feminist psychoanalysis and anti-colonialism, this book represents a radical departure from traditional scholarship on maritime archaeology. Shipwreck Hauntography asserts that nautical archaeology bears the legacy of Early Modern theological imperialism, most evident through the savior-scholar model that resurrects—physically or virtually—ships from wrecks. Instead of construing shipwrecks as dead, awaiting resurrection from the seafloor, this book presents them as vibrant if not recalcitrant objects, having shaken off anthropogenesis through varying stages of ruination. Sara Rich illustrates this anarchic condition with 'hauntographs' of five Age of 'Discovery' shipwrecks, each of which elucidates the wonder of failure and finitude, alongside an intimate brush with the eerie, horrific, and uncanny.

Britain's emergence as one of Europe's major maritime powers has all too frequently been subsumed by nationalistic narratives that focus on operations and technology. This volume, by contrast, offers a daring new take on Britain's maritime past. It brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the manifold ways in which the sea shaped British history, demonstrating the number of approaches that now have a stake in defining the discipline of maritime history. The chapters analyse the economic, social, and cultural contexts in which English maritime endeavour existed, as well as discussing representations of the sea. The contributors show how people from across the British Isles increasingly engaged with the maritime world, whether through their own lived experiences or through material culture. The volume also includes essays that investigate encounters between English voyagers and indigenous peoples in Africa, and the intellectual foundations of imperial ambition.

In the early modern period, both legal and illegal maritime predation was a common occurrence, but the expansion of European maritime empires exacerbated existing and created new problems of piracy across the globe. This collection of original case studies addresses these early modern problems in three sections: first, states’ attempts to exercise jurisdiction over seafarers and their actions; second, the multiple predatory marine practices considered ‘piracy’; and finally, the many representations made about piracy by states or the seafarers themselves. Across nine chapters covering regions including southeast Asia, the Atlantic archipelago, the North African states, and the Caribbean Sea, the complexities of defining and criminalizing maritime predation is explored, raising questions surrounding subjecthood, interpolity law, and the impacts of colonization on the legal and social construction of ocean, port, and coastal spaces. Seeking the meanings and motivations behind piracy, this book reveals that while European states attempted to fashion piracy into a global and homogenous phenomenon, it was largely a local and often idiosyncratic issue.

Following recent historiographical appeals on the need to study knowledge exchanges between European maritime rivals and their impact on overseas expansionist processes, this book makes this study for the Portuguese overseas empire between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. As the first European maritime power to systematically launch long-distance voyages, Portugal became a model worth emulation when Spain, France, England and the Dutch Republic started their own overseas enterprises. In different chapters that each adopt a case study relation (Portugal-Spain, Portugal-England, Portugal-France and Portugal-Dutch Republic), this book documents how Portuguese maritime knowledge was outsourced by its maritime rivals. The impact that Portuguese nautical knowledge had is evaluated, resorting particularly to a wide range of diplomatic and espionage documents. Finally, the book discusses the alleged Iberian secrecy policies regarding maritime knowledge, explaining why there is no serious reason to consider their success.

Nearly 400 years have passed since the naval ship Vasa sank in Stockholm in 1628, and more than sixty years since its salvage in 1961. Today, Vasa stands as an iconic symbol – a ship, a shipwreck, a museum, and a unique manifestation of the material culture of Sweden’s early modern navy. But Vasa is not the only Swedish naval vessel of its time. Sweden’s naval records reveal nearly 900 other ships, each with a story very different from Vasa’s. Some were sunk in battle, many served in the navy for decades, others were repurposed as construction elements in harbours, or deliberately sunk at the entrances to Swedish cities and naval bases as obstacles for the enemy. This volume focuses on and examines these forgotten or hidden ships as material culture, broadly defined to encompass all remains of the navy, from shipwrecks on the seabed to museum objects, archives, cannons, and even coffins made from ship timbers. The book highlights how new methods, techniques, and materials can challenge and enrich naval studies. It is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between underwater archaeology, history, ethnology, and cultural heritage studies from both Sweden and Finland.

Central to the European maritime expansion of the 15th century was the mastery of long-distance sea routes and the development of rutters—technical documents recording navigational data and geographic observations. This book highlights the indispensable role of rutters and ships' logbooks in early modern navigation and knowledge production.

Piracy Mythmaking in the Eighteenth Century: Criminality, Human Nature, and Civil Government focuses on the figure of the pirate as a literary phenomenon in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Taking a cultural studies approach, it complements historical studies of piracy by examining the pirate as a powerful and important literary and cultural trope. Piracy Mythmaking offers new insights into piracy literature by analyzing ways in which the pirate served as a contested figure of conversation in relation to imperialist violence, gender, race, and topical philosophical matters related to human nature and the formation and governance of civil societies. Through analysis of a multitude of pirate narratives in diverse genres, Piracy Mythmaking emphasizes and illustrates the wide range of viewpoints found in pirate literature, from militant nationalism to satirical critique of domestic politics and British imperialism, particularly in the Americas.

This collection examines early modern maritime predation through three lenses: state jurisdiction over seafarers, diverse predatory practices labeled as piracy, and representations of piracy by states and seafarers themselves.

This volume boldly reinterprets Britain's maritime history through multidisciplinary scholarship, exploring how the sea fundamentally shaped British development.

Rather than looking at different manifestations of early modern piracy as geographically and temporally isolated cultural phenomena, Practices and Narratives of Early Modern Piracy: Connecting the Seas (1550–1800) pursues a comprehensive approach to this field of study.

This book offers convincing evidence to incorporate the Catholic world of early modernity into the history of modern science.

Aims to tell the full story of early English shipboard performers, who have been historically absent from conversations about English navigation, maritime culture, and economic expansion.

Instead of construing shipwrecks as dead, awaiting resurrection from the seafloor, this book presents them as vibrant if not recalcitrant objects, having shaken off anthropogenesis through varying stages of ruination.