The Victorian Empire And Britain S Maritime World 1837 1901

A wide-ranging new survey of the role of the sea in Britain's global presence in the 19th century. Mostly at peace, but sometimes at war, Britain grew as a maritime empire in the Victorian era. This collection looks at British sea-power as a strategic, moral and cultural force.

A wide-ranging new survey of the role of the sea in Britain's global presence in the 19th century. Mostly at peace, but sometimes at war, Britain grew as a maritime empire in the Victorian era. This collection looks at British sea-power as a strategic, moral and cultural force.

Britain's overseas Empire pre-eminently involved the sea. In a two-way process, ships carried travellers and explorers, trade goods, migrants to new lands, soldiers to fight wars and garrison colonies, and also ideas and plants that would find fertile minds and soils in other lands. These essays, deriving from a National Maritime Museum (London) conference, provide a wide-ranging and comprehensive picture of the activities of maritime empire. They discuss a variety of issues: maritime trades, among them the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Honduran mahogany for shipping to Britain, the movement of horses across the vast reaches of Asia and the Indian Ocean; the impact of new technologies as Empire expanded in the nineteenth century; the sailors who manned the ships, the settlers who moved overseas, and the major ports of the Imperial world; plus the role of the navy in hydrographic survey. Published in association with the National Maritime Museum. DAVID KILLINGRAY is Emeritus Professor of Modern History, Goldsmiths College London; MARGARETTE LINCOLN and NIGEL RIGBY are in the research department of the National Maritime Museum.

Between the end of the Seven Years war in 1763, and the abolition of slavery within its Empire in 1833, Britain's maritime engagement with the wider world was transformed. The essays in this book explore different aspects of that transformation, and in so doing assess the significance and complexities of Britain's maritime world in this key period, which was characterized by the contradictory and competing forces of revolution and reaction, 'liberty' and imperialism, war and peace, enlightenment and enslavement. They were originally delivered as lectures in a series jointly sponsored by the Institute of Historical Research and by the Centre for Imperial and Maritime Studies at the National Maritime Museum.

In what has established itself as a classic study of Britain from the late eighteenth century to the mid-Victorian period, Eric J. Evans explains how the country became the world’s first industrial nation. His book also explains how, and why, Britain was able to lay the foundations for what became the world’s largest empire. Over the period covered by this book, Britain became the world’s most powerful nation and arguably its first super-power. Economic opportunity and imperial expansion were accompanied by numerous domestic political crises which stopped short of revolution. The book ranges widely: across key political, diplomatic, social, cultural, economic and religious themes in order to convey the drama involved in a century of hectic, but generally constructive, change. Britain was still ruled by wealthy landowners in 1870 as it had been in 1783, yet the society over which they presided was unrecognisable. Victorian Britain had become an urban, industrial and commercial powerhouse. This fourth edition, coming more than fifteen years after its predecessor, has been completely revised and updated in the light of recent research. It engages more extensively with key themes, including gender, national identities and Britain’s relationship with its burgeoning empire. Containing illustrations, maps, an expanded ‘Framework of Events’ and an extensive ‘Compendium of Information’ on topics such as population change, cabinet membership and significant legislation, the book is essential reading for all students of this crucial period in British history.

A comprehensive account of how British race patriotism shaped the defense partnership between Britain and the dominions before the Great War.

This book is an innovative, interdisciplinary study of the nature of design as a form of communication within and across Britain and its empire in the long nineteenth century. In this period, Britain had developed from the world’s first industrial nation into the ‘Workshop of the World’ but how were technological innovations translated and communicated across the imperial territories? How were designs turned into reality? This book explores these themes, incorporating archival case study technologies such as trains, sugar manufacture and agricultural technologies. Using a four-part framework we firstly examine the identification of innovation opportunities and how these translated to engineering specifications. The realization of conceptual designs through collaboration and their subsequent manufacture and distribution as finished products are then reviewed. Using the authors’ expertise in the fields of historical and design engineering, this study contributes real-world case studies to design theory.

This book foregrounds the role of the Royal Navy in creating the British Atlantic in the eighteenth century. It outlines the closely entwined connections between the nurturing of naval supremacy, the politics of commercial protection, and the development of national and imperial identities – crucial factors in the consolidation and transformation of the British Atlantic empire. The collection brings together scholars working on aspects of the Royal Navy and the British Atlantic in order to gain a better understanding of the ways that the Navy protected, facilitated, and shaped the British-Atlantic empire in the era of war, revolution, counter-revolution, and upheaval between the beginning of the Seven Years War and the end of the conflict with Napoleonic France. Contributions question the limits – conceptually and geographically – of that Atlantic world, suggesting that, by considering the Royal Navy and the British Atlantic together, we can gain greater insights into Britain’s maritime history.