Abstract
Readers of a certain age might recall with some fondness Glen Campbell’s melodic rendition of ‘Galveston’, which inferred that in 1969 the eponymous city was an idyllic place where love might blossom against the backdrop of ‘seawinds blowing’ and ‘seawaves crashing’. Those who might consider venturing there to seek such romantic pleasures might think again, however, on reading in this issue of IJMH the article by Rebecca Goza and her colleagues concerning the devastation experienced by this erstwhile prosperous Texan port when it was hit by a major hurricane in early September 1900. With between 6000 and 12,000 people losing their lives, the death toll was much greater than that inflicted on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 or on the mid-Atlantic states by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Highlighting the destructive power of the natural forces that shape marine and coastal environments, the Galveston hurricane also demonstrates how human societies over the long term have generally struggled to anticipate the occurrence of extreme meteorological and oceanographic episodes, and to adapt their behaviours, buildings and sea defences to mitigate the impact of such events. Learning by suffering, reacting rather than pre-empting, investing without risk assessment – these are all too familiar features of this facet of the human–nature interaction.
Such societal vulnerability to the elements contrasts vividly with the exploitation by people of living marine resources that has been taking place across ocean space since time immemorial. The way people adapt to new and dynamically changing contexts is inherent to this predatory dimension of the relationship between human societies and marine environments. It is considered from two perspectives in this issue. First, there is an appraisal by Nina Vieira and Cristina Brito of the perceptions and representations of the manatees encountered by European explorers and settlers in the Caribbean and Amazon basin during the Age of Discovery. Admiration and wonder at the size and extraordinary physical features of these ‘new’ creatures soon gave way to hunting and resource extraction that in many respects continued the long-established practices of indigenous people, but on a more intensive and destructive scale. Stock depletion ensued, bequeathing environmental, conservation and ethical issues for later generations to resolve. Depletion breeds scarcity, of course, an outcome that lies at the core of this issue’s second perspective on the impact of human predation on the marine environment. Here, in four articles presented as a Forum, the focus is on the political economy of the fisheries since the mid-eighteenth century. Commencing with Adam Smith’s critique of the financial incentives offered by the British government to herring fishers in the 1770s and 1780s, the Forum then examines the political tensions between American and Norwegian purveyors of canned fish in the early twentieth century, before considering the protracted negotiations relating to the ‘ageing law of the sea’ conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, which culminated in the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea. In essence, over two centuries, policy-makers adapted their strategies to meet changing commercial, technological and environmental pressures, with free market economics giving way to political interventionism in an uneven, ad hoc and generally reactive manner.
Adaptation pervades the other contributions to this issue. In the commercial sector, Daniel Castillo and Jesus Valdaliso apply path dependency theory to examine the development of the Spanish port system over the last 130 or so years, chiefly through an assessment of the absolute and relative performance of the country’s leading ports over the long term. The use of the sea for military purposes is discussed in three very different settings – the Roman Empire, the Spanish Caribbean and the First World War – by Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen, Roxana Nakashima and Jarosław Suchoples. Respectively, these authors analyse the recruitment of Thracian labour to work in the fleets of Rome, the deployment of Mediterranean galleys to defend Spain’s New World colonies, and the creation of the Emden legend for Germany’s propagandist purposes. Effective or otherwise, these responses, like the others discussed in the pages that follow, not only demonstrate the complexity and diversity of the challenges arising from societal interaction with the sea, but also the physical dangers inherent to that relationship. No wonder Glen Campbell moved inland to become the Wichita Lineman.