Abstract
Readers who keep a weather eye on the contents page of the International Journal of Maritime History will have spotted the unannounced appearance of ‘Discussion Papers’ in the May 2018 issue of our journal. That issue contained two discussion papers: ‘Maritime culture: A sociological perspective’ by Lydia Carol-Dekker; and ‘Re-imaging shipboard societies: A spatial approach to analysing ships …’ by Michael J. Moloney. In the pages that follow, there is another Discussion Paper in the form of Michael Bender’s interpretation of the meanings of a twelve-volume series of literary works – Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons – that are generally perceived as adventure stories with a significant nautical flavour written to appeal to school-age children. Although these three papers are analytical works based on academic research, they have been afforded the distinctive descriptor of ‘Discussion Paper’ because they each approach the maritime past from the perspective of a discipline other than History. Accordingly, Carol-Dekker, as the title of her paper clearly indicates, takes a sociological stance in her exploration and explanation of the multifaceted cultures that exist and interact within the merchant shipping industry, both now and in the past. Michael Moloney is a maritime archaeologist whose research into shipwrecks focuses on the spatial organization of British eighteenth-century naval ships to provide insight into the social dynamics, or cultures, of shipboard society. Michael Bender, too, goes beyond the conventional bounds of historical enquiry by projecting through the lens of popular children’s books of the 1920s and 1930s a picture of how the general public might resort to rural guerrilla warfare to confront an invading force in a total war. Written by Arthur Ransome, a foreign correspondent for one of Britain’s leading national newspapers, these seemingly ‘harmless’ works are imbued with the ideals of self-sufficiency, good form, pluck and middle-class Englishness redolent of the writings of Robert Baden-Powell, J. M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling and Enid Blyton.
The inclusion of such disciplinary perspectives – including, dare I say it, two versions of that curious device known as the ‘Harvard reference’ – is not a new development, for a generous leeway regarding the course that contributors have taken in approaching ‘maritime history’ has been allowed by editors of the IJMH over the last 30 years. Rather, identifying these approaches as ‘Discussion Papers’ is designed to highlight the inherently interdisciplinary character of History, the focus of which – the human experience over time and space – is primarily humanist, but is shaped by processes studied by biological, behavioural, social, environmental and other species of ‘scientist’. And, of course, the editorial team has not turned a blind eye to the research findings of historians, which remain at the heart of our journal, as the articles and research notes that comprise the bulk of this issue amply demonstrate. These can be usefully be considered in three groups. First, seaborne trade and its necessary accomplice, ports, form the subject of four contributions. Here, coverage ranges across eras, oceans and commodities to embrace Annitta Kunnappilly’s exploration of the evidence that has survived regarding the cargoes transhipped at the ancient port of Muziris on the shore of Kerala in what is now India, Kristiaan Dillen’s analysis of the paradoxical and complex relations between port-towns in medieval Flanders, the investigation undertaken by Cátia Antunes and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva into the means by which the Dutch slave trade drove the development of port hubs in three continents in the early modern Atlantic economy, and Maria Kulikova’s discussion of the politics of oil transport in nineteenth-century Russia.
A further three papers are concerned with the perils of working at sea. Some of the physical dangers of seafaring were mitigated by the great improvement in communications delivered by the development of radio equipment, as charted by Stojce Ilcev. Further dangers lay in statutory provisions – or, more accurately, the British state’s interpretations of its own more imprecise provisions – as Mirelle Luecke and Jennifer S. Kain reveal in their respective accounts of the difficulties experienced by ‘American tars’ of Early Republican New York City when they encountered Britain’s Impress Service, and by the unfortunate Harold Shaw, whose working life started in Manchester and descended even further to the stokeholds of transoceanic steamers and then a dependence on the rudimentary, harsh and unwieldy bureaucratic welfare system of colonial New Zealand in the early twentieth century. Governments also feature prominently in the third group of papers, two of which deal with the practicalities of naval operations in the mid-twentieth century – Peter John Hooker’s examination of the role of submarines in Japan’s military strategy from 1917 to 1941, and Juan J. Díaz-Benitez’s analysis of the supply of materials through Spain to the Kriegsmarine during the Second World War – while Jesús M. Valdaliso identifies clearly the significant role of state subsidies in propelling Spanish shipbuilders up to fourth in the global ship construction league table during the 1970s.
Readers who delve beyond the contents page into the inside cover of the IJMH will observe that the composition of our Editorial Board has altered due to the retirement of a number of long-serving colleagues and the recruitment of replacements from the swelling ranks of those concerned with the maritime dimension of the historical process, however they choose to approach that rich and highly significant subject. While we thank retirees (John Barzman, Maria Fusaro, Ingo Heidbrink, Chris Reid and Carl Swanson) for their contributions to the development of the journal, we welcome aboard, and look forward to working with, the new watch (Jeremiah Dancy, Apostolos Delis, Andrew Lambert, Ray Stokes and Jesús M. Valdaliso).