Abstract
It is well known that over the centuries maritime activities involving the transport overseas of cargoes have generated a greater volume of documentary information than most other forms of human endeavour. This is largely due to the international character of such business, which has obliged sovereign authorities to regulate seaborne trade and shipping more rigorously than domestic transport and industry – partly to enhance the efficiency and profitability of sea-based commerce, partly to manage the risk of conflict with foreign commercial partners and rivals, and partly to tax effectively goods and vessels entering from, or clearing to, foreign ports.
Evidence of the abundance of evidence that exists to inform (or deter, as cynics have argued) maritime historical scholarship is presented in this issue of the International Journal of Maritime History. Much of this material relates to violence at sea. Whether state sanctioned prize-taking or criminal appropriation, such aggressive activity has invariably created legal documents that have subsequently evolved into archival material. While Nguyen Thi My Hanh has extracted details from Vietnamese government records to examine anti-piratical activity in the South China Sea during the early nineteenth century, Sarah Craze has used information relating to Prize Court hearings since the seventeenth century, especially those convened during the First and Second World Wars and the Egyptian-Israeli conflict, to interpret changing approaches to armistice in the ending of war during the twentieth century.
It is also true, of course, that large swathes of the maritime past are not blessed with ‘data-rich’ primary sources. This is apparent in contributions to this volume that are identified by their authors as being ‘exploratory’ in one way or another. Matthew Salonia, for instance, deals with an account of an early voyage to the East Indies. The perceptions and reflections of Salonia’s subject, Giovanni da Empoli, are explored through his correspondence with his father, which sheds light on the means and significance of the diffusion of knowledge about ‘the Indies’ through the Portuguese and Italian merchants and agents engaged in the venture. Empoli’s commercial inclinations and religious beliefs sit uncomfortably together, a theme that Leon van den Broeke and Joost Schokkenbroek develop in their analysis of the ‘Dutch Deputies’ who sailed with a religious mission in the context of their nation’s aggressive, acquisitive commercial and colonial policy. Two contributions on whaling further explore the mysteries of a business asset – entrepreneurial ability – that is notoriously difficult to define, measure and interpret. Alexei Kraikovski’s appraisal of the efforts of Russian merchants to enter the Arctic blubber trade in Archangelsk during the eighteenth century offers a positive revision of the established historiography, which contends that this attempt was an abject failure. Bjorn Basberg adopts a comparative approach to analyze the entrepreneurial qualities of Chr. Christensen and C.A. Larsen, particularly the extent to which they deployed their Northern whaling techniques and business structures in the very different environment of the Antarctic whale fishery. Meanwhile, in Glasgow, Henry Burrell’s various efforts to work with his brothers in the family shipping firm, enter the sugar trade and develop the ‘straightback steamer’ – an innovative ship design – are explored by Martin Bellamy. Here, the exploration takes us into comparatively uncharted waters, wherein the interplay of sibling rivalry, mental illness and conservative institutions appear to have seriously inhibited the development of Henry’s career in business and ship design.