Abstract
Particular themes have been explored by multiple authors in various issues of the International Journal of Maritime History since its inception in 1989. Such explorations have generally appeared in ‘Forums’, with an explanatory, contextual introduction preceding between three and six research articles that offer different or contrasting perspectives on the same broad theme. The first Forum published in the IJMH addressed the subject of eighteenth-century privateering (volume 1, no. 2), while the last formed part of the May 2019 issue and focused on the ‘Crew Lists’ housed in the Maritime History Archive at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Between those two poles, there have been Forums on topics as diverse as piracy, islands and sea shanties, while the IJMH has also drawn on the collaborative efforts of scholars to publish multi-author ‘Roundtable’ reviews of particularly important studies in the field of maritime history.
In devoting its entire article space to different aspects of colonial shipbuilding in the early modern era, this first-ever ‘special issue’ of the IJMH presents what might be termed a Forum on a grand scale – a Forum that extends to nine articles, an Introduction and Afterthoughts. Yet this is far from a narrowly focused set of papers. The repair, refit and construction of vessels was a widespread and significant activity in the empires of the European maritime powers from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. It was a matter of great concern to policy-makers in the metropoles and localities of the Dutch, English, French and Iberian empires, and it consumed the human and material resources required to operate shipyards large and small across the globe. As such, the repair and building of ships played a vital role in supplying the innumerable and multifarious vessels that engaged in seaborne trade across the oceans, within colonial spheres, and between coastal communities.
The editors of IJMH are grateful to Cátia Antunes for bringing the papers together to make this a special issue, and for instilling coherence into the collection through her astute and insightful introduction.