Abstract
Cátia Antunes, Michiel van Groesen and colleagues at Leiden University will be hosting the editorial office of the International Journal of Maritime History (IJMH) for the next five years. We are very excited at this prospect. Leiden has a long-standing tradition in maritime history across different historical epochs and themes – ancient, medieval, early modern and contemporary history from economic, social, cultural, political and global perspectives. This tradition is reflected in our research leadership in the field and our teaching curricula. We envisage a future where the proud track record of the IJMH will be enhanced by a strong commitment to opening up the concept of maritime history to contributors (or research clusters) who are producing excellent work on the connections between maritime history and environmental, cultural and global history. We are keen to add to our existing body of contributors by bringing in experts from Africa, South Asia, Latin America and the Far East in order to broaden maritime historical approaches globally. And we will proactively build on the journal's well-deserved reputation for effectively mixing the ideas and work of senior and junior scholars across cultural, linguistic and national academic divides.
The bulk of this issue of the IJMH concerns the carriage of cargoes around coasts, over seas and across oceans. Variously discussed in relation to seaborne trade, maritime commerce, commodity flows, supply chains and logistical solutions, sea transport has been vital to the development of local, regional, international and global economies and societies over many centuries, not least through the demand it has exerted on shipping, shipbuilding, ports, navies and other maritime activities. Glimpses of the wide-ranging character and ramifications of this business are provided by the research findings of our contributors. Whereas the coastwise movement of cheese from Cheshire to other parts of the British Isles, much of it procured by victuallers to supply the navy, is considered by Peter Atkins, the short-sea trades of northern Europe feature prominently in Thomas Lennerfors’ analysis of the maritime export systems developed by Swedish paper and pulp companies, and in the six Forum articles that each focus on a different aspect of the carriage of ‘natural ice’ from the ponds and lakes of southern Norway to the confectioners, cafes, ice houses, fish docks and factories of Germany, France and Britain. This latter trade proved important in facilitating the expansion of fresh-food supplies to meet the demands of rapidly growing populations during the ‘pre-refrigeration’ era between 1850 and 1920. The so-called ‘Last Ice Age’ is set in context by Per Norseng, and viewed from theoretical, business, shipping, political and environmental perspectives by, respectively, David Atkinson, Eyvind Bagle, Knut Nygaard, Effie Dorovitsa and Ingo Heidbrink.
Transoceanic voyages are examined in four contributions to this issue. Like the ice trade, whaling transforms a naturally occurring resource into commodities for human consumption. But there the similarity ends, for whaling entails the extraction and butchery of living marine animals – a process that was variously perceived as normal, spectacular and appalling in the diaries of captains’ wives analysed by Emilia Syväsalmi. The forced migration of Africans across the Atlantic to work as slaves in the Americas gives rise to an examination by Joost C. A. Schokkenbroek and Leon van den Broeke of the medical treatment provided aboard Dutch slavers, while Rachael Pasierowska appraises the prosaic, heroic and (from a twenty-first-century perspective) disturbingly trade-specific names given to ships engaged in the transatlantic slave trade in the mid eighteenth century. Crossing the same ocean some 150 years later, the fare-paying passengers in the first-class saloons of the Titanic met with disaster, but treated that imposter just the same as a triumph according to the press reports of Philip Gibbs, who endeavoured to spin a tale of glorious masculine Britishness out of their tragic deaths. As Martin Kerby and Margaret Baguley explain, Gibbs was one of the war correspondents who applied the same approach and language in describing the catastrophes that befell the stoic British officer corps on the Western Front a few years later.
Finally, we salute the outstanding editorial work of David J. Starkey and his Hull colleagues over the last eight years, and acknowledge with gratitude their contribution to the preparation of Volume 34, Number 1 of the IJMH.