The Maritime World of Early Modern Britain

Britain's emergence as one of Europe's major maritime powers has all too frequently been subsumed by nationalistic narratives that focus on operations and technology. This volume, by contrast, offers a daring new take on Britain's maritime past. It brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the manifold ways in which the sea shaped British history, demonstrating the number of approaches that now have a stake in defining the discipline of maritime history. The chapters analyse the economic, social, and cultural contexts in which English maritime endeavour existed, as well as discussing representations of the sea. The contributors show how people from across the British Isles increasingly engaged with the maritime world, whether through their own lived experiences or through material culture. The volume also includes essays that investigate encounters between English voyagers and indigenous peoples in Africa, and the intellectual foundations of imperial ambition.

Blakemore Richard :

Richard J. Blakemore is Lecturer in the History of the Atlantic World at the University of Reading. With Elaine Murphy, he is the author of The British Civil Wars at Sea, 1638-1653 (Boydell & Brewer, 2018), and he is currently finishing a monograph entitled Empires below Deck: Two Seafarers and their Worlds in the Seventeenth Century.Davey James :

James Davey is Lecturer in Naval and Maritime History at the University of Exeter. His recent publications include: Tudor and Stuart Seafarers: The Emergence of a Maritime Nation (Bloomsbury, 2018) and A New Naval History (Manchester University Press, 2019) edited with Quintin Colville. His current research project explores the Royal Navy and the ‘Age of Revolution’.

''The collection makes an engaging, well-informed, and well-researched contribution that whets the appetite for more."
- Daniel Carey, Journal of Early Modern History, issue 3, 2024

"The Maritime World of Early Modern Britain demonstrates how different the questions and methodological approaches of early modern maritime history can be."
- Patrick Schmidt, Historisches Institut, Universität Rostock

"[The Maritime World of Early Modern Britain] is the inaugural volume of the new Maritime Humanities 1400-1800: Cultures of the Sea series and it is an excellent first statement in that series. The very high quality of the papers is exceeded only by their diversity of topics and approaches […] This book is a good statement on the future of maritime history in the early modern period. It should be widely made available and all students of maritime history be encouraged to read it and be inspired."
- Dr. Sam McLean, Global Maritime History

"With contributions that consider familiar sources from new angles and include unconventional actors in the narrative, The Maritime World of Early Modern Britain 'reveals a picture of connection, exchange, and interdependence' (35), identifying stimulating themes and methods for maritime historians of Britain and beyond."
- Margaret E. Schotte, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 61, Iss. 3