Archive Results For: Pacific
Book Review – ‘Spain, China and Japan in Manila, 1571–1644: Local comparisons and global connections’ by Derek Massarella
This book, a PhD thesis revised for publication, champions the currently fashionable analytical framework of ‘connected histories’. The author analyses ‘the Manila System’, which she describes as ‘characterised by multi-layered connections based on negotiations, a complex market torn between protectionism and free trade, triangular circulations and bi- or multilateral communication involving different parties of the […] Read More
Filed under: Indian Ocean | Pacific
Subjects include: Administration | Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review – ‘Chokepoints: Movement, mobility, regulation and the Suez and Panama Canals in global history’ by Christoph Laucht
After their opening in 1869 and 1914 respectively, the Suez and Panama canals have functioned as ‘essential instruments of world unity’, as the French geographer André Siegfried argued in his comparative study of the two inter-oceanic waterways Suez and Panama (1940). For Siegfried, ‘[t]his unity was the magnificent achievement of the nineteenth century’. Following in particular the […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | Mediterranean | Indian Ocean | Pacific
Subjects include: Logistics | Miscellaneous | Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review – ‘Joe Rochefort’s War: The odyssey of the codebreaker who outwitted Yamamoto at Midway’ by Elliot Carlson
The large number of people who have seen the feature film ‘Battle of Midway’ will no doubt remember the rather eccentric US Naval intelligence chief at Hawaii, Joe Rochefort. Clearly an eccentric, but having the trust of the US naval command, he was able to say where the Japanese attack would fall. This laid the […] Read More
Filed under: WW2 | Twentieth Century | Pacific
Subjects include: Biography | Miscellaneous
Book Review – ‘To Auckland by the Ganges: The journal of a sea voyage to New Zealand in 1863’ by Robert M. Grogans
Migration is an epic theme in the history of the British Empire, and has left in its considerable wake an extensive literature exploring the experiences of migrants to the Australasian colonies. The best books, among them Don Charwood’s wide-angled The Long Farewell (1981), Helen Woolcock’s Rights of Passage (1986), Jan Gothard’s Blue China (2001) and Robin Haines’s Life and Death in the […] Read More
Filed under: Nineteenth Century | Pacific
Subjects include: Biography | Ocean Liners & Passenger Craft
Book Review – ‘Oceania Under Steam: Sea transport and the cultures of colonialism c. 1870–1914’ by Frances Steel
Frances Steel’s study of the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand (USSCo.) at the height of the age of steam is a worthy addition to the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series. It represents an impressive and pioneering attempt to fill several gaps in our understanding of the British Pacific World between the late nineteenth century and […] Read More
Filed under: Nineteenth Century | Twentieth Century | Pacific
Subjects include: Miscellaneous
Book Review – ‘Dutch Sources on South Asia c. 1660–1825, vol. 4, Mission to Madurai: Dutch embassies to the Nayaka court of Madurai in the seventeenth century’ by Markus Vink
The volume reviewed is part of a series on Dutch sources on South Asia which originally began in 2001 as a bibliography and guide to all Dutchlanguage materials on the subject that are available in the National Archives at The Hague. The series editors and contributors hold the noble aim of making it possible for […] Read More
Filed under: Early Modern | Eighteenth Century | Nineteenth Century | Indian Ocean | Pacific | East India Company
Subjects include: Miscellaneous | Strategy & Diplomacy
Book Review – ‘Captain Cook: Master of the seas’ by Frank McLynn
It may reasonably be thought that J. C. Beaglehole’s publications have long since had the final word on Captain Cook and his pioneering maritime exploits in the second half of the eighteenth century for all that the publishing industry’s appetite for retelling the heroic tales in more popular forms retains its position in a crowded […] Read More
Filed under: James Cook | Eighteenth Century | Pacific
Subjects include: Biography
A One-way Street? Admiral James Somerville and Anglo-American Naval Relations, 1942
Admiral Sir James Somerville’s command of the Eastern Fleet in 1942 caused serious tensions in Anglo-American naval relations despite the admiral’s personal efforts to cultivate closer ties with the US Navy. Specifically, US Navy admirals such as Ernest King felt that while the US Navy had helped the Royal Navy in its hour of need, […] Read More
Filed under: WW2 | Indian Ocean | Pacific
Subjects include: Strategy & Diplomacy
Notes: Corrigenda
I have to correct, with apology, three accidental slips in the notes on T. D. Ledward’s Bounty letters that appeared in the November 2018 issue1. The first (n22) is that Albemarle Bertie’s final rank was full admiral and baronet, not knighted vice-admiral. The second (n54) is that neither Bligh’s bible nor prayerbook are in the National Maritime […] Read More
Filed under: American Revolution | Eighteenth Century | French Revolution | Pacific
Subjects include: Science & Exploration
Notes: Captain Bligh’s Glasses
In 1939, on the death of Lieutenant Commander George Frederick Glennie, the National Maritime Museum (NMM) received from his widow a fine, oval, silver-mounted Georgian reading glass, which folds into protective tortoiseshell covers (REL0026, figure 1). It measures 76 x 52 x 20 millimetres and the lens hinges out sideways from one of the mounts on […] Read More
Filed under: Atlantic | American Revolution | Eighteenth Century | French Revolution | Pacific
Subjects include: Science & Exploration