Global Ocean of Knowledge, 1660-1860
Global Ocean of Knowledge, 1660-1860

Author: Karel Davids

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-05-14

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1350142158

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This book looks to fill the 'blue hole' in Global History by studying the role of the oceans themselves in the creation, development, reproduction and adaptation of knowledge across the Atlantic world. It shows how globalisation and the growth of maritime knowledge served to reinforce one another, and demonstrates how and why maritime history should be put firmly at the heart of global history. Exploring the dynamics of globalisation, knowledge-making and European expansion, Global Ocean of Knowledge takes a transnational approach and transgresses the traditional border between the early modern and modern periods. It focuses on three main periodisations, which correspond with major transformations in the globalisation of the Atlantic World, and analyses how and to what extent globalisation forces from above and from below influenced the development and exchange of knowledge. Davids distinguishes three forms of globalising forces 'from above'; imperial, commercial and religious, alongside self-organisation, the globalising force 'from below'. Exploring how globalisation advanced and its relationship with knowledge changed over time, this book bridges global, maritime, intellectual and economic history to reflect on the role of the oceans in making the world a more connected place.

Maritime Capital
Maritime Capital

Author: Eric W. Sager

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 1990-11-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0773562516

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Sager and Panting describe in detail the growth of the shipping industry and the economic context in which the shipping merchants operated. Shipowning and shipbuilding were a central part of the mercantile economy of the Atlantic colonies of British North America. But, following a slow and incomplete transition in the region from commercial to industrial capitalism, the shipping industry collapsed: by 1900 the local fleets were a third of their size a mere two decades earlier. The shipowners of the region, Sager and Panting argue, were merchants first: they shifted their investments to landward enterprises because they believed Confederation offered new and better possibilities for commercial exchange. Canadian capital and the Canadian state acted together to build transcontinental railways but gave little support for a Canadian merchant navy. Maritimers became Canadians and turned away from their seaward past, thereby relinquishing control and management of the industrial economy that followed the age of wood, wind, and sail. Drawing upon both the data base of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project and important secondary sources, Sager and Panting show that the merchant class, in failing to maintain a merchant marine built and owned in their region, contributed in no small way to the Maritimes' present state of underdevelopment.