The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600–1800

The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600–1800

Author: Phillip Reid

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-04-14

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9004426345

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In The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600—1800, Phillip Reid shows how ordinary commercial vessels reflected the risk management strategies of those who designed, built, bought, and sailed them.


The Merchant Navy

The Merchant Navy

Author: Richard Woodman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2013-04-10

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 0747813485

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At one time British ships carried half of the world's trade, transporting every conceivable type of freight from and to all four corners of the globe – and in times of crisis the merchant fleet has also offered military assistance. In fact, the merchant convoys and armed cruisers that defied the German blockades to supply Britain in the First World War were so pivotal that they were recognised as a second 'navy' – the Merchant Navy. This fleet again saw service in the Second World War, continuing to keep Britain provisioned even in its darkest hour. Richard Woodman here relates the Merchant Navy's colourful history and brings to life the day-to-day experiences of the seamen.


Merchants of Medicines

Merchants of Medicines

Author: Zachary Dorner

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-07-15

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 022670680X

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The period from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century—the so-called long eighteenth century of English history—was a time of profound global change, marked by the expansion of intercontinental empires, long-distance trade, and human enslavement. It was also the moment when medicines, previously produced locally and in small batches, became global products. As greater numbers of British subjects struggled to survive overseas, more medicines than ever were manufactured and exported to help them. Most historical accounts, however, obscure the medicine trade’s dependence on slave labor, plantation agriculture, and colonial warfare. In Merchants of Medicines, Zachary Dorner follows the earliest industrial pharmaceuticals from their manufacture in the United Kingdom, across trade routes, and to the edges of empire, telling a story of what medicines were, what they did, and what they meant. He brings to life business, medical, and government records to evoke a vibrant early modern world of London laboratories, Caribbean estates, South Asian factories, New England timber camps, and ships at sea. In these settings, medicines were produced, distributed, and consumed in new ways to help confront challenges of distance, labor, and authority in colonial territories. Merchants of Medicines offers a new history of economic and medical development across early America, Britain, and South Asia, revealing the unsettlingly close ties among medicine, finance, warfare, and slavery that changed people’s expectations of their health and their bodies.


Merchant Enterprise in Britain

Merchant Enterprise in Britain

Author: Stanley Chapman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9780521893626

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Studies of the British Industrial Revolution and of the Victorian period of economic and social development have until very recently concentrated on British industries and industrial regions, while commerce and finance, and particularly that of London, have been substantially neglected. This has distorted our view of the process of change, since financial services and much trade continued to be centred on the metropolis, and the south-east region never lost its position at the top of the national league of wealth.


Merchants

Merchants

Author: Edmond Smith

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 0300264496

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A new history of English trade and empire—revealing how a tightly woven community of merchants was the true origin of globalized Britain In the century following Elizabeth I’s rise to the throne, English trade blossomed as thousands of merchants launched ventures across the globe. Through the efforts of these "mere merchants," England developed from a peripheral power on the fringes of Europe to a country at the center of a global commercial web, with interests stretching from Virginia to Ahmadabad and Arkhangelsk to Benin. Edmond Smith traces the lives of English merchants from their earliest steps into business to the heights of their successes. Smith unpicks their behavior, relationships, and experiences, from exporting wool to Russia, importing exotic luxuries from India, and building plantations in America. He reveals that the origins of "global" Britain are found in the stories of these men whose livelihoods depended on their skills, entrepreneurship, and ability to work together to compete in cutthroat international markets. As a community, their efforts would come to revolutionize Britain’s relationship with the world.


Planters, Merchants, and Slaves

Planters, Merchants, and Slaves

Author: Trevor Burnard

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-02-22

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 022663924X

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"As with any enterprise involving violence and lots of money, running a plantation in early British America was a serious and brutal enterprise. Beyond resources and weapons, a plantation required a significant force of cruel and rapacious men men who, as Trevor Burnard sees it, lacked any better options for making money. In the contentious Planters, Merchants, and Slaves, Burnard argues that white men did not choose to develop and maintain the plantation system out of virulent racism or sadism, but rather out of economic logic because to speak bluntly it worked. These economically successful and ethically monstrous plantations required racial divisions to exist, but their successes were always measured in gold, rather than skin or blood. Burnard argues that the best example of plantations functioning as intended is not those found in the fractious and poor North American colonies, but those in their booming and integrated commercial hub, Jamaica. Sure to be controversial, this book is a major intervention in the scholarship on slavery, economic development, and political power in early British America, mounting a powerful and original argument that boldly challenges historical orthodoxy."--


SURVIVORS: BRITISH MERCHANT SEAMEN

SURVIVORS: BRITISH MERCHANT SEAMEN

Author: G. H. Bennett

Publisher: Burns & Oates

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13:

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Winning the Battle of the Atlantic was critical to Britain's survival in the Second World War. The British Merchant Navy suffered enormous losses of both ships and men, particularly in the early years of the war. Sailing through U-boat wolf-packs across the Atlantic, or on the perilous routes to Malta and Murmansk, took a special kind of courage. Ships often sank within minutes of being torpedoed. Survivors is the history of this epic struggle. It is a graphic account of how the ships were attacked and sunk, how crews reacted, how they attempted to launch their lifeboats and how they ended up swimming or clinging to debris, or making long voyages in lifeboats or on rafts. Death might come at any stage, yet the will to live and the resourcefulness and skill of the seamen enabled a surprising number to survive. "There was a terrific smash and everything was pandemonium on deck. The wheel house collapsed on top of me and I was trapped by the concrete slabs which had fallen on me and pinned me to the deck. I think that the ship sank in about thirty seconds after breaking in two ... Although I was trapped, I could see everything over my head. The stern burst into flames and I saw flames forward. I could see the water coming up and coming over my head. The ship hit the bottom and turned over, the debris was thrown off me and I was released and I came to the surface."--Sinking of SS Abukir, 28 May 1940


The Book of Privileges of the Merchant Adventurers of England, 1296-1483

The Book of Privileges of the Merchant Adventurers of England, 1296-1483

Author: Anne F. Sutton

Publisher:

Published: 2009-04-30

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13:

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This edition of the trading privileges granted to the merchants of England by the princes of the Low Countries reveals the increasing value of cross-Channel trade throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. French, Latin, and Dutch texts are accompanied by the 15th century English translations, forming a unique historical and linguistic tool.


A Country Merchant, 1495-1520

A Country Merchant, 1495-1520

Author: Christopher Dyer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-05-17

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0191624454

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Around 1500 England's society and economy had reached a turning point. After a long period of slow change and even stagnation, an age of innovation and initiative was in motion, with enclosure, voyages of discovery, and new technologies. It was an age of fierce controversy, in which the government was fearful of beggars and wary of rebellions. The 'commonwealth' writers such as Thomas More were sharply critical of the greed of profit hungry landlords who dispossessed the poor. This book is about a wool merchant and large scale farmer who epitomises in many ways the spirit of the period. John Heritage kept an account book, from which we can reconstruct a whole society in the vicinity of Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire. He took part in the removal of a village which stood in the way of agricultural 'improvement', ran a large scale sheep farm, and as a 'woolman' spent much time travelling around the countryside meeting with gentry, farmers, and peasants in order to buy their wool. He sold the fleeces he produced and those he gathered to London merchants who exported through Calais to the textile towns of Flanders. The wool growers named in the book can be studied in their native villages, and their lives can be reconstructed in the round, interacting in their communities, adapting their farming to new circumstances, and arranging the building of their local churches. A Country Merchant has some of the characteristics of a biography, is part family history, and part local history, with some landscape history. Dyer explores themes in economic and social history without neglecting the religious and cultural background. His central concerns are to demonstrate the importance of commerce in the period, and to show the contribution of peasants to a changing economy.