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This book compiles seven essays concerning changes to merchant shipping over the hundred and fifty years between 1850 and 2000, and spanning a range of countries, with particular focus on Norway, Greece, Japan, and England. The essays are linked by the theme of change: from traditional to modern shipping; in fluctuating cargo demands; from sail to steam; wood to iron; in improvements in communication technologies; in political natures and affiliations; in seafaring skillsets; in the advent of containerisation and advent of globalisation. The overall aim is to construct a solid international context for the merchant shipping industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - primarily to aid a major Norwegian deep-sea merchant marine project. The book contains an introduction that sets out these aims, and seven essays by maritime historians which form part of the international contextual whole, though all can be approached individually.

This study aims to provide new insights into the connections between maritime history and global history. It demonstrates the significance of maritime activity as a conduit of global exchange by examining local, national, and international interdependencies and trade networks, and a broad range of time periods, geographical areas, and various sub-divisions of maritime historical research. It is composed of ten essays, with an introductory chapter and concluding chapter. The first five essays discuss the effects globalisation on shipping in the early modern period; the following three discuss maritime transportation and the economics of industrialisation from the nineteenth century to the present day; the next discusses the impact of global entrepreneurialism on maritime history; the penultimate discusses the connections and variables between maritime and global history; and the concluding chapter examines the theoretical assumptions surrounding the two disciplines, using the globalisation of Early Modern Spain as a case study to do so. The study demonstrates that the core strength of maritime history is its essential place in global history, and that the process of globalisation began at sea.

This book analyses the causes and effects of the shipping market crisis in the 1970s and 1980s - the most severe of the twentieth century. It approaches the subject from three viewpoints. The first is the tanker sector, where the crisis began, spread, and caused the most damage. The second is from a national perspective - focusing on the impact on Norwegian shipping and shipowners. The third, narrowed further in scope, analyses the crisis from the business perspective of four individual tanker owners - taking into account their business strategies and eventual fates. The aim of the journal is to add to the knowledge of recent maritime history by examining the transformation of the industry during a period of rapid change. One distinct conclusion is that shipowners, to their detriment, assumed that the demand for tankers would continue to increase as it had consistently done so throughout the century thus far. The overall conclusion is that shipping is a cyclical industry, and that the oversupply of ships produced during the 1970s took its toll toward the end of the century. By 2004 and 2005, however, the industry began to bounce back, offering hope for the future. The book consists of an introductory chapter, seven chapters of analysis, a concluding chapter, select bibliography, and three appendices tabling Norwegian tanker statistics.

This book presents an in-depth study of the impact of the steamship on Britain during its first forty years, roughly between 1810 and 1850. It relates the early steamship to several industrial themes including diffusion; construction; modernisation; the role of government - particularly the difficult attempt to align laissez-faire politics with the greater need for public safety measures due to technological advance; business and finance; plus public reaction and tourism. The aim is to establish the significance of the steamship as a conduit of modernisation and societal change. It consists of a foreword, introduction, and fourteen chapters devoted to specific themes, structured to ensure each chapters build on the preceding chapter’s progress. Collectively, they demonstrate that the development of both experience and enterprise with steam power both gained and refined during this period made the mid-century expansion of steamship technology across Britain possible. Ultimately, it establishes that steamship services began to adapt to oceanic routes, steam began to integrate into the world economy, and the age of sail began to draw to a close.

This book is a reprint of Jaap R. Bruijn’s 1993 book, The Dutch Navy, which offers an English-language overview of the history of the Dutch Navy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is divided into three chronological periods: the ‘old’, ‘new’, and ‘second-rate’ navy. Rather than presenting a history of naval conflict, this volume approaches Dutch naval history from the following four angles: operations, administration, officer duties, and sailor duties. It consists of a series foreword, a new introduction detailing recent developments in naval historiography, the original introduction providing a history of Dutch maritime history from the middle ages to the beginning of the seventeenth century, a conclusion, and a bibliography and index. It explores the astounding amount of naval power belonging to such a sparsely populated nation, plus the rapid rates of success and decline. It confirms that the Dutch navy - with its logic, innovation, and missteps alike - provides an excellent case study of both the development of European bureaucracy and armed forces in the Early Modern period.