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This work studies the history of two major Scottish shipbuilding firms based on the River Clyde - Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company and Lithgows Limited. It traces each firm’s origin, success, decline, and collapse, and places the events into the historical context of maritime Britain. The aim is to enhance the academic understanding of the cause and effect of the decline of the British shipbuilding industry, delving beyond the factors of poor industrial relations, international market conditions, and entrepreneurial failure in search of further answers. As a private company, Lithgows Limited provides useful insights into company management outside of state control. The authors base their analysis on the catalogued volumes of Scotts and Lithgows records, though due to the large number of gaps in the data, they also conducted interviews with major players in each company from the post-war period. Public, business, and banking records also provide supplementary material. The book is separated into eight chapters, plus a concluding ninth, an appendix listing ships built by Scott Lithgow Limited between 1970-1987, and a select bibliography.

Jimmy Reid was probably the greatest political orator of late twentieth-century Britain. He was at the forefront of the major turning points in the history of industrial relations and politics in Britain. His story is an epic one; from a poverty-stricken background in Govan, Glasgow, he became a communist at a young age, leading a national strike of engineering apprentices while only twenty, before being pitch into the national limelight as the leading spokesperson for the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Work-In in 1971-2. Disillusioned with communism he left the Party for Labour and the centre-left before leaving them disenchanted with New Labour to join the Scottish National Party. His political journey from Communism, to Labourism, and ultimately to Nationalism (a political life in three acts) not only speaks of the complexities of left politics after 1945, but also illuminates and facilitates our understanding of institutions and social change in post-war Britain by showing how they were understood and negotiated by a particular individual.

This volume tackles the history of Shipbuilding in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century by breaking it down into six regions:- Northeast England; Southeast England; Southwest England; Northwest England; Scotland; and Ireland. The intent is to determine the different economic, social, and geographic factors that contribute to the varied rates of rise and decline of Shipbuilding across the United Kingdom, rather than view the nation’s shipbuilding history as a singular narrative, which risks omitting the complexity of each region. Each region has been ascribed an author, and each author seeks to establish the quantitative and qualitative nature of output in their region, assessing individual factors of production, the character of the enterprises, and the nature of the market.

This volume seeks to explore the vast history of international maritime business, focussing on themes of management, finance, and labour. Each essay considers the economics of maritime industries and the factors that influenced decision-making. Their collective purpose is to spotlight relatively neglected areas of international maritime business history, and their richly varied subjects and geographies are primarily unified by this theme, whilst demonstrating the universality of international maritime business. The essays cover the following subjects:- the Norwegian shipbroking firm, Fearnley and Eger; the labour management strategies of nineteenth century London dock companies; the hierarchies of Finnish seagoing in the nineteenth century; twentieth-century Spanish merchant shipping; an examination of Gothenburg’s leading shipping companies; an exploration of The Royal Mail’s postal contracts and overseas mail service; patterns of ownership and finance in Greek deep-sea steamship fleets; the relationships between banks and industry in interwar Italy; the expansion of Japanese post-war shipbuilding; and a survey of Chinese junk trades.

This volume is dedicated to Maritime Business History, by means of commemorating the career of Professor Peter Neville Davies, a prominent member of the Economic and Social History department of the University of Liverpool (a career spanning the dates 1964-1992). The volume is divided into four sections. The first is a tribute and appreciation of Professor Davies, which also acts as an introduction to his work for unfamiliar readers. The second section focuses on business aspects of British maritime history, with particular attention to the impact of British shipping overseas, and the rise and decline of ship building industries. The third section is specific to Liverpool and Merseyside, and explores the local maritime history of the area, including trade with the Mediterranean, local shipbuilding, the Mersey port system, and nautical archaeology. The final section explores subjects within international maritime history, particularly within Norway and America. All essays and topics covered aim to collectively and significantly develop the field of maritime business history, and all are directly related to Professor Davies’ academic interests, as a means of celebrating Professor Davies own accomplishments during his career. The journal concludes with a comprehensive bibliography of Professor Davies’ work.

This volume seeks to critically review the contemporary state of maritime historiography, as it stands at the volume’s publication date of 1995. The volume is comprised of thirteen essays, each focused on the recent research into the maritime concerns of a particular geographical location, listed as follows: Australia; Canada; China; Denmark; Germany; Greece; Ibero-America; India; the Netherlands; the Ottoman Empire; Spain; the United States; and a final chapter concerning historians and maritime labour in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. One concern made evident by the collection is the lack of stable identity and cohesive aims within maritime history, the subject holds many conflicting definitions and concepts. The purpose of this volume is to explore the recent developments in maritime history, plus the growth of scholarly interest, to provide a ‘beacon and stimulus for future work’ and to clearly direct and define maritime historiography toward a solid position in the field of history.

This study seeks to correct the underrepresentation of Mediterranean maritime history in academic publications, in attempt to understand the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic environment in which maritime activity takes place, by compiling ten essays from maritime historians concerning Spain, France, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Greece, Turkey, and Israel. The aim of the collection is to provide an insight into Mediterranean maritime history to those who could not previously access such information due to language barriers or difficulty securing non-English publications; some of the essays have translated into English specifically for this publication. The majority of the essays concern the Early Modern period, and the remainder concern the contemporary.

In a time of great need for Britain, a small coterie of influential businessmen gained access to secret information on industrial mobilisation as advisers to the Principal Supply Officers Committee. They provided the state with priceless advice, but, as “insiders” utilised their access to information to build a business empire at a fraction of the normal costs. Outsiders, in contrast, lacked influence and were forced together into a defensive “ring” – or cartel – which effectively fixed prices for British warships. By the 1930s, the cartel grew into one of the most sophisticated profiteering groups of its day. This book examines the relationship between the private naval armaments industry, businessmen, and the British government defence planners between the wars. It reassesses the concept of the military-industrial complex through the impact of disarmament upon private industry, the role of leading industrialists in supply and procurement policy, and the successes and failings of government organisation. It blends together political, naval, and business history in new ways, and, by situating the business activities of industrialists alongside their work as government advisors, sheds new light on the operation of the British state. This is the story of how these men profited while effectively saving the National Government from itself.

This study provides a detailed study of the fishing nation of Taiwan at a regional and local level in order to address the lack of academic research into the Taiwanese fishing industry in comparison to other nations. Over three stages of analysis it identifies the reasons for the rise and decline of Taiwanese distant-water fisheries. The first stage examines the broader historical background, government policy, and birth of the Taiwanese fishing industry. The second explores the industry at a national level, analysing the relationships between fishing, government, military, and ancillary industries. The third approach narrows the scope to individual fishing communities and explores the working lives and cultural habits of the fishermen. The major focus is the port of Kaohsiung and how it became the major supply base for the fishing industry. It explores Taiwan’s relationship with Japan and the postwar decline due to Japan’s losses in the Second World War. Finally, it considers the development of Taiwanese colonial and postwar fishing policies. It concludes that modern fishing techniques were introduced from Japan, and emboldened Taiwanese fisherman to risk entering remote and foreign waters. The author suggests that further research into Taiwan take would help scholars better understand the history of distant-fisheries. The journal consists of nine chapters, an introduction and conclusion, a list of interviewees, and a bibliography of English and Chinese-language sources.

This journal comprises the edited diaries of Canadian seafarer, Joseph Salter, arranged chronologically from 1839 through to 1899, chronicling the many voyages of his career. He took employment with John Leander Starr, a Halifax Merchant, between 1839 and 1841, then moved into ship owning and the purchase of the Moncton, New Brunswick shipyard in 1846. The mid-nineteenth century was a difficult time for shipping, and Salter declared bankruptcy in 1858. He continued to work in maritime industries but gradually moved toward landward business and politics, as shipping went into decline. The diaries provide a comprehensive view of the life of ship-owner, shipbuilder, ship’s agent, and shipbroker during the age of sail. The diaries are introduced by editor Nancy Ross, great-granddaughter of Salter. Chapter 1 serves as Salter’s introduction, Chapters 2 through 16 record his various voyages: to British Guiana; Jamaica; Sierra Leone; Grenada; and his maritime business dealings and later life. Interspersed with his diaries are collections of his letters and several of his renderings of ships and boats. Appendix 1 lists the vessels under his ownerships; Appendix 2 concerns patent applications; Appendix 3 details his genealogy; and Appendix 4 gives a history of the Moncton Shipyard in New Brunswick.

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.