Pirate welfare played a prominent part in Mediterranean life during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Its influence was significant both in the decline of Venice and in the shift of the economic hegemony of Europe. Professor Tenenti maintains that Venice is a fitting focus for study of this period, for the mediterranean became and increasingly a centre of European activity. On one side was Venice which, in spite of a huge navy and a still sizable merchant fleet, observed the strictest neutrality and sought only to protect her trade. On the other were potentially or openly hostile navies, which clashed with one another and frequently also with Venetian shipping. english and Dutch navies forced their way into the area by a combination of trade and piracy and established themselves in positions of great strength. Professor Tenenti analyzes the impact of northern piracy on the trade of the Venetian republic and her failure to resist this threat. During the early seventeenth century Venetian prosperity was irreparably damaged, not only by competition from the north, but also by a severe shipbuilding crisis. He suggests that Venice wa unable to adapt the organization, equipment and discipline of her navy to the changed conditions; for these were spheres in which her pride was particularly strong and tradition enduring. He describes the different types of pirates from the Barbary pirates, the Knights of Malta and the English corsairs to the Uscocchi, whom even sophisticated Venetians regarded as necromancers. The translation of this important work fo Venetian economic history makes a valuable addition to the books on the period available to English readers. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1961.

This volume discusses the effects of industrialization on maritime trade, labour and communities in the Mediterranean and Black Sea from the 1850s to the 1920s. The 17 essays are based on new evidence from multiple type of primary sources on the transition from sail to steam navigation, written in a variety of languages, Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Russian and Ottoman. Questions that arise in the book include the labour conditions, wages, career and retirement of seafarers, the socio-economic and spatial transformations of the maritime communities and the changes in the patterns of operation, ownership and management in the shipping industry with the advent of steam navigation. The book offers a comparative analysis of the above subjects across the Mediterranean, while also proposes unexplored themes in current scholarship like the history of navigation. Contributors are: Luca Lo Basso, Andrea Zappia, Leonardo Scavino, Daniel Muntane, Eduard Page Campos, Enric Garcia Domingo, Katerina Galani, Alkiviadis Kapokakis, Petros Kastrinakis, Kalliopi Vasilaki, Pavlos Fafalios, Georgios Samaritakis, Kostas Petrakis, Korina Doerr, Athina Kritsotaki, Anastasia Axaridou, and Martin Doerr.

The SS Mendi is a wreck site off the Isle of Wight under the protection of Historic England. Nearly 650 men, mostly from the South African Native Labour Corps (SANLC), lost their lives in February 1917 following a collision in fog as they travelled to serve as labourers on the Western Front, in one of the largest single losses of life during the conflict. The loss of theSS Mendi occupies a special place in South African military history. Prevented from being trained as fighting troops by their own Government, the men of the SANLC hoped that their contribution to the war effort would lead to greater civil rights and economic opportunities in the new white-ruled nation of South African after the war. These hopes proved unfounded, and the SS Mendi became a focus of black resistance before and during the Apartheid era in South Africa. One hundred years on, the wreck of the SS Mendi is a physical symbol of black South Africans' long fight for social and political justice and equality and is one of a very select group of historic shipwrecks from which contemporary political and social meaning can be drawn, and whose loss has rippled forward in time to influence later events; a loss that is now an important part of the story of a new 'rainbow nation'. The wreck of the SS Mendi is now recognised as one of England's most important First World War heritage assets and the wreck site is listed under the Protection of Military Remains Act. New archaeological investigation has provided real and direct information about the wreck for the first time. The loss of the Mendi is used to highlight the story of the SANLC and other labour corps as well as the wider treatment of British imperial subjects in wartime.

While the Ottoman Empire is most often recognized today as a land power, for four centuries the seas of the Eastern Mediterranean were dominated by the Ottoman Navy. Yet to date, little is known about the seafarers who made up the sultans' fleet, the men whose naval mastery ensured that an empire from North Africa to Black Sea expanded and was protected, allowing global trading networks to flourish in the face of piracy and the Sublime Porte's wars with the Italian city states and continental European powers. In this book, Christine Isom-Verhaaren provides a history of the major events and engagements of the navy, from its origins as the fleets of Anatolian Turkish beyliks to major turning points such as the Battle of Lepanto. But the book also puts together a picture of the structure of the Ottoman navy as an institution, revealing the personal stories of the North African corsairs and Greek sailors recruited as admirals. Rich in detail drawn from a variety of sources, the book provides a comprehensive account of the Ottoman Navy, the forgotten contingent in the empire's period of supremacy from the 14th century to the 18th century.

What is the ocean's role in human and planetary history? How have writers, sailors, painters, scientists, historians, and philosophers from across time and space poetically envisioned the oceans and depicted human entanglements with the sea? In order to answer these questions, Soren Frank covers an impressive range of material in A Poetic History of the Oceans: Greek, Roman and Biblical texts, an Icelandic Saga, Shakespearean drama, Jens Munk's logbook, 19th century-writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Jules Michelet, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Jonas Lie, and Joseph Conrad as well as their 20th and 21st century-heirs like J. G. Ballard, Jens Bjorneboe, and Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen. A Poetic History of the Oceans promotes what Frank labels an amphibian comparative literature and mobilises recent theoretical concepts and methodological developments in Blue Humanities, Blue Ecology, and New Materialism to shed new light on well-known texts and introduce readers to important, but lesser-known Scandinavian literary engagements with the sea.

This volume presents Greek Maritime History and unravels the historical trajectory of a maritime nation par excellence in the Eastern Mediterranean. At the core of the book lies the rise of the Greek merchant fleet and its transformation from a peripheral to an international carrier. Following the evolution of Greek shipping for more than three centuries (17th-20th century), the book traces a maritime nation in its making and provides proof of a different, yet successful pattern of maritime development compared to other European maritime nations. The chapters adopt a multidimensional and interdisciplinary approach - spanning from shipping, fishing and trade to piracy, technology, human resources and entrepreneurship - and reflect the main directions of Greek maritime historiography over the last thirty years. Contributors are: Apostolos Delis, Dimitris Dimitropoulos, Zisis Fotakis, Katerina Galani, Gelina Harlaftis, Evdokia Olympitou, Gerassimos D. Pagratis, Alexandra Papadopoulou, Socrates Petmezas, Evrydiki Sifneos, Anna Sydorenko, Ioannis Theotokas, and Katerina Vourkatioti.

Captain Charles Johnson's General History of Pirates was one of the best-selling books of 1724, when it was first published. It provides a sweeping account of what has come to be called the Golden Age of Piracy. It went through four editions in two years, and without doubt owed a substantial part of its success to a dramatic writing style that vividly captures the realities of pirates' savage existence. The book contains documentary evidence of events during the lives of its subjects. In the 270 years since its original publication, Johnson's work has come to be regarded as the classic study of one of the most popular subjects in maritime history.

This book investigates the Guinea Company and its members, aiming to understand the genealogy of several major changes taking place in the English Atlantic and in the Anglo-Africa trade in the seventeenth century and beyond. Little attention has been paid to the companies that preceded the Royal African Company, launched in 1672, and by presenting the Guinea Company - the earliest of England's chartered Africa companies - and its relationship with the influential men who became its members, this book questions the inevitability of the Atlantic reality of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through its members, the Guinea Company emerged as a purpose-built structure with the ability to weather a volatile trade undergoing fundamental change.

The rich and dramatic story of our forty-ninth state is unfolded through wonderful vintage photographs and the entertaining historical narrative of well-known maritime author Jim Gibbs. More than 250 photographs of Alaskan sailing vessels, ports, lighthouses, and historical figures, along with an intriguing text, guide the reader through the story of the original inhabitants and the ensuing occupations by the Russians and Americans. Visit lighthouses, tap into the oil business, and get caught up in the excitement of the gold rush. Gibbs relates the epic stories of Alaska, unusual shipwrecks, and a history of the cruise industry and modern cargo transport. If you are interested in exploring (or re-visiting) this unique and beautiful place, let this informative and pictorial guide take you on a tour of the "Frozen North" from your own armchair.

Titanic is a fascinating exploration of the most famous maritime disaster of all time. It delves into the astonishing facts surrounding the tragedy of 1912 and is essential for anyone wishing to separate myth from reality. With a range of trivia including facts about the construction of the vessel deemed to be 'unsinkable', the information is presented in an interesting and engaging way to embrace a wide variety of readers. This title is brimming with facts about the Titanic and its passengers, the history of the Titanic, strange stories of premonitions of the disaster, conspiracy theories, the various films, the sinking of the Titanic, the discovery of the wreck and salvage operations, are all explored. Brief, accessible and entertaining pieces on a wide variety of subjects makes it the perfect book to dip in to. The amazing and extraordinary facts series presents interesting, surprising and little-known facts and stories about a wide range of topics which are guaranteed to inform, absorb and entertain in equal measure.

Did British, French and Russian gunboats pacify the notoriously corsair-infested waters of the Eastern Mediterranean? This book charts the changing rates and nature of piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean in the nineteenth century. Using Ottoman, Greek and other archival sources, it shows that far from ending with the introduction European powers to the region, piracy continued unabated. The book shows that political reforms and changes in the regional economy caused by the accelerated integration of the Mediterranean into the expanding global economy during the third quarter of the century played a large role in ongoing piracy. It also considers imperial power struggles, ecological phenomena, shifting maritime trade routes, revisions in international maritime law, and changes in the regional and world economy to explain the fluctuations in violence at sea.

Lo Jung-pang, a renowned professor at the University of California, Davis, completed a 600-page typed manuscript entitled China as a Sea Power, 1127-1368 in 1957, but he died without arranging for the book to be published. Bruce Elleman, who found the manuscript in the UC Davis archives in 2004, has digitized the manuscript and edited it for length and accuracy. Lo Jung-pang argued that during each of the three occasions when imperial China embarked on maritime enterprises (the Qin and Han dynasties, the Sui and Tang dynasties, and Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties), the beginning was made by coastal states when China was divided, the height was reached when China was strong and unified, and the decline took place when China weakened, the people became absorbed by internal affairs, and the policy of the state became directed to the north and the west. These cycles of maritime interest, lasting roughly five hundred years, corresponded with cycles of cohesion and division, strength and weakness, prosperity and impoverishment, expansion and contraction. Today a strong and outward looking China is again building up its navy and seeking maritime dominance, with important implications for trade, diplomacy and naval affairs. Events will not necessarily follow the same course as in the past, but Lo Jung-pang's book suggests questions that can be raised for study as events unfold in the years and decades to come.

In 1780 Richard Sheridan noted that merchants worked 'merely for money'. However, rather than being a criticism, this was recognition of the important commercial role that merchants played in the British empire at this time. Of course, merchants desired and often made profits, but they were strictly bound by commonly-understood socio-cultural norms which formed a private-order institution of a robust business culture. In order to elucidate this business culture, this book examines the themes of risk, trust, reputation, obligation, networks and crises to demonstrate how contemporary merchants perceived and dealt with one another and managed their businesses. Merchants were able to take risks and build trust, but concerns about reputation and fulfilling obligations constrained economic opportunism. By relating these themes to an array of primary sources from ports around the British-Atlantic world, this book provides a more nuanced understanding of business culture during this period. A theme which runs throughout the book is the mercantile community as a whole and its relationship with the state. This was an important element in the British business culture of this period, although this relationship came under stress towards the end of period, forming a crisis in itself. This book argues that the business culture of the British-Atlantic mercantile community not only facilitated the conduct of day-to-day business, but also helped it to cope with short-term crises and long-term changes. This facilitated the success of the British-Atlantic economy even within the context of changing geo-politics and an under-institutionalised environment. Not working 'merely for money' was a successful business model.

Naval mines are pernicious weapons of debated legality and fearsome reputation. Since World War II over 18,400 of these ingenious devices have been deployed during 24 naval mining events, seriously damaging or sinking over 100 ships including 44 warships. Despite this sustained drumbeat of use both in attack and in defence, there were no modern books that examine this `Weapon That Waits'. Naval Minewarfare: Politics to Practicalities is a comprehensive guide to modern naval minewarfare. From explaining the basic tenets of both naval mining and naval mine countermeasures, then examining the modern history of naval mining, through to the legal, political and statecraft factors that should underpin any decisions to employ naval mines, this detailed analysis provides a contemporary view of how this weapon is used as part of a military or insurgent campaign. Focussing on both the psychological warhead in every mine as well as naval mining's lethal effects, it contains a wealth of invaluable information and explanation all carefully scripted to enlighten military historians and inform international strategists. The inclusion of an Annex of mitigations against mining specifically designed for use by civilian ships, their owners and also port authorities makes this an outstanding primary reference for politicians through to practitioners of both military and civilian elements of conflicts that involve naval mines.