How did residents of the British Isles come to see themselves as a “maritime nation”? What impact did this emerging reputation have at home, and, even more pressingly, on the wider world? The contributions in The Maritime World of Early Modern Britain strive to answer these questions for the period from 1485 to 1714. Edited by Richard Blakemore and James Davey, the collection is a fitting inaugural volume in the new Amsterdam University Press series, Maritime Humanities, 1400–1800: Cultures of the Sea. Recognizing that no ten-chapter volume can be comprehensive, Blakemore and Davey have instead assembled these contributions “both to illuminate [the] bigger picture” of Britain's “messy, complicated, and disputed process of transformation” and “to indicate directions in which maritime history of early modern Britain is now moving” (18).
While Blakemore and Davey identify the changing scope of trade and government control as key themes in these chapters, along with the development of the idea of maritime Britain (4), they might as readily have called our attention to methodology and sources. Three chapters invite us to learn from close readings of specific ships, while three others demonstrate how we can assemble a clearer picture of a larger group of merchant vessels or the people connected with them. The four remaining chapters trace the dissemination of ideas about the sea and leading British figures in literary and scientific sources.
In the first of the close readings, Bernhard Klein (chapter 1) provides a “biography” of one of Henry VIII's favorite ships, the Minion. Klein provides instructive lessons on how textual records can help historians more accurately interpret visual depictions of Tudor vessels on the famous Anthony Roll. This opening chapter sets the tone for the volume, acknowledging British involvement in the slave trade from the early sixteenth century. Meredith Greiling, in chapter 9, offers a microhistory of a single ship model, one installed in the seventeenth century in Aberdeen's St. Nicholas Kirk. Greiling explores the history and symbolism of this “votive ship,” tracing its Dutch connections and social context to show how Scottish shipmasters “placed themselves at the center of an interconnected . . . maritime world” (255).
In chapter 6, on capital trials and punishment, Cheryl Fury considers the first four voyages of the English East India Company as a group. These pioneering expeditions were atypical, seeing more instances of violent crime, “sexual offences,” and threatened mutiny than did most merchant voyages (166). However, they also reveal instructive general patterns: mutinies were far less likely on the homeward journey, as financial rewards were in sight. Depending on the crime, a crew could ask for clemency on behalf on an accused shipmate. Ultimately this produced a “theatre of justice” that was interactive rather than imposed from above (170).
To complement these close readings, the second trio of chapters focuses on larger data sets. Craig Lambert and Gary P. Baker (chapter 3) demonstrate how they arrived at an updated overview of the English merchant fleet (including Welsh and Channel Islands vessels), the product of a multiyear Arts and Humanities Research Council grant. Lambert and Baker read bureaucratic records in concert with a valuable but problematic primary source, in this case port books and a 1571–72 survey by Thomas Colshill.
Claire McLoughlin (chapter 4) examines an overlooked aspect of sixteenth-century commercial shipping: Scottish trade with Iberia. We often hear about Dutch middlemen in the decades leading up to the Navigation Acts, but it turns out that the Scottish frequently took on that role during the Anglo-Spanish war, providing an important channel for illicit imports. Elaine Murphy contributes a valuable intervention on women during the Civil War (chapter 7), focusing only briefly on “bawdy” behavior before examining the overlooked commercial role of women (often widows) who supplied equipment to the Royal Navy.
Where these chapters highlight material objects, the four remaining chapters explore maritime concepts. Two, by Alan James and Claire Jowitt, respectively, focus on Walter Ralegh. James (chapter 2) traces an intriguing connection between the “violent, self-styled Renaissance man” (68) and a Huguenot historian, the sieur de La Popelinière. Ralegh evidently borrowed the Frenchman's strategy: to attempt to unite the kingdom across the confessional divide in war against its natural enemy, Spain (68). James suggests that in the ongoing competition with Habsburg might, sea power offered an avenue for more peripheral polities to disrupt the enemy. Both men, he finds, argued for investing in maritime infrastructure.
In chapter 5, Jowitt (who edits the series with John McAleer), provides a fascinating critical study of the varied ways in which the persona of “Water” Ralegh was referenced in a series of six popular “seafever” plays (127). Whereas Elizabeth I had encouraged privateering against the Spanish, under James I the same raiding activities were viewed as piracy. Thus, piratical sea captains could be symbols of inspired leadership or of unruliness and corruption. Such theatrical figures, Jowitt contends, had heightened significance for a state struggling with governance on land and at sea. Rebecca Bailey (chapter 8) also draws on a wide range of literary and visual sources to trace how King Charles I and the contested “Ship Money” campaign were portrayed in the 1630s. After detailing the monarch's lead role in the sumptuous masque Britannia Triumphans, Bailey shows how “ships, literature, national and international identity [were linked] together” (227) first to celebrate and then to critique Charles I's rule.
Philippa Hellawell (chapter 10) concludes the volume with a rich analysis highlighting the tight connections between natural philosophy and the maritime world. Examining texts by three Royal Society experimental philosophers, Robert Southwell, Robert Hooke, and William Petty, Hellawell argues that in systematizing the mechanical parts of shipping and seafaring practice, these men were in fact conceptualizing a program for English maritime sovereignty (275). Due to the wide-ranging treatments of diverse subject matter, Blakemore and Davey do not offer a separate conclusion to the volume (fortunately, there is an index and a useful bibliography). Instead, Hellawell finishes with an apt call to bring together “histories of politics and science, geography and sovereignty, shipbuilding and navigation, naval governance and warfare . . . in a comprehensive examination of Britain's evolving maritime power” (282). With contributions that consider familiar sources from new angles and include unconventional actors in the narrative, The Maritime World of Early Modern Britain “reveals a picture of connection, exchange, and interdependence” (35), identifying stimulating themes and methods for maritime historians of Britain and beyond.
