Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

Staying power : the history of black people in Britain /Peter Fryer "'STAYING POWER is a panoramic history of black Britons. Stretching back to the Roman conquest, encompassing the court of Henry VIII, and following a host of characters from Mary Seacole to the abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, Peter Fryer paints a picture of two thousand years of Black presence in Britain. First published in the 1980s, amidst race riots and police brutality, Fryer's history performed a deeply political act; revealing how Africans, Asians and their descendants had long been erased from British history. By rewriting black Britons into the British story, showing where they influenced political traditions, social institutions and cultural life, was - and is - a deeply effective counter to a racist and nationalist agenda.This new edition includes the classic introduction by Paul Gilroy, author of 'There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack', in addition to a brand-new foreword by Guardian journalist Gary Younge, which examines the book's continued significance today as we face Brexit and a revival of right wing nationalism."--Provided by the publisher. 2018. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 305.896041

Slavery, capitalism and the Industrial Revolution / Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson. "For too long, the role of slavery in driving Britain's economic development has been marginalized. In their remarkable new book, Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson 'follow the money' to document in revealing detail the role of slavery in the making of Britain's industrial revolution. Slavery was not just a source of wealth for a narrow circle of slave owners who built grand country houses and filled them with luxuries. The forces set in motion by the slave and plantation trades seeped into almost every aspect of the economy and society. In textile mills, iron and copper smelting, steam power, and financial institutions, slavery played a crucial part. Things we might think far removed from the taint of slavery, like 18th century fashions for indigo-patterned cloth, sweet tea, snuff boxes, mahogany furniture, ceramics and silverware, were intimately connected. Even London's role as a centre for global finance was partly determined by the slave trade as insurance, financial trading and mortgage markets were developed in the City to promote distant and risky investments in enslaved people. The result is a bold and unflinching account of how Britain became a global superpower, and how the legacy of slavery persists. Acknowledging Britain's role in slavery is not just about toppling statues and renaming streets. We urgently need to come to terms with slavery's inextricable links with Western capitalism, and the ways in which many of us continue to benefit from slavery to this day."--Provided by publisher. 2023 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 382/.440941

Edmund Burke and the British Empire in the West Indies : wealth, power, and slavery /P.J. Marshall. "Edmund Burke was both a political thinker of the utmost importance and an active participant in the day-to-day business of politics. It is the latter role that is the concern of this book, showing Burke engaging with issues concerning the West Indies, which featured so largely in British concerns in the later eighteenth century. Initially, Burke saw the islands as a means by which his close connections might make their fortunes, later he was concerned with them as a great asset to be managed in the national interest, and, finally, he became a participant in debates about the slave trade. This volume adds a new dimension to assessments of Burke's views on empire, hitherto largely confined to Ireland, India, and America, and explores the complexities of his response to slavery. The system outraged his abundantly attested concern for the suffering caused by abuses of British power overseas, but one which he also recognised to be fundamental for sustaining the wealth generated by the West Indies, which he deemed essential to Britain's national power. He therefore sought compromises in the gradual reform of the system rather than immediate abolition of the trade or emancipation of the slaves."--Provided by the publisher. 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 325.3209033

Hamble River : A Glimpse of the past /Ian Underdown Underdown, I. M.-(Ian M.) 2014 • PAMPHLET • 1 copy available. 627.1(282.242)

Astronomical minds : the true longitude story /Ted Gerrard. Gerrard, Ted. 2007. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 528.282

Black experience and the empire / Philip D. Morgan, editor and Sean Hawkins, editor. "This work explores the lives of people of sub-Saharan Africa and their descendants, how they were shaped by empire, and how they in turn influenced the empire in everything from material goods to cultural style. The black experience varied greatly across space and over time. Accordingly, thirteen substantive essays and a scene-setting introduction range from West Africa in the sixteenth century, through the history of the slave trade and slavery down to the 1830s, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century participation of blacks in the empire as workers, soldiers, members of colonial elites, intellectuals, athletes, and musicians. No people were more uprooted and dislocated; or traveled more within the empire; or created more of a trans-imperial culture. In the crucible of the British empire, blacks invented cultural mixes that were precursors to our modern selves - hybrid, fluid, ambiguous, and constantly in motion."--Provided by the publisher. 2004. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 941-44

Not made by slaves : ethical capitalism in the age of abolition /Bronwen Everill. "'East India Sugar Not Made By Slaves'-with these words on a sugar bowl, consumers of the early nineteenth century declared their power to change the global economy. Bronwen Everill examines how abolitionists in the Atlantic world shaped emerging ideas of ethical commerce to fight the system of plantation slavery that had become an engine of modern capitalism. How did consumers define ethical commerce? How did producers create markets for their products? Everill focuses on the everyday economy of the Atlantic world rather than on the more familiar boycott movements against slave-produced goods. Different approaches to making money in ethical commerce-through commercial agriculture, government contracts, international trade, and money management-shaped the relationship between production, consumption, and morality in ways that determined how slavery and freedom came to be defined in the market economy. Companies such as Macaulay & Babington in Sierra Leone, Roberts & Colson in Liberia, and Forster & Smith in the Gambia used commercial networks and government subsidies to make 'legitimate' commerce pay. Ethical commerce was also promoted by former slaves in such organizations as the Colored Free Produce Society, which promoted the idea that consumers bore responsibility for the plight of the slave and could change their buying behavior. This book illuminates global consumer society and industrial capitalism at the turn of the nineteenth century, as well as underscores the roles of slavery and antislavery movements in the development of international capitalism. It also reminds us that concerns over fair trade and labor conditions remain relevant today"--Provided by publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 174/.409182109034

Europe and the sea / edited by Dorlis Blume, Christiana Brennecke, Ursula Breymayer and Thomas Eisentraut for the Deutsches Historisches Museum "Europe is a maritime continent: measured by the length of its coasts and its total size, none of the five continental masses on the planet has more points of contact with the seas than Europe. The importance of the sea for the development of European civilisation is illustrated by the themes of myths, shipbuilding and seafaring, rule of the seas, European coastal trade, expansion, the slave trade, migration, the maritime global economy, resources, oceanography, tourism, and the artistic perception of the sea. Thirteen themes, each linked to a port city, range from Antiquity to the present day and demonstrate that the domination of the seas was a central component of European power politics for centuries."--Provided by the publisher. c2018. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 930.9(26)

Slavery in Africa and the Caribbean : a history of enslavement and identity since the 18th century /edited by Olatunji Ojo and Nadine Hunt. "For over four hundred years, thousands of African men and women were taken from their homeland and transported across the world to be sold into slavery. The history of this startling and horrific period is perennially important, and recent scholarship has sought to uncover the experiences of the slaves themselves in order to uncover the voices of its many victims. Slavery and Africa in the Caribbean analyses the written sources which have survived, demonstrating how many Africans coped by adopting a flexible identity in order to negotiate the cultural differences in African, European and Islamic systems of slavery."--Provided by the publisher. 2012. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1(6:729)"17"

The fearless Benjamin Lay : the Quaker dwarf who became the first revolutionary abolitionist /Marcus Rediker A biography of writer and activist Benjamin Lay, who was a prominent early campaigner for the end of enslavement in the United States in the early 18th century. The book gives an account of Lay's youth in Essex and London, his travels to Barbados as a sailor, where he became radicalised against the slave trade, and his subsequent lifelong work to draw public attention to its barbarism, influenced by his Quaker faith. The book also outlines Lay's impact and legacy in Quakerism and the abolitionist movement after his death. Includes 12 pages of colour plates. 2017 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92LAY

Letters of the late Ignatius Sancho, an African / edited by Vincent Carretta. Sancho, Ignatius, 2015. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 942.1/3200496

Navies and soft power : historical case studies of naval power and the nonuse of military force /Bruce A Elleman and S C M Paine. "For well over two centuries, the U.S. Navy has engaged in an ever broader array of nonmilitary missions. Although a fundamental raison d'etre of navies concerns hard power, in the twentieth century an awareness of the uses of soft power developed. For example, since ancient times protecting against piracy has been a common naval problem, while since the mid-nineteenth century equally important patrol missions, such as attempts to stop the illegal slave trade, have been conducted by the U.S. Navy. After the Cold War, many other nonmilitary missions became important, in particular maritime humanitarian-aid missions like the post-tsunami Operation Unified Assistance in Southeast Asia during 2004-2005 ... this volume presents nine historical case studies examining the use of navies in nonmilitary missions"--Preface. 2015 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 363.34/8

Africans in English caricature 1769-1819 : black jokes, white humour /Temi Odumosu. Between 1769 and 1819 London experienced an unprecedented growth in the proliferation of texts and images in the popular sphere, engaging learned citizens in discussion and commentary on the most pressing social and political issues of the day. From the repeal of the Stamp Act to the French revolution, the local Westminster election or the abolition of the slave trade, these prints, political pamphlets, plays, novels and periodicals collaborated (sometimes intentionally) in critique, praise and assessment of the country's changing socio-economic climate. African people were a critical aspect of this world of images, and their presence conveyed much about the implications of travel, colonialism and slavery on the collective psyche. Whether encountered on the streets of the city, in opulent stately homes, or in tracts describing the horrors of the slave trade, the British paid attention to Africans (consciously or not), and developed a means of expressing the impact of these encounters through images. Scholarship has begun to interrogate the presence of Africans in British art of this period, but very little has been written about their place in visual and literary humour created in a metropolitan context. This book fills this scholarly lacuna, exploring how and why satirical artists both mocked and utilized these characters as subversive comic weaponry. [2017] • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 741.5/6942

Outsourcing empire : how company-states made the modern world /Andrew Phillips and J. C. Sharman. "From Spanish conquistadors through to pith-helmeted British colonialists, the prevailing vision of European empire-builders has been staunchly statist. But from the early 1600s through to the early twentieth century, from the East Indies to North America to Africa and the South Pacific, it was company states - not sovereign states - that played the most important role in driving European worldwide commercial and colonial expansion. In Asia, the Dutch and English East India Companies ingratiated themselves with mighty Asian rulers such as the Mughal and Qing Emperors to infiltrate Asian markets. In North America, the Hudson's Bay Company maintained a network of forts and factories across the continent closely integrated with American Indian trading routes and practices. And in Africa, the company states were first key intermediaries in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and later the colonial vanguards of the 'scramble for Africa.' Notwithstanding their central importance for both International Relations scholars and students of global history, company states remain largely ignored in studies of the modern international system's evolution and expansion. Beholden to an outdated historiography, most scholarship on the expansion of the international system looks only at sovereign states. Historians and historical sociologists have done more to acknowledge company states' pioneering role. But these studies have typically focused on individual company states in isolation, and have thus missed the significance of company states as key progenitors of the modern international system. As a result of this neglect, we lack an understanding of what defined the company states as a distinctive form of international actor, and how they served as crucial but now largely forgotten builders of the world's first truly global international system. Existing works struggle to account for rise, fall and fleeting nineteenth century resurrection of company states as agents of long distance commerce and conquest, as well as their sharply contrasting fortunes in different regions. Finally, unless we understand the nature and significance of company states, we cannot understand how inter-civilizational relations were mediated across trans-continental distances and deep cultural differences for the majority of the modern era. These are the vital gaps in our knowledge which the authors seek to address in this book."-- 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 909.08

Channelling mobilities : migration and globalisation in the Suez Canal region and beyond, 1869-1914 /Valeska Huber. "The history of globalisation is usually told as a history of shortening distances and acceleration of the flows of people, goods and ideas. Channelling Mobilities refines this picture by looking at a wide variety of mobile people passing through the region of the Suez Canal, a global shortcut opened in 1869. As an empirical contribution to global history, the book asks how the passage between Europe and Asia and Africa was perceived, staged and controlled from the opening of the Canal to the First World War, arguing that this period was neither an era of unhampered acceleration, nor one of hardening borders and increasing controls. Instead, it was characterised by the channelling of mobilities through the differentiation, regulation and bureaucratisation of movement. Telling the stories of tourists, troops, workers, pilgrims, stowaways, caravans, dhow skippers and others, the book reveals the complicated entanglements of empires, internationalist initiatives and private companies."--Provided by the publisher. 2013 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 382(267.5)"18/19"

Jeopardy of every wind : the biography of captain Thomas Bowrey /Sue Paul. "In 1669, fleeing a London decimated by the plague and the Great Fire, a young English child arrived, alone, at Fort St. George, the first English fortress in Mughal India. The boy survived to become a maverick merchant-mariner, an 'independent' trading on the fringes of the East India Company. Captain Thomas Bowrey gained renown in numerous fields. Operating throughout the East Indies and speaking Malay, the lingua franca of diplomacy and trade in the region, he would write and publish the first ever Malay-English dictionary, a seminal work that even a century later would be used by the likes of Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. It has also been claimed Bowrey wrote the earliest first-hand account of the recreational use of cannabis. Bowrey's shipping interests, however, were plagued by pirates, privateers and mutiny and included the tragic Worcester, which played a pivotal role in the union of England and Scotland. Subsequent projects included the east African slave trade and his collaboration with Daniel Defoe in the founding of the South Sea Company. Despite everything, Bowrey succeeded in amassing sufficient fortune for alms-houses to be built in his name following his death, but his true legacy is his papers that lay hidden in an attic for two centuries and which now shed light not only on the exploits of this remarkable man but also on life and commerce at the start of globalisation."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. txt

Britain and the ocean road : shipwrecks and people, 1297-1825 /Ian Friel. "Britain and the Ocean Road uses new firsthand research and unconventional interpretations to take a fresh look at British maritime history in the age of sail. The human stories of eight shipwrecks serve as waypoints on the voyage, as the book explores how and why Britain became a global sea power. Each chapter has people at its heart - sailors, seafaring families, passengers, merchants, pirates, explorers, and many others. The narrative encompasses an extraordinary range of people, ships and events, such as a bloody maritime civil war in the 13th century, a 17th-century American teenager who stepped from one ship to another - and into a life of piracy, a British warship that fought at Trafalgar (on the French side), and the floating hell of a Liverpool slave-ship, sunk in the year before the slave trade was abolished. The book is full of surprising details and scenes, including England's rudest and crudest streetname, what it was like to be a passenger in a medieval ship (take a guess), how a fragment of the English theatre reached the Far East during Shakespeare's lifetime, who forgave who after a deadly pirate duel, why there were fancy dress parties in the Arctic, and where you could get the best herring. Britain and the Ocean Road is the first of two works aimed at introducing a general audience to the gripping (and at times horrifying) story of Britain, its people and the sea. The books will also interest historians and archaeologists, as they are based on original scholarship. The second book, Black Oil on the Waters, will take the story from the age of steam to the 21st century."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.00941

Taming the Atlantic : the history of man's battle with the world's toughest ocean /Dag Pike. "The Atlantic Ocean has been and remains an often deadly challenge to mankind. This delightful and informative book chronicles the history of attempt to cross its hostile surface from the early days of sail to the most recent record breaking attempts in small ultra-fast craft. In between there have been fascinating sagas connected to pioneering discovery, the slave trade, mass emigration, the glamour and luxury of the famous shipping lines and war. The Atlantic has often been the testing ground for the latest technology and design. All this and more, such as navigation techniques and advance weather forecasting are covered. Despite mans best and most ingenious efforts all too often the Worlds toughest ocean comes out on top and, while it is today a major trade route, it remains one of the most daunting maritime challenges."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 656.61(261)

Colonialism : a moral reckoning /Nigel Biggar. "A new assessment of the West's colonial record. In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989, many believed that we had arrived at the 'End of History' - that the global dominance of liberal democracy had been secured forever. Now however, with Russia rattling its sabre on the borders of Europe and China rising to challenge the post-1945 world order, the liberal West faces major threats. These threats are not only external. Especially in the Anglosphere, the 'decolonisation' movement corrodes the West's self-confidence by retelling the history of European and American colonial dominance as a litany of racism, exploitation, and massively murderous violence. Nigel Biggar tests this indictment, addressing the crucial questions in eight chapters: Was the British Empire driven primarily by greed and the lust to dominate? Should we speak of 'colonialism and slavery' in the same breath, as if they were identical? Was the Empire essentially racist? How far was it based on the theft of land? Did it involve genocide? Was it driven fundamentally by the motive of economic exploitation? Was undemocratic colonial government necessarily illegitimate? and, Was the Empire essentially violent, and its violence pervasively racist and terroristic? Biggar makes clear that, like any other long-standing state, the British Empire involved elements of injustice, sometimes appalling. On occasions it was culpably incompetent and presided over moments of dreadful tragedy. Nevertheless, from the early 1800s the Empire was committed to abolishing the slave trade in the name of a Christian conviction of the basic equality of all human beings. It ended endemic inter-tribal warfare, opened local economies to the opportunities of global trade, moderated the impact of inescapable modernisation, established the rule of law and liberal institutions such as a free press, and spent itself in defeating the murderously racist Nazi and Japanese empires in the Second World War. As encyclopaedic in historical breadth as it is penetrating in analytical depth, Colonialism offers a moral inquest into the colonial past, forensically contesting damaging falsehoods and thereby helping to rejuvenate faith in the West's future"--Publisher's description. 2023. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 325/.341

Imperial legacies : the British Empire around the world /Jeremy Black. "Britain yesterday; America today. The reality of being top dog is that everybody hates you. In this provocative book, noted historian and commentator Jeremy Black shows how criticisms of the legacy of the British Empire are in part criticisms of the reality of American power today. He emphasizes the prominence of imperial rule in history and in the world today, and the selective way in which certain countries are castigated. Imperial Legacies is a wide-ranging and vigorous assault on political correctness, its language, misuse of the past, and grasping of both present and future"--Provided by publisher. 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 909/.0971241

Fifty years later : antislavery, capitalism and modernity in the Dutch orbit /edited by Gert Oostindie. "The Dutch slave trade, slavery and abolitionism have long remained unduly neglected issues in the burgeoning international debate on capitalism, modernity, and antislavery. Fifty Years Later now offers a thoroough and wide-rabnging discussion of antislavery in the Netherlands and in the Dutch colonial world, and also provides a fresh contribution to the ongoing debate on the relationship between abolitionism and economic, political and cultural modernisation in the Western world at large. The contributors to this volume are Seymour Dreschner, Pieter C. Emmer, Stanley L. Engerman, Edwin Horlings, Gerrit J. Knaap, Maarten Kuiten-brouwer, Gert Oostindie, Robert Ross, Angelie Sens, and Alex van Stirpriaan."--Prodived by the publisher. 1995. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.36209492

An African's life : the life and times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1797 /James Walvin. A biography of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), known as Gustavus Vassa for much of his life. Enslaved at the age of about eleven, Equiano learned to read and write and converted to Christianity, eventually buying his freedom in 1766. Thereafter, much of his life was spent in London and at sea on British ships. He was an early campaigner against the slave trade, was employed by the British Government as an agent in their efforts to ship the black poor from London to Sierra Leone and was a leading member of the Sons of Africa, a campaigning group of educated black Londoners. Frequently called on as a spokesman for the black community, Equiano became a public figure in his own lifetime, publishing his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, in 1789 which became one of the first examples of published writing by an African writer to be widely read. 2000. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92EQUIANO

The lifeboat baronet : launching the RNLI /Janet Gleeson. "The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is a treasured charity whose mission is to save lives at sea, but what is known of its founder, Sir William Hillary? Back in the early nineteenth century, when death from shipwreck was a tragic reality of life, the handsome, charismatic and adventurous Hillary decided to atone for his chequered past and do something to prevent it. His journey from Regency rake to national hero led him to leave his slave-owning family in Liverpool, travel abroad, mingle with royalty, marry an heiress and, during the Napoleonic Wars, head the largest volunteer army in Britain. Then, financial and marital catastrophe struck. Forced to seek exile on the Isle of Man, a harrowing shipwreck and guilty conscience inspired his historic campaign. Having battled to found the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck (today's RNLI) in 1824, Hillary's commitment never faltered. He frequently took to the lifeboats, braving terrifying storms and saving hundreds of lives, despite never learning to swim. Thanks to him the sea remains a safer place today. In this comprehensive biography of Sir William Hillary, Janet Gleeson draws on previously unpublished lettersm - many written by Hillary himself - revealing the RNLI's development, Hillary's links with the Jamaican slave trade, as well as the tribulations of his private life."--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92HILLARY

Free slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean civil war / Joseph Kaifala. "This book is a historical narrative covering various periods in Sierra Leone's history from the fifteenth century to the end of its civil war in 2002. It entails the history of Sierra Leone from its days as a slave harbor through to its founding as a home for free slaves, and toward its political independence and civil war. In 1462, the country was discovered by a Portuguese explorer, Pedro de Sintra, who named it Serra Lyoa (Lion Mountains). Sierra Leone later became a lucrative hub for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. At the end of slavery in England, Freetown was selected as a home for the Black Poor, free slaves in England after the Somerset ruling. The Black Poor were joined by the Nova Scotians, American slaves who supported or fought with the British during the American Revolution. The Maroons, rebellious slaves from Jamaica, arrived in 1800. The Recaptives, freed in enforcement of British antislavery laws, were also taken to Freetown. Freetown became a British colony in 1808 and Sierra Leone obtained political independence from Britain in 1961. The development of the country was derailed by the death of its first Prime Minister, Sir Milton Margai, and thirty years after independence the country collapsed into a brutal civil war."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 966.4

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