The sea has been the site of radical changes in human lives and national histories. It has been an agent of colonial oppression but also of indigenous resistance, a site of loss, dispersal and enforced migration but also of new forms of solidarity and affective kinship. SeaChanges re-evaluates the view that history happens mainly on dry land and makes the case for a creative reinterpretation of the role of the sea: not merely as a passage from one country to the next, but a historical site deserving close study.
Table of Contents:
Introduction, 1. Deep Times, Deep Spaces: Civilizing the Sea, 2. Costume Changes: Passing at Sea and on the Beach, 3. The Global Economy and the Sulu Zone: Connections, Commodities and Culture, 4. Ahab's Boat: Non-European Seamen in Western Ships of Exploration and Commerce, 5. Staying Afloat: Literary Shipboard Encounters from Columbus to Equiano, 6. The Red Atlantic; or, 'a terrible blast swept over the heaving sea', 7. Chartless Voyages and Protean Geographies: Nineteenth-Century American Fictions of the Black Atlantic, 8. 'At Sea-Coloured Passenger', 9. Slavery, Insurance and Sacrifice in the Black Atlantic, 10. Cast Away: The Uttermost Parts of the Earth
About the Author :
Bernhard Klein is Lecturer in Literature at the University of Essex. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Fictions of the Sea: CriticalPerspectives on the Ocean in British Literature andCulture. Gesa Mackenthun is Professor in American Studies at Rostock University in Germany. In addition to numerous essays on the topics of nineteenth-century American literature, colonialism, and postcolonial studies, she is the author of Metaphors of Dispossession:American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire,1492-1637.
Review :
"This terrific collection makes major contributions to several dynamic fields of historical inquiry, as it decisively demonstrates the centrality-not marginality-of an oceanic perspective to our understanding of the past. The volume is exciting both for what it achieves and the possibilities it suggests
." -- Lisa Norling, University of Minnesota
"Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean builds upon recent theoretical developments in Maritime Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Postcolonial Studies, and Cultural Studies to place our understanding of the sea in a deeply historicized, complex, nuanced, and dynamic context. It joins important works like Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic and Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh's The Many-Headed Hydra in extending and radically reshaping our understanding of a significant arena of contemporary scholarship
." -- Jim Miller, George Washington University
