English Maritime Empire

8 Key excerpts on "English Maritime Empire"

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  The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds 1400-1800

  • Claire Jowitt, Craig Lambert, Steve Mentz, Claire Jowitt, Craig Lambert, Steve Mentz(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4

  The cartography of the sea

  Mapping England’s ‘mastery of the oceans’

  Alistair S. Maeer

  The so-called early modern ‘Age of European Expansion and Empire’ heralded momentous changes across the globe that still influence us today. Disparate peoples, cultures, flora, and fauna collided and unleashed a dizzying array of transformative experiences as peoples began to venture beyond their local shorelines and consistently interact with distant lands. This transformation was the product of a new embrace of the sea, one that increasingly led to claims of ‘mastery’ in the period 1400–1800. This mastery of the seas, and the related rise of commerce and empires, were the products of new maritime communities’ abilities to traverse the globe reliably. Maritime communities’ innovations in navigation, financial structures, and shipping, were the essential components of early modern European commercial expansionism and imperialism. Specifically, by the seventeenth century, the art of navigation and the act of traversing waterways increasingly became scientific endeavours with the use of charts. As a visual instrument for navigation constructed to depict coastlines, ports of call, and hazards, nautical cartography inherently reflects the willed perceptions of its makers and audience. Accordingly, as visual representations of perceived reality, cartographic sources (maps and charts) offer unrivalled opportunities to assess the evolving conceptions and conventions of peoples of the past. In effect, early modern nautical cartography is as much an embodiment of European mercantile and ministerial interests as it is an artistic and scientific artefact conveying ‘mastery’ of the sea.

  A comparative study of seventeenth-century European nautical cartography reveals that English overseas interests shifted from an emphasis on pragmatic mercantilism to a growing expression of territorial dominion and ambition, eventually emulating established European modalities of imperialism. Studying the evolution of English charting, by contrasting the relatively staid presentation of early seventeenth-century English charts to other contemporaneous European traditions, broadens Alison Games’ theory, primarily based on textual sources, of cosmopolitanism as an expression of pre-Restoration English attitudes.1

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  Technology and Entrepot Colonialism in Singapore, 1819-1940

  • Goh Chor Boon(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS Publishing

    (Publisher)

  3 Maritime Technology and Development of the Port A close relationship existed between the expansion of the British Empire and British scientific exploration of lands beyond. In the nineteenth century, geography became a significant “imperial science” in British schools and universities. Exploration and map compilation in far-flung regions remained a source of enormous public interest but as geography developed in to a professional discipline, it “began to expand beyond its original focus on exploration and topographical map-making to assume intellectual authority over a wide range of regionally specific environmental, economic, social, political and cultural evidence”. 1 Both the amateur explorers and the university-based scholars provided the geographical knowledge necessary for overseas conquest and colonization. 2 The Empire, with its extensive material resources and geographical reach, allowed travellers and scientific explorers to sail into nooks and corners of lands in the periphery and pursue their interests on a genuinely global scale. The expeditions of James Cook, Joseph Banks and Joseph Conrad resulted in huge collections of scientific information which contributed to the development of British science. The gathering of such knowledge relied on a set of institutions closely linked to the imperial government, including the Admiralty, the Hydrographer’s Office, the East India Company, the Royal Engineers, the Ordinance Survey, the Geological Survey and the Kew Gardens. The island of Singapore appeared on a variety of regional maps with the Europeans making inroads into the seas and lands of Southeast Asia from the sixteenth century. 3 Charting of the Straits of Malacca and the adjacent coastline, including the Straits of Singapore, was an important preoccupation for the Portuguese, the Maritime Technology and Development of the Port 65 Dutch, and, the English.

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  Modern Naval History

  Debates and Prospects

  • Richard Harding(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  The English raids into the Caribbean, particularly the exploits of Sir Francis Drake and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, linked maritime commerce, wealth and national defence as the central virtuous conditions of England’s rise to economic supremacy and political liberty. 15 In 1940, during the deep crisis of that summer, this legend provided the theme for the Ford Lectures at Oxford. James Williamson surveyed the ‘oceanic interest’ that came to dominate Britain from the sixteenth century. Britain was vulnerable, but oceanic enterprise had produced the means of defending it. Three of those means may be enumerated; the most efficient fighting fleet the world has seen, its sea-talent as well as its material having common origin with those of the innumerable merchant fleets that traversed every ocean; an elastic and expanding wealth, ill-distributed, no doubt, but unprecedented in bulk and resilience to disaster; and a tradition of statesmanship, an instinctive strategy, guiding even mediocre men to do the right thing, bred from two centuries of familiarity with the whole earth as a field of play, and proving able after anxious years to use the sea-power and the wealth to overcome the greatest military ascendancy that continental Europe had produced. 16 Similarly, the Dutch depredations on Spanish commerce, their massive expansion of colonial possessions at the expense of the old Portuguese empire (incorporated into the Spanish orbit in 1580) and their defeat of a Spanish Armada at the Battle of the Downs in 1639 provide a similar NAVIES, POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT, 1500–1789 69 narrative for the emergence of their Golden Age in the second half of the seventeenth century. 17 These events provided the focus for many of the early histories of navies and naval warfare. They are an essential part of the national myths which had crystallized by the end of the nineteenth century.

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  Ruling the Waves

  The Political Economy of International Shipping

  • Alan W. Cafruny(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  These figures do not include U.S.-owned vessels registered under foreign flags. 5. OECD, Maritime Transport Committee, Maritime Transport, 1982 (Paris: OECD, 1983), table 21a, p. 157. 6. Thorsten Rinman and Rigmer Linden, Shipping: How It Works (Gothenburg, Sweden: Rinman and Linden, 1979), p. 15. 7. Ralph Davis, English Merchant Shipping and Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Seventeenth Century (London: HMSO, 1975), p. 32. 8. Judith Blow Williams, British Commercial Policy and Trade Expansion, 1750-1850 (Ox- ford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 27. On the development of English shipping, see also Ralph Davis, The Rise cf the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1962); C. E. Faylc, A Short History of the World's Shipping Industry 40 GLOBAL SHIPPING REGIMES merchant shipping figured prominently in the development of the Anglo- German political and commercial rivalry that culminated in World War I. During the mercantilist period, international rivalry focused on the control and exploitation of colonial territories. Consequendy, in an era de- fined by the lack of cross-trading (carriage of cargo between countries by a third party), control of shipping played a decisive role in the division and redivision of the world economy among a small group of great powers. Indeed, the Navigation Acts served as the legal foundation of mercan- tilism, and their abolition signified the beginning of the laissez-faire era. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the importance of shipping has been partially concealed by the commanding position of the hege- monic powers—first Britain, then the United States—on the seas. Ger- many's immediate challenge to Britain was primarily Continental, both for reasons of geography and because of Britain's formidable maritime power. Similarly, the Soviet challenge to the United States is primarily land-based, although it does contain an important maritime dimension.

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  Britain's Maritime Empire

  Southern Africa, the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, 1763–1820

  • John McAleer(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  European empires in the region. 146 Furthermore, the triangular rela- tionship between Britain, rival empires and various settler colonists further illuminates the complex interplay of political forces shaping the region in the late eighteenth century, subverting any notions of a simple and clear rise to British dominance in the area. Focusing on a number of incidents and examples, drawn from across the geographi- cal scope of the maritime region, this chapter demonstrates how closely entwined the British presence there was with other competing empires of trade and settlement. The second half of the book explores how this maritime ‘world’ at the southern reaches of the Atlantic and Indian oceans operated in practice, the ways in which it was increasingly incorporated into the British Empire in Asia, the limits and possibilities for exercising British power, and the practical connections that linked it with the Indian subconti- nent. Building on models developed by scholars of the Atlantic world, and being increasingly explored by those interested in Britain’s Indian Ocean world, these chapters concentrate on the movement of people, information and ideas within and beyond this region. As many scholars have identified, the oceanic networks that sustained the East India Company’s trade and, ultimately, the British presence in Asia relied on the movement of people, goods and objects. In many ways, Britain’s interest in the entire route to the East was predicated on the movement of goods: the successful and regular return of large shipments of Asian commodities to sell in western markets. But the southern arc of this maritime route was also associated with such movements and exchanges. Objects, people and ideas moved within the region, and between the region and the Indian subcontinent.

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  Asian Maritime Power in the 21st Century

  Strategic Transactions China, India and Southeast Asia

  • Vijay Sakhuja(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS Publishing

    (Publisher)

  It was his strong belief that there was intense competition among nations to carve out resource-rich areas and the navy had an all-important task of guarding China’s maritime interests. 63 Thus, formal and formidable foundations were laid for furthering maritime power. INDIAN MARITIME DEVELOPMENTS India has a distinguished ancient maritime history that was nurtured on strong commerce, trade, movement of peoples, spread of culture and the rooting of Indian influences in the Mediterranean, Persia, Southeast Asia and China. The Mauryas, Satavahnas, Chalukyas, Cholas, and Chera kingdoms had a flourishing maritime enterprise and some of them had developed powerful navies that engaged in warfare. These global links were significant for the growth of Indian influences and trade that flourished on high growth rates and expanding trade and India and the Indian Ocean emerged as the centres 16 Asian Maritime Power in the 21st Century of maritime activity and maritime enterprise. 64 Historical maritime and naval developments in India are discussed in greater details in Chapter 7. Significantly, abundance of raw materials and goods, prosperity, and wealth were the magnet for the European initiative to trade with India that later turned into colonial subjugation. In the colonial times, the British had developed a minimal maritime infrastructure in India that was to cater to transport raw materials and goods to England and also for sustaining the expeditionary British forces in Asia. Engaging the vast Indian human resources, the British exploited both civilian and military labour to support their overseas colonial operations in Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. The Royal Indian Marine (RIM) was established in 1892 with an initial force of seven ships and about 2,000 men. 65 The RIM was the principal force that was deployed in campaigns in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Burma. The RIM also saw action in terms of convoy duties in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.

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  Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai

  Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550–1700

  • Tonio Andrade, Xing Hang, Anand A. Yang, Kieko Matteson(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • University of Hawaii Press

    (Publisher)

  1 I NTRODUCTION The East Asian Maritime Realm in Global History, 1500–1700 Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang M aritime East Asia is a contentious place. Traversed by some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and endowed with rich fisheries and huge deposits of oil, it is a confusing morass of contested sovereignties and geopolitical rivalries. Few maritime regions today are subject to such dissonant and dangerous claims and counterclaims, with Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, and Bru-neian pirates, statesmen, soldiers, and civilians disputing isolated—and of-ten uninhabited—atolls. An East Asian war is more likely to erupt over the Diaoyu or Spratly Islands than over any land borders. This unsettled situation is a legacy of the peculiar history of East Asia’s maritime realm. Stretching from the Strait of Malacca to the Sea of Japan and centered upon the East and South China Seas, the seaways of East Asia have been a core region of international trade for centuries. However, dur-ing the period from 1500 to 1700, the velocity and scale of that commerce increased dramatically. The lucrative export of massive quantities of silver from Japan for Chinese silk and Southeast Asian tropical goods wove the region together into a coherent zone of exchange. Besides the Chinese junks, the Japanese red-seal ( shuin ) vessels, and the Southeast Asian jongs that be-came a staple of its ports and sea lanes, Indian dhows, Spanish galleons, and Dutch and English men-of-war increasingly connected maritime East Asia to a thriving global economic system that also comprised the Indian Ocean, Europe, and the Americas. Maritime East Asia shares much in common with other maritime “worlds”—the Mediterranean World, the Atlantic World, and the Indian Ocean World. These zones of trade and communication have received far more scholarly attention, and in fact, historians of East Asia have tried to understand East Asian waterways in terms of those other oceans.

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  Nationalizing Empires

  • Stefan Berger, Alexei Miller, Stefan Berger, Alexei Miller(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Central European University Press

    (Publisher)

  6 Maps were a means of representing the empire as a more coherent entity than it in fact was. The Mercator projection distorted the edges of the map in a way which emphasized the size of the empire while basing it on the Greenwich Meridian, estab-lished as the international standard in 1884, making the British Isles the focal point of the world. The empire could be shown in pink or red while the rest of the world was blank or lacking in detail. This gave a spurious impression of unity. 7 One of the problems with trying to create a census was the fact that the empire was a rapidly moving target. It never seemed to stay still for long enough to measure, a problem familiar from quantum physics. Growth was a constant process throughout our period. The so-called first British Empire was based in the Atlantic and dominated by trade which was suffused with the enslavement of Africans and colonies of white settlement. The core was the thirteen colonies in North America where settlers of British origin predominated while the outlier in Quebec was pri-marily French and Catholic in ethnicity. The West Indian possessions were over-whelmingly slave societies with a tiny white elite but their sugar, along with the to-bacco of the Chesapeake and the naval supplies of New England, were the backbone of this imperial economy. On a lesser scale in the eighteenth century were the pos-sessions—managed by the East India Company—in the Indian sub-continent. After the American colonies won their independence, expansion in India seemed to be the new trend, though in fact the two were parallel in many ways. The Atlantic remained the focus of British trade into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, though with a 5 Paul Kennedy, “Mahan versus Mackinder: Two Interpretations of British Sea Power,” in Strategy and Diplomacy 1870–1945 (Glasgow: Fontana Press, 1983). 6 A. J. Christopher, “The Quest for a Census of the British Empire, 1840–1940,” Journal of Historical Geography 34 (2008): 268–85.

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