The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  17. Ibid., pp. 7–12, and map 3, pp. 16–17.

  18. D. Schroeter, The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford, 2002), pp. 44–5.

  19. P. Fenton and D. Littman, Exile in the Maghreb: Jews under Islam, Sources and Documents, 997–1912 (Madison, 2016).

  20. Schroeter, Merchants of Essaouira, pp. 34–42.

  21. Quoted from Schroeter, Sultan’s Jew, p. 86; see also J. A. O. C. Brown, Crossing the Strait: Morocco, Gibraltar and Great Britain in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Leiden, 2012), p. 45.

  22. M. Abitbol, Les Commerçants du roi – Tujjār al-Sulṭān: une élite économique judéo-marocaine au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1998), letters 5–6, pp. 30–31, and letter 11, p. 37; M. Abitbol, Témoins et acteurs: les Corcos et l’histoire du Maroc contemporain – Mishpahat Qorqos: ve-ha-Historiya shel Maroqo bizemanenu (Jerusalem, 1977); Schroeter, Merchants of Essaouira, pp. 21, 23.

  23. D. Corcos, ‘Les Juifs du Maroc et leurs mellahs’, in D. Corcos, Studies in the History of the Jews of Morocco (Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 64–130; cf. S. Deshen, The Mellah Society: Jewish Community Life in Sherifian Morocco (Chicago, 1989).

  24. Schroeter, Sultan’s Jew, p. 110, fig. 14.

  25. For example, Schroeter, Merchants of Essaouira, p. 49.

  26. Ibid., pp. 40–41; Schroeter, Sultan’s Jew, p. 19.

  27. Schroeter, Merchants of Essaouira, pp. 19, 79, 95–120.

  28. Brown, Crossing the Strait, pp. 125–7.

  29. Schroeter, Merchants of Essaoiura, pp. 125–8.

  30. Ibid., p. 50.

  31. Brown, Crossing the Strait, p. 129.

  32. Ibid., pp. 94–120, 127, 129–30.

  33. Schroeter, Sultan’s Jew, pp. 46, 78; Brown, Crossing the Strait, pp. 17, 49–51.

  34. Schroeter, Sultan’s Jew, pp. 44–5.

  35. F. Sequeira Dias, ‘Os empresários micaelenses no séclo XIX: o exemplo de sucesso de Elias Bensaúde (1807–1868)’, Análise Social, vol. 31 (1996), pp. 437–64, drawing on her doctoral thesis, Uma estratégia de sucesso numa economia periférica: a Casa Bensaúde e os Açores, 1800–1873 (Ponta Delgada, 1993).

  36. Figures from T. B. Duncan, Atlantic Islands: Madeira, the Azores and the Cape Verdes in Seventeenth-Century Commerce and Navigation (Chicago, 1972), pp. 1–4, 22, 162–3; A. Prata, ‘Porto Grande of S. Vicente: the Coal Business on an Atlantic Island’, in M. Suárez Bosa, ed., Atlantic Ports and the First Globalisation c.1850–1930 (Basingstoke, 2014), pp. 49–69.

  37. M. Serels, The Jews of Cape Verde: a Brief History (Brooklyn, 1997), pp. 21–4, 38.

  38. A. Jaffer, Lascars and Indian Ocean Seafaring, 1780–1860: Shipboard Life, Unrest and Mutiny (Martlesham, 2015).

  PART FIVE

  THE OCEANS CONTAINED

  48. Continents Divided, Oceans Conjoined

  1. G. Williams, ed., The Quest for the Northwest Passage (London, 2007), pp. 433–58.

  2. I. Sanderson, A History of Whaling (New York, 1993), pp. 213–17; A. Dudden, ‘The Sea of Japan/Korea’s East Sea’, in D. Armitage, A. Bashford and S. Sivasundaram, eds., Oceanic Histories (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 197–8.

  3. H. Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (New York, 1851), ch. 111.

  4. T. Toyoda, History of pre-Meiji Commerce in Japan (Tokyo, 1969), pp. 92–4.

  5. W. Beasley, The Japanese Experience: a Short History of Japan (London, 1999), pp. 191–3; B. Walker, A Concise History of Japan (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 145–6; W. J. Macpherson, The Economic Development of Japan 1868–1941 (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1995), p. 70, and also pp. 23–4; Toyoda, History of pre-Meiji Commerce, pp. 95–100.

  6. D. McCullough, The Path between the Seas: the Creation of the Panama Canal 1870–1914 (New York, 1977), p. 112.

  7. What follows is based on my Great Sea, pp. 545–55, where the creation of the Suez Canal is discussed at greater length.

  8. M. Parker, Hell’s Gorge: the Battle to Build the Panama Canal (2nd edn of Panama Fever (London, 2007), London, 2008), p. 15.

  9. Z. Karabell, Parting the Desert: the Creation of the Suez Canal (London, 2003), pp. 28–37; J. Marlowe, The Making of the Suez Canal (London, 1964), pp. 44–5.

  10. Karabell, Parting the Desert, pp. 131–2; Lord Kinross, Between Two Seas: the Creation of the Suez Canal (London, 1968), pp. 98–9.

  11. Karabell, Parting the Desert, p. 260; Kinross, Between Two Seas, p. 287.

  12. Marlowe, Making of the Suez Canal, pp. 255–75; Karabell, Parting the Desert, pp. 262–5; R. Blake, Disraeli (London, 1966), pp. 581–70.

  13. F. Hyde, Blue Funnel: a History of Alfred Holt and Company of Liverpool from 1865 to 1914 (Liverpool, 1956), pp. 20, 24.

  14. G. Lo Giudice, L’Austria, Trieste ed il Canale di Suez (Catania, 1981), pp. 180–81; Marlowe, Making of the Suez Canal, p. 260.

  15. McCullough, Path between the Seas, p. 34.

  16. Index to the Reports of the Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army (including the Reports of the Isthmian Canal Commission, 1899–1914), 1866–1912, vol. 2: Fortifications, Bridges, Panama Canal, etc., February 16 1914 (63rd Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, Document no. 740, Washington DC, 1916), p. 2551; Parker, Hell’s Gorge, pp. 11–12.

  17. McCullough, Path between the Seas, pp. 28–30.

  18. Parker, Hell’s Gorge, pp. 18–19.

  19. McCullough, Path between the Seas, p. 33; Parker, Hell’s Gorge, pp. 20–24.

  20. Quotation from Parker, Hell’s Gorge, p. 32, and more generally see pp. 27–33.

  21. Parker, Hell’s Gorge, pp. 38–9.

  22. McCullough, Path between the Seas, pp. 61–7; Parker, Hell’s Gorge, p. 46.

  23. Parker, Hell’s Gorge, pp. 55–6.

  24. Ibid., pp. 107, 109–10.

  25. McCullough, Path between the Seas, pp. 160–61; Parker, Hell’s Gorge, pp. 119–23.

  26. J. Greene, The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal (New York, 2009), p. 42.

  27. McCullough, Path between the Seas, pp. 205–12; Parker, Hell’s Gorge, pp. 160–62.

  28. Parker, Hell’s Gorge, p. 159.

  29. McCullough, Path between the Seas, pp. 240–41.

  30. Ibid., p. 254.

  31. Ibid., p. 255, whence also the quotation from Roosevelt.

  32. J. Davis, The Gulf: the Making of an American Sea (New York, 2017).

  33. A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea-Power upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston, 1890), p. 33.

  34. McCullough, Path between the Seas, pp. 253, 254–5, 259, 262–3, 268–9; Parker, Hell’s Gorge, p. 173.

  35. Greene, Canal Builders, pp. 10, 19–20.

  36. Greene, Canal Builders, pp. 46–7, 111–16.

  37. McCullough, Path between the Seas, pp. 409–21; Parker, Hell’s Gorge, pp. 238–48.

  38. McCullough, Path between the Seas, pp. 492–50, 428–9 (illustrations); Parker, Hell’s Gorge, pp. 211, 306–9; Greene, Canal Builders, pp. 15–18.

  39. McCullough, Path between the Seas, p. 610.

  40. Greene, Canal Builders, pp. 51, 95–107, 123–58.

  41. McCullough, Path between the Seas, pp. 611–12.

  42. Parker, Hell’s Gorge, pp. 368–70.

  49. Steaming to Asia, Paddling to America

  1. N. Jones, The Plimsoll Sensation: the Great Campaign to Save Lives at Sea (London, 2006), p. 10.

  2. Jones, Plimsoll Sensation, pp. 1–3.

  3. I take this to be the meaning of the comment by L. Paine, The Sea and Civilization: a Maritime History of the World (London, 2014), pp. 531–2.

  4. Jones, Plimsoll Sensation, ‘Appendix: Songs and Poems’, p. 314.

  5. Quoted in Jones, Plimsoll Sensation, ‘Appendix: Songs and Poems’, p. 315, from 1875.

  6. Jones, Plimsoll Sensation, pp. 201–10.

  7. Cited in Jones, Plimsoll Sensation, p. 236.

  8. Jones, Plimsoll Sensation, pp. 283–5.

  9. F. Hyde, Blue Funnel: A History of Alfred Holt and Company of Liverpool From 1865 to 1914 (Liverpool, 1956), pp. 13–16; F. Hyde,
Liverpool and the Mersey: an Economic History of a Port 1700–1970 (Newton Abbot, 1971), pp. 54–5 – much of the literature on Liverpool shipping was written by this one scholar.

  10. Hyde, Blue Funnel, p. 19; M. Falkus, The Blue Funnel Legend: A History of the Ocean Steamship Company (Basingstoke, 1990), pp. 92–8.

  11. G. Milne, ‘North of England Shipowners and Their Business Connections’, in L. Fischer and E. Lange, eds., International Merchant Shipping in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: the Comparative Dimension (St John’s, Nfdl., 2008), pp. 154–7.

  12. T. Hunt, Ten Cities That Made an Empire (London, 2014), pp. 387–94; Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey, pp. 31–4; F. Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic 1840–1973: a History of Shipping and Financial Management (London, 1975), pp. 129–30.

  13. Milne, ‘North of England Shipowners’, pp. 153, 159–64.

  14. Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, p. 102, fig. 10, steamship Nestor I; A. Prata, ‘Porto Grande of S. Vicente: the Coal Business on an Atlantic Island’, in M. Suárez Bosa, ed., Atlantic Ports and the First Gobalisation c. 1850–1930 (Basingstoke, 2014)’, pp. 49–53.

  15. D. Howarth and S. Howarth, The Story of P&O: the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (2nd edn, London, 1994), pp. 33–4.

  16. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey, pp. 51–2; Howarth and Howarth, Story of P&O, pp. 15, 94.

  17. Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, pp. 37–9.

  18. F. Hyde, Far Eastern Trade 1860–1914 (London, 1973), p. 22; Hyde, Blue Funnel, pp. 37–9; also Howarth and Howarth, Story of P&O, pp. 94–5.

  19. Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, p. 4.

  20. Hyde, Blue Funnel, pp. 24–5, 32–3, 182 (table of ships in fleet); Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey, pp. 57, 59–61; Hyde, Far Eastern Trade, pp. 25–7; Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, pp. 60–66.

  21. Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, pp. 105–7, 111; Hyde, Blue Funnel, pp. 56–70; Hyde, Far Eastern Trade, pp. 23, 28–32.

  22. Howarth and Howarth, Story of P&O, pp. 30–35, 101.

  23. Ibid., pp. 60–62.

  24. Ibid., p. 80; F. Welsh, A History of Hong Kong (2nd edn, London, 1997), p. 162.

  25. Ibid., pp. 54–5.

  26. Hyde, Far Eastern Trade, pp. 17–19.

  27. Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic, pp. 75, 84–6.

  28. Ibid., pp. 15–16, 28–9, 77, 94–101.

  29. R. Gillespie, Early Belfast: the Origins and Growth of an Ulster Town to 1750 (Belfast, 2007); S. Royle, Portrait of an Industrial City: Changing Belfast 1750–1914 (Belfast, 2011); J. P. Lynch, An Unlikely Success Story: the Belfast Shipping Industry 1880–1935 (Belfast, 2001), pp. 2–9, 67.

  30. M. Moss and J. Hume, Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast, 1861–1986 (Belfast, 1986), pp. 12–14, 144, 146; Lynch, Unlikely Success Story, p. 61.

  31. S. Tenold, ‘Norwegian Shipping in the Twentieth Century’, in Fischer and Lange, eds., International Merchant Shipping, p. 57.

  32. Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic, pp. 61–2.

  33. C. Brautaset and S. Tenold, ‘Lost in Calculation? Norwegian Merchant Shipping in Asia, 1870–1914’, in M. Fusaro and A. Polónia, eds., Maritime History as Global History (St John’s, Nfdl., 2010), pp. 206, 217, 219–20.

  34. Tenold, ‘Norwegian Shipping’, pp. 59–60.

  35. Brautaset and Tenold, ‘Lost in Calculation?’, p. 207.

  36. A. Hardy, Typhoon Wallem: a Personalised Chronicle of the Wallem Group Limited (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 1–2, 21–3, 25, 37–8.

  37. Ibid., p. 45.

  38. G. Harlaftis, A History of Greek-Owned Shipping: the Making of an International Tramp Fleet, 1830 to the Present Day (London, 1996), p. xx; G. Harlaftis, ‘The Greek Shipping Sector, c.1850–2000’, in Fischer and Lange, eds., International Merchant Shipping, p. 79.

  39. Harlaftis, History of Greek-Owned Shipping, pp. 52–4, 108–9, table 4; Harlaftis, ‘The Greek Shipping Sector’, p. 80, and table 2, p. 81.

  40. Harlaftis, ‘The Greek Shipping Sector’, pp. 82–4.

  41. Åland Maritime Museum, The Last Windjammers: Grain Races round Cape Horn (Mariehamn, 1998), pp. 10–11, 15; E. Newby, The Last Grain Race (3rd edn, London, 2014), p. xx.

  42. Åland Maritime Museum, Last Windjammers, p. 14; Newby, Last Grain Race, pp. xx–xxi; H. Thesleff, Farewell Windjammer: an Account of the Last Circumnavigation of the Globe by a Sailing Ship and the Last Grain Race from Australia to England (London, 1951), pp. 2–3.

  43. Thesleff, Farewell Windjammer, pp. 3, 134; Newby, Last Grain Race, pp. 201–3; Åland Maritime Museum, Last Windjammers, pp. 22–6, 30.

  44. Newby, Last Grain Race; Thesleff, Farewell Windjammer, pp. 4–5.

  45. Thesleff, Farewell Windjammer, p. 9; Åland Maritime Museum, Last Windjammers, pp. 22, 41–2.

  50. War and Peace, and More War

  1. K. O’Rourke, ‘The Economist and Global History’, in J. Belich, J. Darwin, M. Frenz and C. Wickham, The Prospect of Global History (Oxford, 2016), p. 47, especially n. 11.

  2. Cited by S. Conrad, What is Global History? (Princeton, 2016), pp. 93–4.

  3. O’Rourke, ‘Economist and Global History’, pp. 48–9, 55 (and n. 30); also K. O’Rourke and J. Williamson, Globalization and History: the Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1999).

  4. M. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World: a Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 25–9, 35–49, and map 2, p. 42.

  5. Ibid., pp. 56–9.

  6. Ibid., pp. 39–40, 107 fig. 2 (Chilehaus).

  7. Ibid., p. 45.

  8. Ibid., pp. 49–55, 75–9.

  9. Cited in J. Steinberg, Yesterday’s Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet (London, 1965), p. 208.

  10. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 213, 217–18; M. Falkus, The Blue Funnel Legend: A History of the Ocean Steamship Company (Basingstoke, 1990), pp. 157–61; F. Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic 1840–1973: A History of Shipping and Financial Management (London, 1975), p. 169; D. Howarth and S. Howarth, The Story of P&O: The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (2nd edn, London, 1994), p. 117.

  11. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 217, 231; Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, p. 173; Howarth, Story of P&O, p. 124; F. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey: an Economic History of a Port 1700–1970 (Newton Abbott, 1971), p. 147.

  12. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 235–7.

  13. O’Rourke, ‘Economist and Global History’, p. 55; Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, p. 203.

  14. Howarth and Howarth, Story of P&O, p. 125; W. J. Macpherson, The Economic Development of Japan 1868–1941 (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1995), p. 31.

  15. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 247, 269.

  16. Cited in Howarth, Story of P&O, p. 129; Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, p. 229; Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey, p. 149.

  17. Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, pp. 175, 190–92; Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic, p. 181.

  18. Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic, pp. 171–3, 180; Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 254–5.

  19. Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic, pp. 173–6, 180, 227–34.

  20. Ibid., pp. 191–218; loan figures: pp. 214–15; Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 253–4.

  21. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, p. 248.

  22. Quoted by Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic, p. 255; also pp. 264–7, 280.

  23. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey, pp. 160–77.

  24. Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, pp. 240, 245.

  25. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 277–8; Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, p. 236.

  26. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 282–3.

  27. S. Roskill, A Merchant Fleet in War: Alfred Holt & Co., 1939–1945 (London, 1962), pp. 19, 23–8.

  28. Ibid., p. 47.

  29. Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic, pp. 260–67.

  30. Howarth, Story of P&O, pp. 138–40, 145–6.

  31. A.
Hardy, Typhoon Wallem a Personalised Chronicle of the Wallem Group Limited (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 64–6; F. Welsh, A History of Hong Kong (2nd den, London, 1977), pp. 412–23.

  32. Roskill, Merchant Fleet in War, map of ships sunk in the war, on front endpaper; 87 ships: p. 11; Pyrrhus: pp. 29–33; Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, p. 237 gives 77.

  33. Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, pp. 237–40, 245.

  34. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey, pp. 178–80; Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 281, 284, 304–6; Falkus, Blue Funnel Legend, pp. 247–8 (Churchill).

  51. The Oceans in a Box

  1. D. Howarth and S. Howarth, The Story of P&O: the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (2nd edn, London, 1994), p. 151.

  2. M. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World: a Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 290–93.

  3. F. Welsh, A History of Hong Kong (2nd edn, London, 1997), pp. 442, 444, 451–2.

  4. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 299–300.

  5. J. C. Perry, Singapore: Unlikely Power (New York, 2017), pp. 165–8, 171.

  6. M. R. Frost and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Singapore: a Biography (Singapore and Hong Kong, 2009), pp. 322–35; Perry, Singapore, pp. 148–9, 163; Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 67–8.

  7. F. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey: an Economic History of a Port 1700–1970 (Newton Abbot, 1971), p. 191; Howarth and Howarth, Story of P&O, p. 173; on shipyard workers: A. Reid, The Tide of Democracy: Shipyard Workers and Social Relations in Britain, 1870–1950 (Manchester, 2010).

  8. Howarth and Howarth, Story of P&O, pp. 165–6, 174.

  9. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey, p. 187.

  10. Howarth and Howarth, Story of P&O, pp. 151, 156–7.

  11. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, p. 306; Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey, pp. 192–3, 197.

  12. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World, pp. 311–13; p. 312: map of Rotterdam port.

  13. K. Hudson and J. Pettifer, Diamonds in the Sky: a Social History of Air Travel (London, 1979), pp. 58, 61.

  14. Ibid., p. 67.

  15. Ibid., pp. 69, 79, 81, 84–7.

  16. Howarth and Howarth, Story of P&O, p. 163.