Abstract
Readers of the IMEHA Newsletter, one of our sister publications, will know that at least eight international gatherings of maritime historians are taking place between the start of May and the end of August 2015. The temporal, spatial and topical range of these meetings is remarkable. A single event is the focus of one conference, for in Southampton, on 31 July–3 August, the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt is to be commemorated by researchers charged with assessing the maritime and terrestrial contexts in which this localized, internecine dispute was decided. A rather broader remit has been adopted by the convenors of two maritime history sessions at the XVIIth World Economic History Congress, to be held in Kyoto, Japan, on 3–7 August 2015. Whereas both consider the emerging global economy of the early modern era, one focuses the entrepreneurial aptitude of seafarers in the complex legal, commercial and political realms in which they worked, and the other examines the trading patterns and institutional structures that developed as Europeans increasingly interacted with the peoples and politics of the Asian seas. Dalian Maritime University in China is the venue for a conference that has been called to mark the passage of 70 years since the cessation of the Second World War, and also to celebrate World Seafarers Day (25 June), through appraisals of seafaring in the 1939–45 conflict, maritime culture and underwater archaeology. Particular perspectives on maritime activity over time and space are to be addressed in conferences scheduled to take place in Estonia, Prague and Copenhagen, where participants are respectively invited to present their research findings on marine environmental history, maritime sociology and the exploitation of undersea oil and gas reserves. Given the richness and variety of the subjects to be examined in these conferences it is fitting that the programme of another event in the 2015 maritime history calendar – the ‘Connected Oceans’ meeting on 8–10 June in Porto – proposes to proceed down ‘new avenues of research’ in order to survey developments in the field of maritime historical studies over the past decade.
That such developments have been many and positive, as the 2015 conference calendar indicates, reflects the vitality of our particular subject area. It also demonstrates the relevance of an understanding of the past to an appreciation of contemporary issues, as well as the inherently transdisciplinary character of history, which is primarily a humanist discipline, whose principal human agents have acted individually and collectively according to a complex mix of psychological, biological, cultural, technological and environmental influences. The opportunity to develop these various perspectives on the maritime past further will arise in the week commencing 27 June 2016, when the 7th International Congress of Maritime History convenes in Perth, Western Australia. Here, the brief is fittingly broad, with researchers invited to address ‘Old Worlds, New Worlds? Emerging Themes in Maritime History’ in a programme that will encompass all historical periods and regions, and all aspects of humankind’s relationship with the seas and oceans. The closing date for proposals falls on 30 June 2015, and those engaged in all of the burgeoning sub-fields of maritime history are encouraged to apply.
Whatever their approach to the past, maritime historians should always be critically aware of the value of their primary sources. This is evident in the contributions to this issue of International Journal of Maritime History, which variously appraise, analyze and re-interpret materials as diverse as Greek classics, early-modern English port surveys, a Russian seafarer’s recollections, British shipping and naval periodicals, Dutch business accounts and secondary works on Australian whaling. The past continues to speak loudly to those who are willing to listen and learn!