People, Place and Power on the Nineteenth-Century Waterfront

This book explores the tenuous existence of seafarers, divided between their time on the ocean and their residence in sailortown economies geared to exploit them. Particular attention is given both to the contribution of seafarers as a global workforce into the nineteenth century, and to their help in creating vibrant multicultural enclaves in port cities worldwide. In addition, research explores the scandalized opinions of outside observers, challenging ideas about public behavior and relationships. Sailortown myths persisted far into the twentieth century, to the detriment of older waterfront districts and their residents, and readers will find this book is invaluable in casting new light on forgotten communities, whose lives bridged urban, maritime and global histories.

Auteur

Graeme J. Milne is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Liverpool, UK. He works on urban, maritime and economic history, and is the author of North East England, 1850-1914 (2006) and Trade and Traders in mid-Victorian Liverpool (2000).

Contenu

1. Introduction. - i. Literatures, entanglements and spaces. - ii. Voices. - iii. Sailortowns in time and space: A brief tour. - 2. The seafarer in the age of sail. - i. Representing the seafarer. - ii. Mobility, identity and markets. - iii. Working in a peculiar industry. - iv. Choices. - 3. The maritime-urban frontier. - i. Sailortown and the Victorian urban crisis. - ii. Sailortown and the cosmopolitan port city. - iii. Sailortown's streets. - iv. Spaces of enticement. - v. Threats and dangers. - vi. Imagined places. - 4. Crimps and crimping. - i. The mythic crimp. - iii. Controlling spaces. - iv. Depredations. - v. Crimps and market power. - 5. Visions of home. - i. Family lives. - ii. The seamen's boarding-house. - iii. Sailors' Homes. - iv. Missions to seamen. - v. Institutional landscapes. - 6. The state in sailortown. - i. The war on desertion. - ii. Regulating the spaces of crimping. - iii. 'Government crimping'. - iv. Documents, identities and the global subaltern. - v.Public health and sailortown's sexual entanglements. - 7. Legacies: Sailortown in the twentieth century. - i. Race and place on the waterfront. - ii. War, Depression, and the welfare of seafarers. - Conclusion. - Sources and Bibliography