The Edwin Fox

How an Ordinary Sailing Ship Connected the World in the Age of Globalization, 1850-1914
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-4696-7655-5
Verlag: University of North Carolina Press

Buch, Englisch, 304 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 635 g

It began as a small, slow, and unadorned sailing vessel—in a word, ordinary. Later, it was a weary workhorse in the age of steam. But the story of the Edwin Fox reveals how an everyday merchant ship drew together a changing world and its people in an extraordinary age of rising empires, sweeping economic transformation, and social change. This fascinating work of global history offers a vividly detailed and engaging narrative of globalization writ small, viewed from the decks and holds of a single vessel. The Edwin Fox connected the lives and histories of millions, though most never even saw it.

Built in Calcutta in 1853, the Edwin Fox was chartered by the British navy as a troop transport during the Crimean War. In the following decades, it was sold, recommissioned, and refitted by an increasingly far-flung constellation of militaries and merchants. It sailed to exotic ports carrying luxury goods, mundane wares, and all kinds of people: not just soldiers and officials but indentured laborers brought from China to Cuba, convicts and settlers being transported from the British Empire to western Australia and New Zealand—with dire consequences for local Indigenous peoples—and others. But the power of this story rests in the everyday ways people, nations, economies, and ideas were knitted together in this foundational era of our modern world. Readers will never see globalization the same way again.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cothran, Boyd

Shubert, Adrian

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Globalisierung, Transformationsprozesse
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Geschichte der Schifffahrt
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten

Über Autor(innen)

Boyd Cothran is associate professor of history at York University. Adrian Shubert is professor emeritus of history at York University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.