Tag: maritime

  • Intersecting port cities: PTUC members collaborate with the Port Cities Research Centre, Kobe, Japan

    Intersecting port cities: PTUC members collaborate with the Port Cities Research Centre, Kobe, Japan

    In June, four members of the history team at Portsmouth participated in a series of field trips, presentations, and workshops with academics from Kobe University in Japan. In this blog, one of the founding members of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures research group, Dr Rob James, who is a senior lecturer in history, discusses the visit and what potential future opportunities the collaboration promises.

    As part of our goal to extend links with other institutions worldwide, four members of the University’s Port Towns and Urban Cultures (PTUC) project, Dr Mel Bassett, Professor Brad Beaven, Dr Karl Bell and Dr Rob James, travelled to Kobe, Japan in late-June to meet scholars from the Port Cities Research Centre (PCRC) at Kobe University. The aim of the visit was to both collaborate on port city research and explore research interests between Portsmouth’s and Kobe’s academic communities. Both universities have strong research interests in history, literature, sociology, politics, education and languages, and during the visit we realized that there were great opportunities for working together.

    The PTUC crew at the ‘Intersecting Port Cities’ workshop

    On the first day of the visit members from PTUC and PCRC gave presentations on their various research areas at the Intersecting Port Cities. Kobe and Portsmouth. Their History and Potentialities workshop. This provided a chance for each of us to familiarize ourselves with both groups’ research interests and start to think about ways we could develop future collaborations. While both Kobe and Portsmouth are port cities, they are very different in terms of their history and social composition. Portsmouth is a city with deep naval roots, but Kobe’s port is more industrial, with strong commercial links to large manufacturers such as Kawasaki. Due to its broader industrial base, Kobe is a wealthier city, but we learned that pockets of deprivation still existed, particularly in areas with a strong immigrant community. Despite these economic and social differences between the ports, both operated (and still do) as contact zones in which people from differing cultures meet and mix. Both are waterfront cities at the intersection of maritime and urban space, offering the chance of cultural exchange that both reinforces and challenges local, national and international boundaries. The comparative histories of Kobe and Portsmouth discussed in these workshops thus helped us hone our methodologies and understanding of port cities in general.

    Rob James presenting at the ‘Intersecting Port Cities’ workshop

    Although these research workshops focused on a comparative analysis of port cities, it became clear from our discussions that there was the potential to work together on themes such as citizenship, ethnicity, ‘race’, education, translation and cultural transmission between East and West. All of these areas could involve academics from a range of disciplines at each university, and plans have been put into place to link researchers from both universities’ various faculties. For example, Rob James’ research into the cinema culture of ports links well with the work being conducted by postdoctoral researchers at Kobe University, so plans are afoot to work on collaborative projects in which the cinema cultures of Kobe and Portsmouth are compared and contrasted. After this thought-provoking workshop we were treated to dinner on the Luminous Kobe II pleasure cruiser, and while we sailed around the city’s harbour, eating an array of delicious food from sushi to Kobe beef, our PCRC partners continued to share fascinating stories about the development of the port of Kobe and its rich industrial, economic and social-cultural histories.

    During the following days we engaged in a variety of trips to areas of historical interest, such as Kobe’s theatre district and ‘foreign quarter’, the Kobe Centre for Overseas Migration and Cultural Interaction, and the Kobe Planet Film Archive. These visits allowed us to see how identities in Kobe have been shaped and negotiated, especially through the city’s economic migration and its industries’ working communities. The visits also gave us a fascinating insight into how the city has changed over time, particularly the ways in which the ebbs and flows of the economy have affected the city’s cultural development. Indeed, while walking around the city, it became clear to us that the mapping project we have established at Portsmouth (that tracks the development of its ‘sailortown’ culture) could also be rolled out in Kobe. Such a task would enable the diverse and multilayered heritage of Kobe to be captured and shared with anyone interested in understanding the port’s history. As well as being taken on these very informative trips covering the city’s history, we were also introduced to the various outreach activities with which PCRC’s members are involved, including the Kobe Foreigners Friendship Centre and Takatori Community Centre, where we were told about the ways in which minority communities have been given a ‘voice’ in the broader Kobe community. We also visited Kobe City Archive and were introduced to many archival sources, including newspapers and trade directories, that showed us what a wealth of material there is available for us to use to enable us to further explore the port’s history while working collaboratively with academics at Kobe University.

    Kobe theatre district

    In fact, many opportunities for collaboration were discussed across the four days of the workshops, and it was at the final workshop session where both research groups put forward areas where we had identified real prospects for working together in the future. There was very clear potential to develop interdisciplinary projects that will showcase the research of both of our centres on the international stage. We also recognized opportunities to submit large funding bids to research councils that would allow us to fuse PTUC’s European port town network with the Asian consortium of universities, and thus help us to further explore the relationship between urban and maritime societies. In addition, we made initial plans for an international conference to be held jointly by the two centres, with plans for publications arising from the papers presented. We are also aiming to start a collaborative research project on Japanese culture and the West.

    Kobe port from aboard the pleasure cruiser ‘Kobe Luminous II’

    Overall, our visit to Kobe helped us to establish strong links with Asia, and particularly Japan, allowing us to solidify the port towns’ methodology while also establishing collaborative ways that the University of Portsmouth’s PTUC group could work with its new partner. Indeed, in discussions with our Kobe University colleagues, we have also identified opportunities for exchanges for both academics and students between the two institutions. We’ll keep you posted with future developments!

    PTUC would like to thank the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, an organization that aims to support closer links between the UK and Japan, for its generous financial contribution to this trip.

    Brad Beaven, Karl Bell, and Rob James are founding members of PTUC. Their edited collection Port Towns and Urban Cultures: International Histories of the Waterfront, c. 1700-2000 is available to purchase from Palgrave MacMillan http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137483157

    All images author’s own.

  • ‘Making waves’: the activities of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures group.

    ‘Making waves’: the activities of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures group.

    This blog, by Dr Mel Bassett, research associate for the Port Towns and Urban Cultures project, discusses the many activities of the PTUC group, from working on major First World War exhibitions, to sharing their research with schoolchildren. Mel’s research interests centre on dockyard workers’ identities and the role of empire in the Edwardian period.

    Situated on the south coast, and on the doorstep of some of the nation’s most important naval and maritime heritage, the History Department at the University of Portsmouth are undertaking exciting new research into the influence of maritime history on land.

    Port Towns and Urban Cultures (PTUC) group was established in 2010 by Professor Brad Beaven, Dr Karl Bell and Dr Robert James, and now boasts a team of international collaborators from the academic and professional world.

    We have a vibrant postgraduate environment. There have been 11 ‘Port Town’ PhD students so far, and the creation of the new Naval History MA in October 2016 has already welcomed over 40 students.  We also had the pleasure of welcoming a visiting scholar from the University of Oviedo, Asturas, Spain.

    Indeed, Portsmouth has become the centre of all things ‘Port Towns.’ We have established links with universities and museum networks in Liverpool, Hull, London and Scandinavia, and are now looking East and forging partnerships with Kobe University’s ‘Port Cities’ project in Japan. Moreover, we have a presence on the internet and social media. The Port Towns and Urban Cultures website features a range of collaborators from established academics to postgraduate students and offers a vibrant platform in which those interested in the influence of the sea can share their research. This is complimented by our presence on social media where we have loyal followings on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. There is now also a book, edited by Beaven, Bell and James, which showcases the importance and social and cultural uniqueness of port towns from around the globe.

    We are currently undertaking research into several areas. One of our most ambitious projects has been to map the impact of Royal Naval, merchant and fishing sailor communities on land in Portsmouth by using our ‘Sailortown’ app, which was officially launched this year. Scholars and the general public will be able to understand the relationship between maritime livelihoods and community structures and physically walk through sailortown using our online guides. We hope to also extend this project out to other maritime communities, and are working in collaboration with the University of Gothenburg to do the same in Sweden.

    Profs Mark Connelly and Brad Beaven admiring the Jutland pop-up exhibition

    Another exciting project has been to research the impact the First World War’s most famous naval engagement, the Battle of Jutland, had on the British public. The project was funded by the AHRC’s Gateways to the First World War research centre, and working with the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsdown University of the Third Age, and several undergraduate student volunteers, we traced every Royal Naval sailor killed at the Battle. This has enabled us to make unique insights into how the naval war affected contemporary society, where sailor families lived and the long-term effects of the war at sea on memorialisation and heritage.

    Mel Bassett at the opening of Portsmouth City Museums WW1 Exhibition

    I am the original PhD student that came out of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures stable, so to speak, and am now a Research Associate on the project. As a postgraduate a few colleagues and I helped to establish the PTUC website and social media presence, which has gone from strength-to-strength since its creation in 2013. I have been very fortunate to work on a number of important and interesting projects such as Portsmouth’s First World War Centenary commemorations which included staging a £97,000 Heritage Lottery Funded exhibition and events programme. I came from a Museum professional background before undertaking my PhD, and this has helped greatly in forging links and establishing working relationships with non-academic collaborators. Another great project was working with the University’s UP for Uni team on workshops introducing children to the world of ‘Sickly Slums and Sailortowns’ – a Horrible Histories-themed day where they could learn about slum living, sailor slang and create their own tattoos (on nylon).

    Prof Brad Beaven placing exhibits of Centenary Exhibition 2014

     

    ‘Sickly Slums and Sailortowns’: showing off tattoos

    I also teach part-time at the University of Portsmouth, and without doubt, the most exciting part of my work is getting the opportunity to spread our research to our undergraduates. We have had several students volunteer on high-profile projects such as our AHRC Gateways to the First World War-funded Battle of Jutland project. Through working on an actual research project in tandem with Professor Brad Beaven and me, the students were able to get a real sense of the purpose of the research. They could see the tangible results that were produced through assisting us, and also got to see their work make a difference too. As a result the students have not only learned skills to help them in their degree, but also have experiences to cite on their CVs; which will raise their chances of employability. We are also pleased to note that some were so inspired that they undertook dissertation projects based on the topic.

    The University of Portsmouth’s History Department is making big waves on land on the subject of maritime history, and I am glad to be at the forefront of new and exciting research.

     

    Follow us:

    Website: porttowns.port.ac.uk

    Twitter: @PortPTUC

    Facebook: Port Towns Ptuc

    Instagram: porttownsandurbancultures

     

    All images author’s own.

  • How to ‘forget’ difficult pasts: slavery, memory, and the maritime frame

    How to ‘forget’ difficult pasts: slavery, memory, and the maritime frame

    In Theresa May’s ‘Brexit speech’, on January 17th 2017, the prime minister suggested that Britain’s “history and culture is profoundly internationalist” [1]. This is certainly one way of framing Britain’s historic relationship with the rest of the world. Alternatively, you might suggest that May spelt “centuries of colonial rule, oppression, slavery and genocide” wrong. As cultural sociologist Iwona Irwin-Zarecka argues, the range of possible interpretations of historic events and themes can be limited through processes of ‘framing’ [2]. Such ‘framing’ doesn’t necessarily block out other possible interpretations, but it does act to restrict the range of meanings. The past can be ‘framed’ in certain ways, and certain interpretations and narratives can be promoted over others in ways which obscure less palatable aspects through specific, and active, memory-work: through commemorative ceremonies, memorial design, and yes, political speeches.

    There have been a series of public history interventions recently which have sought to re-engage with some of the so-called ‘forgotten’ sides of the more horrific stories of the history of the British Empire. Britain’s long and meticulously organised involvement in transatlantic slavery has come to light publicly through the work of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership  project at UCL, and the accompanying documentaries presented by David Olusoga, titled, ominously, ‘Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners’ [3]. The problem with the use of the term ‘forgetting’ here is that it just doesn’t capture how much effort it takes to ‘re-frame’ a history as brutal and horrific as, for example, empire into something as progressive-sounding as, say,  ‘internationalism’. Forgetting certain aspects of a nation’s past takes work. Forgetting something as epic as transatlantic slavery and the slave trade, something which saw the transportation of 12 million African people, four centuries of trade in human beings, isn’t something that’s easy to ‘forget’ by letting it slip the collective mind, like a careless omission. This isn’t the ‘dude, where’s my car?’ of historical memory [4]. Saying that transatlantic slavery has been ‘forgotten’ just doesn’t do justice to the lengths people have gone to obscure this history, reworking the memory of slavery into the memory of its abolition, for example, through the valorising of heroes (William Wilberforce) and the celebration of key dates (1807, 1833/34)[5].  This distinctly active process might better be termed an ‘organised forgetting’ [6] or an ‘unremembering’ [7] to indicate the work needed to obscure certain pasts.

    One of the ways in which the connections between British history and transatlantic slavery have been forgotten in an organised way, is through the framing of this past through a distinctly ‘maritime’ lens. Helpfully, this also chimes well with national identity narratives about Britain’s maritime Empire and prowess, Britannia ruling the waves, commanding the seven seas, in images sometimes coupled with comforting national narratives of abolition; of Britain being a country “that took slavery off the high seas” as David Cameron once put it [8]. The ‘maritimization’ of the history of Britain and slavery, as John Beech has argued, has placed a focus on the slave trade rather than enslavement more broadly, severing connections to land-based plantations in foreign lands (safely at a distance) or to legacies closer to home, on British soil, like industrialisation or material culture (pretty Georgian squares and decadent country houses for example).

    In Liverpool, the largest of Europe’s slave-trading ports, responsible for the transportation of over 1.1 million enslaved African people across the perilous ‘middle passage’ [9], this ‘maritimization’ is a process which has been embroiled within maritime-themed civic identity narratives. Historically, the city’s relationship with the sea flooded imperial connections with a language of romanticism within, that “[h]er ships sail on every sea, and the produce of every land under the sun finds its way to her Docks,” as one guide put it in 1902 [10]. In 1957, Liverpool’s 750th ‘birthday’ (marking 750 years since the signing of the King John charter of 1207), the appositely named Derek Whale wrote of the “romantic age of trading pioneers under sail” who brought back “[t]ales of strange customs and people of foreign lands, where lay the white man’s treasures in silks, cotton, ivory, oil, wine and spices,” [11] – and presumably also African people themselves, not included in this list of exotic foreign treasures. Commemorative occasions such as civic birthday parties are an important time for active ‘framing’ of dissonant pasts, which clash with objectives of promoting positive celebrations of local identity narratives. Similarly, museums can play important roles in forging authoritative narratives of the past, even before they exist. In Liverpool, public discourse around the construction of the long-awaited maritime museum reinforced romanticised narratives of sea-based identity narratives with notable omissions, focusing instead on “childhood memories of the romance of Britain’s second seaport.” [12] Criticisms were made of panel text when the museum did open, the 1989 Gifford Report into race relations in Liverpool, produced after the riots of the 1980s, described discussion of Liverpool and the slave trade as “a lawyer’s plea for mitigation” [13]. Even when the new International Slavery Museum opened in Liverpool in 2007, its status as an independent museum, irked some. “Slavery should be covered as part of the Maritime Museum (as it was), not as a free-standing museum” complained one online commenter, with another using this maritime context and perceived rightful place of slavery in the maritime museum to downplay the significance of the slave trade to Liverpool’s history, “[if] ever there was a statement that slavery was not the only thing that made the city rich it is that.” [14]

     

    Goree Warehouses, engraving, copy (1822)

     

    The thing about memory, rather than remembrance [15] is that it doesn’t always abide by the organised rules of active forgetting. As much as the authoritative, ‘organised’ framing of slavery through a maritime lens may act to obscure the breadth and depth of this history through displacement, distancing and downplaying, this ‘maritimization’ can also reveal human realities and consequences of a history left otherwise muddied in the Mersey. In Liverpool, maritimized connections to the city’s past reveal themselves through  mythologies surrounding ‘slaves in Liverpool’. Stories of a slave presence, though dissonant and contested, hook onto places which run along the memory of the 18th century river Mersey’s edge, before it was pushed back by later dock construction on reclaimed land. Such stories ‘hook’ in particular onto the historic site of Goree, eighteenth century warehouses named after an island off the coast of Senegal, the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast, and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site [16]. Though demolished in the 1950s, Goree warehouses have continued to be the imaginative site of memory where an otherwise romanticised and obscured history of the trade in human beings is remembered. Stories of enslaved people shipped, sold, and chained to rings at the site, historical evidence unearthed in cellars around Goree, and obscure sculptures which commemorate the water’s edge, all simultaneously reveal and obscure the mythologies of slaves in Liverpool. As much as maritimizing has ‘framed’ the history of slavery as something seabound and distanced, maritime connections, made at the places where the land of Liverpool meets the water of the Mersey, have dislodged this frame, turned it backwards, revealing human connections.

     

     

    Dr Jessica Moody is Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage. If you want to read more, this research is published in Moody, “ ‘Liverpool’s local tints’: Drowning Memory and Maritimizing Slavery in a Seaport City”, in Katie Donington, Ryan Hanley and Jessica Moody (eds.) Britain’s History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery: local nuances of a ‘national sin’ (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016). This edited collection brings together essays considering localised case studies of Britain and transatlantic slavery in history and memory. http://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/80782

     

    Notes

     

    [1] Theresa May. Speech about Britain leaving the European Union January 17th 2017. See full text here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/full-text-theresa-may-brexit-speech-global-britain-eu-european-union-latest-a7531361.html [accessed January 24 2017]

    [2] Irwin-Zarecka, Iwona. Frames of Remembrance : The Dynamics of Collective Memory. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994.

    [3] ‘Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners’ BBC 2 (2015); see also David Olusoga, “The History of British Slave Ownership Has Been Buried: Now its Scale Can Be Revealed”, The Guardian, 12 July 2015; http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

    [4] For younger, and/or more culturally sophisticated readers, Dude Where’s My Car? Was a 2000 film starring Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott in which two ‘dudes’ forget where they parked their car after a heavy night.

    [5] See John Oldfield. Chords of Freedom: Commemoration, Ritual and British Transatlantic Slavery (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007)

    [6] Paul Connerton. How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)

    [7] Sinfree Makoni, “African Languages as European Scripts: The Shaping of Communal Memory,” in Sarah Nuttal and Carli Coetzee (eds) Negotiating the Past: The Making of Meaning in South Africa (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1998) pp. 242-48

    [8] David Cameron, in a speech responding to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments about Britain’s diminishing global influence. George Parker and Elizabeth Rigby. “Cameron goes on offensive after ‘small island’ jibe”, Financial Times September 6, 2013

    [9] Kenneth Morgan, “Liverpool’s Dominance in the British Slave Trade, 1740-1807” in David Richardson, Anthony Tibbles and Suzanne Schwarz (eds), Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007) p. 15

    [10] A New Guide to Liverpool (Liverpool: Littlebury Brothers, 1902) p. 133

    [11] Derek Whale, “Fishing Village to a Great Seaport” City of Liverpool Charter Celebrations 1207-1957: Evening Express Charter Supplement, Liverpool Evening Express, June 17, 1957.

    [12] Peter Rockliffe, “Special…the Launching of the Maritime Museum” Trident, 2 (1980)

    [13] Lord Gifford QC (Chair), Wally Brown and Ruth Bundey, Loosen the Shackles: First Report of the Liverpool 8 Inquiry into Race Relations in Liverpool (London: Karia Press, 1989)

    [14] Liverpolitan, comment on ‘International Museum of Slavery,” Skyscraper City Forum, 16 September 2007 (6:30pm) www.skyscrapercity.com ; Buggedboy, comment on Skyscraper City Forum 18 September 2007

    [15] Jay Winter and Emmannuel Sivan distinguish between these two terms in order to highlight the organised, post-living memory status of acts of remembrance. See Jay Winter and Emmannuel Sivan, “Setting the Framework” in Winter and Sivan (eds) War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

    [16] http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/26