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An eyewitness to profound change affecting marine environments on the Newfoundland coast, Antony Adler argues that the history of our relationship with the ocean lies as much in what we imagine as in what we discover. We have long been fascinated with the oceans, seeking “to pierce the profundity” of their depths. In studying the history of marine science, we also learn about ourselves. Neptune’s Laboratory explores the ways in which scientists, politicians, and the public have invoked ocean environments in imagining the fate of humanity and of the planet—conjuring ideal-world fantasies alongside fears of our species’ weakness and ultimate demise. Oceans gained new prominence in th...
Tracing the entire history of American foreign policy, Dying by the Sword focuses on how the US came to prioritize the use of military tools over other tools of statecraft, including diplomacy and economic policy. It demonstrates that since the end of the Cold War, the US has dramatically increased its use of force abroad despite fewer international threats. The US's hyper-militaristic foreign policy, which the authors term "kinetic diplomacy", threatens to undermine not just America's leadership role, its credibility, and its domestic policy priorities, but more broadly international peace and security.
The third issue of the yearbook History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) devotes a thematic section to experimental spaces for knowledge production. The articles in this section investigate the role of experimental environments as sites for knowledge production during the long nineteenth century, thereby extending the scope beyond the confines of traditional academic institutions such as academies, laboratories, and universities. By focusing on intentional communities, colonial gardens, agricultural colonies, and artistic colonies as experimental spaces, the authors investigate the intertwined social, natural, and aesthetic aspects of environments. An overarching aim is to develop a distinct pe...
Since the HMS Challenger expedition of 1872 1876, our vision of the ocean has changed completely. We now understand that it plays a key role in biodiversity, climate regulation, and mineral and biological resources, and as such, the ocean is a major service provider for humanity. Oceans draws on data from new oceanographic and satellite tools, acquired through international interdisciplinary programs. It describes the processes that control how the ocean functions, on different spatial and temporal scales. After considering the evolution of concepts in physical, chemical and biological oceanography, the book outlines the future of a warmer, acidified, less oxygenated ocean. It shows how a view of the ocean at different scales changes how we understand it. Finally, the book presents the challenges facing the ocean in terms of the exploitation of biological and mineral resources, in the context of sustainable development and the regulation of climate change.
Through ten case studies by international specialists, this book investigates the circulation and production of scientific knowledge between 1750 and 1945 in the fields of agriculture, astronomy, botany, cartography, medicine, statistics, and zoology. In this period, most of the world was under some form of imperial control, while science emerged as a discrete field of activity. What was the relationship between empire and science? Was science just an instrument for imperial domination? While such guiding questions place the book in the tradition of science and empire studies, it offers a fresh perspective in dialogue with global history and circulatory approaches. The book demonstrates, not...
As he prepared to embark for India in 1774, Alexander Mackrabie's excitement at the sights to be seen and novelties to be experienced was palpable. Mackrabie's journey was conducted under the auspices of the London-based East India Company and was one of the many thousands of Company voyages that brought Europeans into contact with Asian countries and cultures, as well as numerous people and places along the way. Atlantic Voyages tells the story of travellers like Mackrabie as they navigated the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, reflecting on who and what they had left behind in Europe, looking forward to new challenges in Asia, and evaluating the sights and smells, sounds and tastes, hopes and ...
"In 1829, surgeon and amateur naturalist Nathanial Bagshaw Ward discovered that plants enclosed in airtight glass cases could survive for long periods without watering. After four years of growing plants under glass in his London home, Ward created traveling glazed cases that he hoped would be able to transport plants around the world. After a test run from London to Sydney, Ward was proven correct and the Wardian case was born. It is easy to forget in our technologically advanced and globalized world, but prior to the invention of the case it was extremely difficult to transfer plants around the globe, as they often died from mishandling, cold weather, or salt from the ocean. In this enthralling book, Luke Keogh takes us around the world and through history with the Wardian case. He shows that this revolution in the movement of plants transformed the world, impacting the commercial nursery trade, late nineteenth century imperialism, and the global environment. The repercussions of this revolution are still with us today"--
Suva Stories explores a fascinating tapestry of histories in one of the Pacific’s oldest and most culturally diverse urban centres, the capital of Fiji. Charting the trajectory of Suva from indigenous village to colonial hub to contemporary Pacific metropolis, it draws on a rich colonial archive and moving personal memoirs that bear witness to their time. The diverse contributions in this volume form a complex mosaic of urban lives and histories that contribute fresh insights into historical and ongoing debates about race, place and belonging. Suva Stories is a valuable companion to those seeking to engage with the city’s pasts and present, and will prompt new conversations about history and memory in Fiji.
Invisible as the seas and oceans may be for so many of us, life as we know it is almost always connected to, and constituted by, activities and occurrences that take place in, on and under our oceans. The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space provides a first port of call for scholars engaging in the ‘oceanic turn’ in the social sciences, offering a comprehensive summary of existing trends in making sense of our water worlds, alongside new, agenda-setting insights into the relationships between society and the ‘seas around us’. Accordingly, this ambitious text not only attends to a growing interest in our oceans, past and present; it is also situated in a broader spatial turn across the ...
A welcome dive into the world of aquarium craft that offers much-needed knowledge about undersea environments. Atlantic coral is rapidly disappearing in the wild. To save the species, they will have to be reproduced quickly in captivity, and so for the last decade conservationists have been at work trying to preserve their lingering numbers and figure out how to rebuild once-thriving coral reefs from a few survivors. Captive environments, built in dedicated aquariums, offer some hope for these corals. This book examines these specialized tanks, charting the development of tank craft throughout the twentieth century to better understand how aquarium modeling has enhanced our knowledge of the ...