The Maritime Heritage Project

A sweeping narrative history of world trade from Sumer in 3000 BC to the firestorm over globalization today that brilliantly explores trade's colorful and contentious past and provides fresh insights into social, political, cultural, and economic history, as well as a timely assessment of trade's future.

In A Splendid Exchange, William J. Bernstein tells the extraordinary story of global commerce from its prehistoric origins to the myriad controversies surrounding it today. He transports readers from ancient sailing ships that brought the silk trade from China to Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the sixteenth; from the rush for sugar that brought the British to Jamaica in 1655 to the American trade battles of the early twentieth century; from key innovations such as steam, steel, and refrigeration to the modern era of televisions from Taiwan, lettuce from Mexico, and T-shirts from China.

Along the way, Bernstein examines how our age-old dependency on trade has contributed to our planet's agricultural bounty, stimulated intellectual progress, and made us both prosperous and vulnerable. Although the impulse to trade often takes a backseat to xenophobia and war, Bernstein concludes that trade is ultimately a force for good among nations, and he argues that societies are far more successful and stable when they are involved in vigorous trade with their neighbors. A Splendid Exchange is a riveting narrative that views trade and globalization not in political terms, but rather as an evolutionary process as old as war and religion a historical constant that will continue to foster the growth of intellectual capital, shrink the world, and propel the trajectory of the human species.

The Old Merchant Marine

A Chronicle Of American Ships And Sailors
Ralph Delahaye Paine

As an account of American sea-men and ships it is a stimulating and moving story of how the ordinary men fought against the odds. It also reveals that how these valiant and bold men went about finding modes to survive in the turbulent times that followed the American Revolution.

Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks)

History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce: Volume 1
William Schaw Lindsay

There are four volumes in Lindsay's histories merchant shipping histories. Volume I starts with the antiquities of the mercantile marine and closes with the sixteenth century; Volume II traces the progress to the close of the French War in 1815; Volume III deals with Navigation laws of Cromwell and of the causes which led to their abolition; Volume IV is devoted entirely to teh rise adn progress of steamships and the different branches of commerce in which they were engaged.
Illulstrations, maps, plans, tables.
Adamant Media Corporation, 2001 (First Edition 1874-76)

Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture

William R. Leach
This monumental work of cultural history was nominated for a National Book Award.

It chronicles America's transformation, beginning in 1880, into a nation of consumers, devoted to a cult of comfort, bodily well-being, and endless acquisition. 24 pages of photos. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright, and a Spy Saved the American Revolution
Joel Richard Paul

Silas Deane a Connecticut merchant and member of the Continental Congress went to France to persuade the king to support the colonists in their struggle with Britain. Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a playwright who had access to the arms and ammunition that Deane needed. And the Chevalier d'...on was a diplomat and sometime spy for the French king who ignited a crisis that persuaded the French to arm the Americans.

This is the true story of how three remarkable people lied cheated stole and cross-dressed across Europe to gain France's aid as the War of American Independence hung in the balance.

Merchant Adventurer: The Story of W.R. Grace

Marquis James

This biography of William R. Grace (1832-1904) tells the story of a poor Irish immigrant who created an international empire. In a tale rich with details of Grace's maritime and political ventures as well as his personal life, James, chronicles an extraordinarily varied career. Grace opened up commerce with South America, where he made his first fortune trading guano, then dealt in everything from lumber and sewing machines to torpedoes for the 1879 war between Peru and Chile.
Reed Business Information, Inc. , 1993

Lives and Work at Sea:

Herbert Holdsworth, Colin Hannah, and the Ship Ladakh

William L. H. Scarratt

Throughout its history, the British merchant marine often employed people from the same families; it was not uncommon to have brothers or cousins working together on the same ship. Until now, however, relatively little has been written to provide an accurate account of the working lives of families and ships engaged in the ocean-going trade of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This carefully researched book traces the careers of two merchant mariners and a typical "tramp" sailing vessel of the time. Drawing upon government records, employment contracts, crew discharge papers, and other primary sources, the author presents a methodical yet altogether personal history. Maps, period photographs, and memorabilia.

A Maritime History of the United States:

The Role of America's Seas and Waterways (Studies in Maritime History)
K. Jack Bauer
Bauer shows how early American history was fueled by a marine-based economy; the American Revolution was precipitated by laws regulating seaborne trade; our position in the community of nations was shaped by ocean-going trade; water trade helped forge the nation. Bauer discusses the rise and fall of the American merchant marine.
Reed Business Information, Inc., 1987

Daily Life in the Age of Sail: (The Greenwood Press "Daily Life Through History" Series)

The Old Merchant Marine

Ralph Delahaye Paine

The story of American ships and sailors is an epic of blue water which seems singularly remote, almost unreal, to the later generations. A people with a native genius for seafaring won and held a brilliant supremacy through two centuries and then forsook this heritage of theirs. The period of achievement was no more extraordinary than was its swift declension. A maritime race whose topsails flecked every ocean, whose captains courageous from father to son had fought with pike and cannonade to defend the freedom of the seas, turned inland to seek a different destiny and took no more thought for the tall ships and rich cargoes which had earned so much renown for its flag.

Told by a Jew, about Jews, it reveals in surprisingly candid ways the ostracism of Jews in this country addressing how this all began.

Merchant Princes: An Intimate History of Jewish Families Who Built Great Department Stores (Kodansha Globe)

Leon A. Harris

A history of America's famous Jewish shopkeeping families shows how the Filenes, Gimbels, Marcuses, and others created renowned retail empires out of small pushcart beginnings, powerfully evoking the social changes that were transforming America early in the century.

This book is full of history told in an easy-to-read style. Leon Harris reveals the struggles and successes of 12 of the earliest Jewish retailers of America including Levi Strauss, Sears, Roebuck, Neiman, Marcus etc. It is an historic account of the people whose names have become so familiar as store-names that we have forgotten there were ever people with those names. "Merchant Princes" includes many personal anecdotes about the founders of the stores and their families, retailing practices of yester-year and what these merchants did with their incredible wealth.

Voyages with a Merchant Prince:
Secrets of the Ripley Diary

Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600--1900

Steven Brown

Commerce meets conquest in this story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world, as told by Steven Bown, "Canada's Simon Winchester" (Globe and Mail). Through the Age of Heroic Commerce, from the 17th to the 19th centuries, a rogue's gallery of larger-than-life merchant kings ruled vast tracts of the globe and expanded their far-flung monopolies to generate revenue for their shareholders, feather their own nests and satisfy their vanity and curiosity.

Their exploits changed the world during an age of unfettered globalization, mirroring a world we know today. Merchant Kings looks at each ruling monopoly through its greatest merchant king and considers their stories together for the first time.

The Opening of Japan, 1853-1855 : A Comparative Study of the American, British, Dutch And Russian Naval Expeditions To Compel The Tokugawa Shogunate to Conclude Treaties And Open Ports
(Hardcover)
William McOmie ($120)

The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan

When the United States entered the Gilded Age after the Civil War, argues cultural historian Christopher Benfey, the nation lost its philosophical moorings and looked eastward to "Old Japan," with its seemingly untouched indigenous culture, for balance and perspective. Japan, meanwhile, was trying to reinvent itself as a more cosmopolitan, modern state, ultimately transforming itself, in the course of twenty-five years, from a feudal backwater to an international power. This great wave of historical and cultural reciprocity between the two young nations, which intensified during the late 1800s, brought with it some larger-than-life personalities, as the lure of unknown foreign cultures prompted pilgrimages back and forth across the Pacific. In The Great Wave , Benfey tells the story of the tightly knit group of nineteenth-century travelers connoisseurs, collectors, and scientists who dedicated themselves to exploring and preserving Old Japan. As Benfey writes, "A sense of urgency impelled them, for they were convinced Darwinians that they were that their quarry was on the verge of extinction." These travelers include Herman Melville, whose Pequod is "shadowed by hostile and mysterious Japan"; the historian Henry Adams and the artist John La Farge, who go to Japan on an art-collecting trip and find exotic adventures; Lafcadio Hearn, who marries a samurai's daughter and becomes Japan's preeminent spokesman in the West; Mabel Loomis Todd, the first woman to climb Mt. Fuji; Edward Sylvester Morse, who becomes the world's leading expert on both Japanese marine life and Japanese architecture; the astronomer Percival Lowell, who spends ten years in the East and writes seminal works on Japanese culture before turning his restless attention to life on Mars; and President (and judo enthusiast) Theodore Roosevelt. As well, we learn of famous Easterners come West, including Kakuzo Okakura, whose The Book of Tea became a cult favorite, and Shuzo Kuki, a leading philosopher of his time, who studied with Heidegger and tutored Sartre. Finally, as Benfey writes, his meditation on cultural identity "seeks to capture a shared mood in both the Gilded Age and the Meiji Era, amid superficial promise and prosperity, of an overmastering sense of precariousness and impending peril."

Square Rigger Days: Autobiographies of Sail

Charles W. Domville-fife
Supported by a superb collection of illustrations, some never previously published, this new edition of a classic work describes the last, tough days of commercial sail, from the 1860s to World War I. Far from the romantic image conjured up by other books on the subject, this work provides readers with a true look at the harsh realities of the sailor's life on board 19th century merchant ships.