Sea Changes

The sea has been the site of radical changes in human lives and national histories. It has been an agent of colonial oppression but also of indigenous resistance, a site of loss, dispersal and enforced migration but also of new forms of solidarity and affective kinship. SeaChanges re-evaluates the view that history happens mainly on dry land and makes the case for a creative reinterpretation of the role of the sea: not merely as a passage from one country to the next, but a historical site deserving close study.

Bernhard Klein is Professor Emeritus at the University of Kent. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Fictions of the Sea: Critical Perspectives on the Ocean in British Literature and Culture. Gesa Mackenthun is Professor in American Studies at Rostock University in Germany. In addition to numerous essays on the topics of nineteenth-century American literature, colonialism, and postcolonial studies, she is the author of Metaphors of Dispossession: American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire, 1492-1637.

Introduction, 1. Deep Times, Deep Spaces: Civilizing the Sea, 2. Costume Changes: Passing at Sea and on the Beach, 3. The Global Economy and the Sulu Zone: Connections, Commodities and Culture, 4. Ahab's Boat: Non-European Seamen in Western Ships of Exploration and Commerce, 5. Staying Afloat: Literary Shipboard Encounters from Columbus to Equiano, 6. The Red Atlantic; or, 'a terrible blast swept over the heaving sea', 7. Chartless Voyages and Protean Geographies: Nineteenth-Century American Fictions of the Black Atlantic, 8. 'At Sea-Coloured Passenger', 9. Slavery, Insurance and Sacrifice in the Black Atlantic, 10. Cast Away: The Uttermost Parts of the Earth