Browse

Travel

Ship Plan of a Late-19th Century Steamship
Source

Ship Plan of a Late-19th Century Steamship

This ship plan from the late-19th century offers a partial view of spatial arrangements within a Messageries steamship.

Shipping Company Route Map from 1889
Source

Shipping Company Route Map from 1889

This route-map of the Messageries Maritimes shipping company displays the main routes connecting metropolitan France to its empire in the Indo-Pacific. While the map dates to 1889, these routes retained their basic structure through the 1950s.

Title page of Dr. William Ruschenberger's memoir
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Global Microhistory and the Nineteenth-Century Omani Empire

In their primer essay, Jessica Hanser and Adam Clulow note how scholars of global microhistory explore relationships between macro and micro, deep structures and contingency, and big state actors and minor players.

Title page of Dr. William Ruschenberger's memoir
Source

Memoir of William Ruschenberger

Dr. William Ruschenberger (d. 1895) was a United States Navy surgeon and was assigned to the USS Peacock, serving with Edmund Roberts as part of an American delegation representing the Jackson Administration to negotiate treaties with the Omani Empire and the Kingdom of Siam.

Painting of The Batavia Castle seen from the Kali Besar West
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Spatial Histories of Law, Race and Empire

Law is not only to be found in doctrine and documents, but also in structures and materials, in buildings and in cloth, in paintings and in photos.

Image of a list written in script. Explanation in source annotation.
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Global Approaches to Maritime Trade in Colonial North America

Traditional narratives in American history, especially in colonial history, tend to focus primarily on British policy and British trade networks. Taking a global approach to the maritime trade of British America in the colonial era provides a better understanding of the actual economy, however.

Inset of Prester John from larger world map. Shows a man sitting in front of a tent.
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Examining Early Genoese Voyages through Maps

The medieval Genoese ranged from China to the Atlantic, and their experience in navigation, the sugar industry, and the slave trade were the elemental foundation of Iberian colonial expansion.

Map with network lines radiating from fixed points
Source

Nautical Chart, 1385

This nautical chart is signed by Majorcan cartographer Guglielmo Soler and dated to 1385, and ranges from the Black Sea to the Atlantic. Less beautiful than the Catalan map, it was also more practical for navigators to use.

Two photos of men wearing western suits with number 8 and 9 under their photo
Methods

Primer: Borderlands History

Borderlands history studies the making and crossing of borders. While the term “borderlands” has no fixed definition, it can refer to spaces of encounter between different peoples and political entities.