“The Age of Sail: 1450–1850”

The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of British Columbia invite proposals for papers to be presented at a conference entitled “The Age of Sail, 1450–1850.” This meeting, to be held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, on October 7–10, 2010, will bring together scholarship on the history of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans across the early modern period in its cultural, social, economic, political, and environmental dimensions.

Conference Objectives

For humankind the ocean is a hostile environment. Yet, between 1450 and 1850 the discovery that all the seas were one and the projecting of economic and political power on a global scale reshaped the course of history. In the process, this dangerous and poorly understood place, where people could venture but never remain, came to occupy a pivotal position in human affairs. The conference we propose will examine the impact of the ocean environment on world history in the early modern period. Participants might consider the following topics:

  • Community. Much has been made in the past few decades of the transnational character of the seafaring experience and by implication of the maritime community as well. But that community must have had some boundaries. We need to understand more about the orbits within which mariners moved across their lives, the range of identities they possessed, and their own definitions of whom their communities excluded.
  • Tragedy of the Commons? The early modern period opened up the world’s greatest commons to the possibility of exploitation on a global scale. But did people possess the drive and the technological ability to measurably deplete its resources? Were there instances of human restraint in maritime exploitation, and in what circumstances was this possible?
  • Encounters. Ships under sail throughout this period repeatedly occasioned intercultural encounters between peoples who were distant and strange to each other. Indeed, the observations that sailor-journalists made of the indigenous groups they met in their travels are probably the richest surviving source of what ordinary human beings who lived in these different cultures during the age of initial contact made of one another.
  • The Exotic Ocean. The ocean is construed as an exotic place in western culture today. Is this simply a consequence of nature—that is, of the fact that it is a vast and hostile environment? Or is this perception a historical construction that people in the age of sail did not share? Where did this idea of the seas as exotic places originate, and did nonwestern cultures in preindustrial times view these vast waters differently?
  • Violence.The fluidity and unoccupied character of oceans allowed early modern people to concentrate extraordinary amounts of force—both public and private—in single places with remarkable speed. How did violence at sea shape the course of global history in this period?

Submitting a proposal
Proposals should be approximately 500 words and submitted along with a short c.v. electronically to dvickers@interchange.ubc.ca or in hard copy to Age of Sail Conference, Department of History, UBC, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V3M 1M1 by December 31, 2009. The conference committee will entertain proposals from scholars regardless of discipline whose work relates to the objectives described above. Submissions may be regionally focused or global in scale, but the final program will attempt to achieve a geographic balance. Papers will be precirculated, requiring authors to finish their presentations several weeks before the conference convenes. Expenses of the program participants will be covered, and following the conference the conveners intend to publish a volume. Please address all inquiries to Daniel Vickers at dvickers@interchange.ubc.ca.