Maritime History

Port workers (dockers) have played a distinguished role as active members of port communities. In Dakar, the nature and characteristics of Labor were dominated by the Colonial system. It affected the Labor market and exerted influence on wages, regulations and the living conditions of the African workers. The analysis of port Labor in Dakar shows the socio-economic transformations caused by the resolute introduction of industrial capitalism in West Africa from the last decades of the nineteenth century. This paper analyzes the labor organization in the port of Dakar and its connections with the economic Globalization process. It explains too how the colonial Institutional structure impacted on the purchasing power of these workers, showing the effects on their living conditions.

Ports are key elements on trade organization in a regional and international scale. In West Africa, ports played a key role on the introduction of these territories on the international economic dynamics. In the case of Senegal, ports followed this tendency tied to the development of railways. However, the analysis of the Senegalese’s port system did not study the port transition process until the construction of the port of Dakar in 1910. This paper analyse this topic, showing a global perspective of the role played by Saint-Louis and Gorée in this transition process from an economy based on the slave trade to a market economy with extroverted features. It will be exposed the importance of the regional connections as hub elements of any port system.     

Seaports in West Africa introduced these regions into the global economy in the last third of the nineteenth century. They served as gateways for trade and such coaling stations to support the European expansion towards the interior, where the cash-crop culture and mining sectors were developed. The evolution on the field of transport technologies increased the importance of these nodes which focused the economic activity along the coast. These nodes constituted a port network which was interconnected in different scales. Hence, this port network was characterized by hierarchies, complementarities and centralities among the different ports, having different port functions which were integrated into the system. In this paper, we propose a methodological approximation in order to analyse le functioning of this port network. The main ports reviewed in this paper are Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Canary Islands), Dakar, Gorée, St.Louis and Rufisque (Senegal), Mindelo (Cape Verde).

West African colonial ports had played a key role in the introduction of these territories into the international markets of raw materials. The port of Dakar (Senegal) focused the regional external trade, and it was converted in the main commercial infrastructure for the French West Africa. This importance was based on the concentration of investments to improve the port infrastructures and the development of the intermodal connections to the hinterland where the cash-crop production was growing. These modernization processes on the port infrastructures had an impact on the growth of the regional commercial activity, and oriented the Senegalese productive economy towards the export sectors, mainly colonial commodities. In this paper it will be exposed the main improvement phases developed at Dakar, linking them with the increased commercial activity and its predominant position over the region. In addition, it will be analyzed the main port institutions and the port administration model which were tied to the metropolitan interests and the status of Senegal as a colony.

"The thesis explores the shipbuilding industry of the most important commercial and maritime centre of the Aegean in the 19th century. It highlights economic, institutional, technical and social
aspects of the shipbuilding activity and its protagonists, and places them in historical context. The thesis employs interdisciplinary theoretical tools from economic geography, economic sociology and institutional economics and adopts new interpretive models and views with relation to Modern Greek historiography on the subject."

"This article examines the transition of the Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) from a policy of self-defense into its full espousal of large-scale privateering and plundering. I argue that this shift was driven by both economic and political factors, and can be traced to the very formation of the Company as a unified trading venture. The taking of prizes became a cornerstone not only of the economic fortunes of the company, but the establishment
of the Dutch colonial empire in Asia. Of particular interest is not only the instructions emanating from the company directors and the Dutch government in the metropolis, but especially the implementation and adaptation of these directives on the ground. It is this local context that adds a crucial dimension to interpretations of the eager espousal of maritime violence by the VOC and its agents in Asian waters."

The paper investigates the island society of Andros, in the Aegean Sea, under the impact of the development and transformation of Ottoman maritime networks of communication, administration, war and commerce in the Mediterranean, between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. The research focuses, through the study of the Ottoman tax registers of 1670/71 from the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, on the formation of new social powers on the island, a class of Christian Orthodox landowners, who succeeded under the Ottomans the former Frankish feudal lords in the top of the social hierarchy, together with the development of communal and ecclesiastical administration. In the same vein, the Ottoman documents from the local kadı court, which have been preserved on the island’s archives, are studied here as evidence of the interaction between Ottoman administration and local society, through the active involvement of the island’s powerful social actors in the local Ottoman administration of law.