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Full Description
The ideological roots of the British Empire have been widely discussed in early modern studies, as have maritime settings in the period's imaginative writing. However, these perspectives have not adequately accounted for how literature's evolving representations of the common British seaman shaped the early stages of public discourse about Britain's imperial endeavours. Filling that gap in scholarship, Ships of State argues that literary representations of seaborne labour play a distinct and crucial role in the early formation of British imperial attitudes.
The book analyses these representations across an array of popular genres: New World promotion tracts, civic pageantry, stage drama, and broadside ballads. These genres demonstrate how imaginative modes of discourse both reflected and influenced popular conceptions of the common seaman and, by extension, the national ambitions he represented. Placing these depictions into dialogue with the larger national conversation about maritime expansion, Ships of State sheds new light on the role of seaborne labour and its literary representations in creating and sustaining empire.
Contents
Introduction: Literature and the Seaman's Labour in Proto-Imperial Britain
1. "Lords of the harbors": English Fishermen and the Newfoundland Colony
2. "Their labour doth returne rich golden gaine": Fishmongers' Shows and the Fisherman's Labour in Early Modern London
3. "Hereditary Sloth" and the Labour of Empire in Shakespeare's Mediterranean
4. "A wife or friend at e'ery port": The Common Sailor in the Ballads of Early British Empire
Conclusion: The "painefull Sea-Man" of Imperial Britain
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
