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Book Review
| Adrian Jarvis, In Troubled Times: the Port of Liverpool, 1905–1938, International Maritime Economic History Association, St. John's, Newfoundland, 2003. pp. viii + 232. US $15.00 paper.Lars U. Scholl and Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen (eds), Sail and Steam: Selected Maritime Writings of Yrjö Kaukiainen, International Maritime Economic History Association, St. John's, Newfoundland, 2004. pp. xviii + 266. US $15.00 paper.
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| Adrian Jarvis, author of In Troubled Times: the Port of Liverpool, 1905–1938, is a maritime historian with an engineering background; he is interested in policy-making, management and engineering issues associated with British ports, the Port of Liverpool in particular. This monograph focuses on the ways the Liverpool Port management authority, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, variously responded to the changing trade and economic circumstances thrown up by the twentieth century. It is a detailed, finely researched, account of an administration juggling a huge financial debt with investment in technology, infrastructure repairs, remodelling, and new works, all in the context of a specific geographical location and the hostile and often dangerous nature of the Mersey River. |
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Jarvis's emphasis is so heavily on administration and technology that the Port workforce and trade unionism all but disappear, a remarkable achievement given that during the period Liverpool was Britain's largest export port, the second port in the British Empire in terms of goods handled, and before privatisation during the 1990s was the strongest union port in Britain. Maybe this is the sort of monograph Chris Corrigan would like to curl up with. |
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Sail and Steam: Selected Maritime Writings of Yrjö Kaukiainen comprises 17 essays by the Finnish maritime historian Yrjö Kaukiainen, marking his retirement (in 2005) as Professor of European History at the University of Helsinki. Kaukiainen is a prolific writer, publishes in English, Swedish and Finnish, and over three decades has been a key player in the international development of maritime history. |
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The selected essays have been previously published in a diversity of journal outlets; they cover a broad seascape across the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, on topics as diverse as Finnish seafarers, the Baltic timber trade under sail, through to the problems associated with using international ship measurement and shipping statistics as historical sources. My favourite essay concerns the practice amongst East Finnish coastal people during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries of plundering shipwrecks, a livelihood that went in tandem with fishing, seal hunting, and peasant farming. This elegant essay appeals to my own predilection for social banditry and some forms of outlawry. |
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If the collection has a focus, it is the Finnish maritime experience, from the people who made, and were part of the experience, to the economic factors that helped shape it. In the hands of Kaukiainen this is not a narrow national focus, although the strength and individuality of the 'national' is a major factor; Finland is placed in European and global contexts, the author consistently showing how international and global forces and trends were affected by Finnish culture, history, traditions, and geo-politics. |
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Three brief introductory essays by other contributors portray aspects of the life and work of Professor Kaukiainen, but these are essentially friendly, laudatory pieces and fail to convey what the life-mission of Kaukiainen was, and is, so far as being a historian is concerned. While no one can doubt the breadth of Kaukiainen's scholarship displayed in this volume, for me this is not enough. Increasingly I want to know about the 'whys' of historical scholarship and writing; why has the historian embarked on this research, what is the motivation, and to what end? |
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