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Hybrid workshop “Maritime labour practices in colonial contexts” – 19/20 May 2023

I am glad to invite you to a workshop entitled “Maritime labour practices in colonial contexts”. In a small audience in person, but hopefully joined by a wider digital audience, a number of historians and scholars will come and share their research together.

Starting with Marcus Rediker’s and Peter Linebaugh’s Many headed Hydra (2000), the past decades have brought a number of scholarships and disciplines to analyze the diverse maritime working conditions across Time, Oceans, and Globe. The emerging field of Global and Maritime History demonstrated the mobility and importance of those, who crucially filled the ships. Depending on the purpose of the voyage, working and living circumstances at sea changed and differed dramatically.

The diverse purposes of voyages influenced the socialization and consistency of the crew, as they were isolated from mainland systems of society, government, work, and leisure. For several years, a pelagic-whaling ship, which required frequent stopovers, had different necessities as a trade ship. Both the composition of a crew and the hierarchies of a Convict ship might have been different, compared to a Royal Navy Ship.

These different circumstances mirrored in the wage-system too. Facing a several-year absence from home and family, whalers needed a payment in advance to sustain their families. Ships on the American continent became places of hope for slaves who were escaping.

The purpose of this workshop is to highlight and reveal these different conditions and to bring together scholars from diverse disciplines and areas to engage in a dialogue about the results of their research.

You can find the full program here. If you are interested in participating in person or online, please contact me at hussein@uni-trier.de

GHI London Blogpost

 

Thanks to a scholarship of the German Historical Institute London, I have spent several months of last year (September 2021 to November 2021) in several english cities (Birmingham, London) and welsh cities (Aberystwyth, Pembrokeshire, Milford Haven) in order to undertake archival research in a number of Archives, Museums and Libraries.

In the Cadbury Research Library of the University of Birmingham I was able to read (and to copy) extensive amounts of manuscripts of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) Stations and its actors at the Bay of Islands (roughly from the period between 1814 until 1840). Adopting on one particular meeting minute of the CMS in London, I summarized my PhD research project for the blog of the German Historical Institute. I remain very grateful for this wonderful opportunity of the GHIL and thank Dr. Marcus Meer for the lectoring process.

You can read the blogpost on the GHIL Blog here.1

  1. Hussein, Haureh: Māori Iwi, Quaker Whalers, and Missionaries at the Bay of Islands in Aotearoa/New Zealand (1790–1840), in: GHIL Blog, https://ghil.hypotheses.org/1227 [Last Access: 24.11.2022]. []

Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga

During the Conference days of the Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology (see the blogpost of 26. Sept. 2022), I met Bill Edwards, manager of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and Dr. James Robinson, Archaeologist of the same Institution.

Dr. James Robinson delivered a paper entitled “Land and Sea,the archaeological and historical evidence of European interaction with tangata whenua on Moturua Island in the Bay of Islands: 1769–1940s”. Bill Edwards talked about the “Seascapes of encounter, the archaeological and historical evidence of European voyagers early contact with tangata whenua in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.”

Throughout the Conference, I used many occasionaries and moments to have chat with them by a cup of tea, for lunch, or during the boat trip, and even after the Conference, I visited them twice in the Office of the “Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga” in Keri Keri, where we not only continued our conversations but also “fall” into “rabbitholes” of both their Library and their mapping programms in the office.

Apart from Bill and James, John O’Hare, a journalist, also worked in the Council and invited me very spontaneously to talk about my research. I readily used the opportunity to introduce my topic to a local audience. The article can be found in the “Northern Advocate” Newspaper (behind a paywall)1 , but is also free accessible on the blog of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.2

  1. Whaling heritage brings researcher to New Zealand, in: The Northern Advocate, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/bay-news-fleet-celebrates-40-years-okaihau-bowls-on-a-roll/X52EX7N4GOR4EUUGE56LIVJCIE/, [Last Access: 2.11.2022]. []
  2. Whaling Heritage draws researcher to New Zealand, in: Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, https://www.heritage.org.nz/news-and-events/blog/whaling-heritage-draws-researcher-to-new-zealand, [Last Access: 2.11.2022]. []

“Archaeology of Interaction” Conference, 27th – 30th September 2022

Back in May/June 2022, when Aotearoa/New Zealand enabled international guests to visit the country again, I planned a research stay ahead for the months between September and December 2022. During this organization period, I not only had intense correspondences with Museums, Libraries and Archives for manuscripts, but encountered also Call for Papers, and one of them was the “Archaeology of Interaction” Conference of the “Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology“, which will take place from 27th to 30th September 2022 in Russell (former: Kororāreka), at Pēwhairangi/ Bay of Islands.

I remain very happy and proud to be able to introduce my research project in front of the attendes and look forward to the next days. The programme holds numerous highlights throughout the following days, and can be seen here:

“FEEGI” Conference, 24th – 26th February 2022

Next week, the “Forum of the Early-Modern Empires and Global Interactions” (FEEGI) will come virtually together for its fourteenth Biennial Meeting, and I am very happy to introduce my dissertation project in their Saturday Panel “Entangled Lives”.

The Panel will be chaired by Prof. Ty Reese (University of North Dakota), and will furthermore include presentations of Prof. Amélia Polónia/ Rosa Capelão (University of Porto), Dr. Michael Bennett (University fo Sheffield) and Viviana Quintero Márquez (Vanderbilt University).

The full program of the conference can be found here: