The Guano Voyages

Rural History ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
CELIA CORDLE
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rural History ◽  
Agricultural Community ◽  
Agricultural Chemistry ◽  
Important Extension ◽  
Naval Officers

This paper on guano stems from research into hop cultivation in Kent. Parliamentary Papers give fascinating accounts of voyages made during the nineteenth century to obtain this ‘wonder’ fertiliser. The efforts made on behalf of the agricultural community by naval officers and seamen were an important extension of rural history, and were considered vital at the time. The paper describes the effort that went into this cooperation between agriculture and the navy, as well as its global scope, at a time when agricultural chemistry was in its infancy. Although developments in chemistry would displace the need for guano within two decades, the desire for guano was then very striking. Naval personnel underwent considerable danger and physical hardship during these explorations to bring farmers the fertilisers that they wanted, and some features of this narrative are explored here.

Human Capital and Technological Transition: Insights from the U.S. Navy

2011 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 704-729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darrell J. Glaser ◽  
Ahmed S. Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Specialized Training ◽  
Naval Academy ◽  
Technological Transition ◽  
Wage Premia ◽  
Naval Officers ◽  
The U.S

We explore the effects of human capital on workers during the latter nineteenth century by examining the U.S. Navy. Naval officers belonged either to a regular or an engineer corps and had tasks assigned for their specialized training. We compile education and career data for officers from Naval Academy and navy registers for the years 1858 to 1907. Wage premia for “engineer-skilled” officers deteriorated over their careers; more traditionally skilled officers enjoyed higher gains in earnings and more frequent promotions. This compelled those with engineering skills to leave the service early, hindering the navy's capacity to further technologically develop.

Charles Liernurs pneumatische riool en het besturen van bodems

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 311-327
Author(s):  
Maarten Meijer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
Urban Waste ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sewage System ◽  
Agricultural Chemistry ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Charles Liernur’s Pneumatic Sewage System and the Governing of Soils This article interrogates the epistemological conditions of Charles Liernur’s pneumatic sewage system in order to shed light on the changing relation between soils and Dutch society in the nineteenth century. The first section discusses the relation between hygienism, soil and sewage. The second section unearths how Liernur’s design related to the agricultural chemistry of Justus Liebig. Through the epistemologies and the mediating technologies that are operationalized by hygienists and chemists, soils are made governable. The final section of this article discusses the struggle to commercialise the urban waste collected by Liernur’s system, highlighting the difference between governable and governed soils.

Mid-Victorian Attitudes to Seamen and Maritime Reform: The Society for Improving the Condition of Merchant Seamen, 1867

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars U. Scholl
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
General Public ◽  
Parliamentary Committee ◽  
Naval Officers ◽  
Protection Of Life ◽  
Business Freedom

This chapter analyses the mid-nineteenth century attempts to improve the working conditions of merchant seamen in Britain, by focussing on the actions of the Society for Improving the Condition of Merchant Seamen - an extra-parliamentary committee founded to push for governmental reform. Williams notes that the committee was comprised of MPs, naval officers, medical men, and shipmasters, but no common seamen whatsoever. He suggests the society grew out of primarily middle-class humanitarian interests. The society published reports into health, accommodation, wages, and protection of life. Williams declares that their audience was the general public, those who value business freedom but are troubled by humanitarian concerns. He concludes by stating the Society was both instrumental and symptomatic in the shift in consciousness from improving maritime discipline, to improving maritime welfare.

Officers’ contributions to Britain’s anti-slavery culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 167-190
Author(s):  
Mary Wills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Naval Officers

This chapter examines officers’ contributions to the metropolitan discourses about slavery and abolition taking place in Britain in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Furthering the theme of naval officers playing an important part in the social and cultural history of the West African campaign, it uncovers connections between the Royal Navy and domestic anti-slavery networks, and the extent to which abolitionist societies and interest groups operating in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century forged relationships with naval officers in the field. Officers contributed to this ever-evolving anti-slavery culture: through support of societies and by providing key testimonies and evidence about the unrelenting transatlantic slave trade. Their representations of the slave trade were used to champion the abolitionist cause, as well as the role of the Royal Navy, in parliament, the press and other public arenas.

Officers’ commitment to the anti-slavery cause

2019 ◽  
pp. 69-96
Author(s):  
Mary Wills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
The West ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Press ◽  
Naval Officers

The chapter examines how naval officers engaged with the cornerstones of the British abolitionist agenda: religion, humanitarianism, morality and concepts of national identity. As most nineteenth-century naval officers came from the middle or upper-middle classes, they were exposed to a culture of anti-slavery sentiment in popular politics, literature and the press. These ideas had a significant impact on how they conceived the nature of their duty as naval personnel and their identity as Britons. Many testimonies of naval suppression offer emotion, insight and conviction regarding the anti-slavery cause, often driven by religious belief, and particularly the rise of evangelicalism in the navy. Yet there was no obligation for naval officers serving on the West Africa squadron to be committed abolitionists. Others held more ambiguous views, particularly as attitudes regarding slavery and race evolved and hardened as the century progressed.

Thomas Wallace, 1891-1965

1966 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 503-519
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Family Business ◽  
Mining Activities ◽  
Agricultural Machinery ◽  
Pure Science ◽  
The Third ◽  
Farming Community ◽  
Agricultural Community ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Subject

Thomas Wallace was the eighth child of a family of nine, three sons and six daughters. His father, also Thomas, was a blacksmith and agricultural engineer carrying on a family business at Newton-on-the-Moor, near Alnwick. From the beginning of the nineteenth century the Wallace smithy had served the needs of the local farming community, shoeing their horses and mending their simple agricultural machinery. Two of Thomas Wallace’s sons showed the family bent for engineering, but the third, who bore his father’s name and who is the subject of this memoir, had, as he often said himself, no skill in engineering nor any liking for the work; his interests were in scholarship, catholic at first, but soon to be canalized in the study of pure science. Thomas Wallace senior had married Mary Thompson, also of a Northumberland country family. Before their eighth child was born on 5 September 1891 he moved to Burradon, where he expanded his business by undertaking work for the collieries. Thomas junior’s childhood was spent in his native village, where although the country was still pleasant and highly farmed, mining activities had already begun to bring about those changes which later were to take away so much of its beauty. Wallace as a boy was attracted to the farms and he spent many happy days on them, playing and watching the men at work. As he grew older he began to share in the work of haymaking and harvest. It is to this country background that can be attributed the ease with which he later became absorbed in the agricultural community he served.

The Drover's Wife and the Drover's Daughter: Histories of Single Farming Women and Debates in Australian Historiography

Rural History ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Kathryn M. Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rural Women ◽  
Married Women ◽  
The Other ◽  
Family Farms ◽  
Rural History ◽  
Never Married ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
New Research ◽  
Rural Australia

AbstractIn the 1980s two vigorous debates commanded the attention of economic and feminist historians alike, and they played a key part in shaping the historiography concerning rural women in Australia. One debate revolved around the use of the nineteenth-century census in determining women's occupations, including those of farming women. The other debate, part of a wider feminist conversation about women's agency, focused on the question of the nature of white women's lives within colonial families and society. Despite the centrality of rural women to these debates, and the role colonial women's histories played in shaping the historiography, these debates did not impact upon the writing of rural history in Australia. This article revisits these debates in the light of new research into the lives of never-married women on Australia's family farms and uses their histories to question the conclusions arrived at by feminist and economic historians. It also questions the continuing invisibility of rural women in histories of rural Australia and hopes to provoke more discussion between rural and feminist historians.

Jemmy Button

1987 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Toumey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Tierra Del Fuego ◽  
South American ◽  
Evolutionary Thought ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Naval Officers

Jemmy Button was an Indian of Tierra del Fuego who inadvertently inspired four generations of nineteenth-century English missionaries to risk their earthly lives to save his eternal soul. These earnest evangelicals made five expeditions to Jemmy's South American homeland to make Christians of him and his countrymen. One of these ventures was an embarrassing fiasco, another ended in death by starvation, and a third led to a treacherous massacre.This young Indian's unintended influence also touched evolutionary thought. Jemmy Button was a friend and companion to Charles Darwin on the famous voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. Jemmy's versatile personality was intriguing to Darwin. He could be a naked Indian hunter when in Tierra del Fuego, and a foppish English gentleman when in the company of British naval officers. His ability to change like this inspired Darwin's earliest written reflections on the human capacity to progress from savagery to civilization.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Jason W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Science Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Naval Officers ◽  
The U.S

The introduction established the main argument of the book, which is that the U.S. Navy’s charts and its chart-making throughout the nineteenth century were integral to the expansion of American oceanic empire even as such effort exposed the limits of science practice, seafaring, and war-making in a dynamic, dangerous marine environment. The Navy and the broader American maritime world’s encounter with the ocean, mediated through science, was integral to the way mariners, navigators, and naval officers thought of an emerging maritime empire first in commercial terms and, by the late nineteenth century, in new geo-strategic terms. The introduction also places the larger work within the historiographies of military, maritime, and naval history as well as environmental history and the history of science and cartography, seeking to establish historiographical and methodological bridges among these sub-fields.

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