Book Reviews

Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord 18:2 (2008): 120–21.

Rarely do books come along that make such a demonstrable contribution to the field of maritime history as Dionisius Agius’s Classic Ships of Islam, a work that effectively re-lays the foundation for the study of Muslim shipping in the western Indian Ocean. “This is what the book is about: the Classic Ships of Islam, the story of river boats and ocean-going vessels,” in the author’s own words, “these are the best examples of ship-types recorded by Muslim historians, geographers, travelers and storytellers. Classic Ships of Islam is about types of craft, their hull design, and equipment, but also about seamanship and technology in the context of the broader historical framework.”More

The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord 17:1 (2007): 62–63.

Hassan Khalilieh’s Admiralty and Maritime Laws in the Mediterranean Sea (ca. 800-1050) is an invaluable work of legal history that fills a large gap in the history of maritime and international law in the medieval period. Specifically, he attempts to demonstrate “the contribution of Islamic jurisprudence made to the development and internationalization of the law of the sea prior to the emergence of the Italian commercial empires” through a comparative analysis of the Rhodian Sea Law and the Arabic Treatise Concerning the Leasing of Ships and the Claims between (Contracting) Parties (the Kitāb Akriyat al-Sufun).More

World History Connected 3:2 (2006).

First published in translation in 1998 and issued in paperback last year, Pablo Pérez-Mallaína’s Spain’s Men of the Sea is an outstanding contribution to the study of maritime life in the sixteenth-century. As director of the Department of American History at the University of Seville, the author has mined rich veins in the Spanish archives and other sources to present a portrait of the transatlantic shipping industry and its people (not all of them Spanish) that is at once orderly and intimate.More

International Journal of Maritime History 18:1 (2006): 485–86.

Although its bicentennial anniversary has recently come and gone, the 1801–1805 war between the United States and Tripoli remains an obscure episode in American military and diplomatic history. This is unfortunate for a number of reasons. The war was the nation’s first protracted conflict following independence, and apart from the Indian Wars, it was the longest war fought by the United States before Vietnam. Given that the US Navy was brought into being in anticipation of just such a war, how naval administration, strategy and tactics evolved in its earliest years offers ample opportunity for the discerning historian.

International Journal of Maritime History 17:1 (2005): 327–29.

In February 2005, Belfast artist Rita Duffy announced her plan to tow an iceberg to Belfast to commemorate the city’s industrial heritage by drawing attention to its having been the birthplace of the Titanic. A bizarre scheme by any measure—Duffy herself acknowledges that some might deem it “lunatic”—it can be better appreciated after a reading of Stephanie Barczewski’s thought-provoking Titanic: A Night Remembered.More

Itinerario 29:2 (2005): 124–26.

The subject of relations between China and Southeast Asia is not a new one, and has been studied from a wide variety of perspectives. What distinguishes the approach of Martin Stuart-Fox, a professor of history at Queensland University, is that ‘this is not a book only about China’s relations with Southeast Asia, but about the relationship from both sides. It could be just as well be titled Southeast Asia and. China’ (vii). The belief in the commutative nature of this relationship is at once the book’s strength and its weakness.More