Recent Currents in the Nineteenth‐Century American Maritime History

Despite a substantial amount of scholarship in new and exciting directions, some scholars are concerned that the field of nineteenth‐century U.S. Maritime history is becoming too fragmented to function as a coherent field. The ‘new maritime history’ of the late 1960s has ushered in a host of new approaches to the lives, labor, and politics of American seamen. Scholars examining the gender identity, labor, ideology, legal status, literary portrayals, nationalism, multiculturalism, and racial and cultural identities of seafarers have created a dynamic, if at times confusing and atomized portrait of American seafarers in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, despite the myriad of approaches and specialties within the literature, ranging including piracy, mutiny, shipbuilding, whaling, fishing, and packet ships, scholars do agree that the maritime setting was crucial to the national development and sense of self for the United States during nineteenth century, and the maritime history of the United States needs to be integrated more completely into the larger national story and transnational stories.