
The Edwin Fox
How an Ordinary Sailing Ship Connected the World in the Age of Globalization, 1850-1914
The University of North Carolina Press
Published on 24. October 2023
Book
Hardback
312 pages
978-1-4696-7655-5 (ISBN)
Description
It began as a small, slow, and unadorned sailing vessel-in a word, ordinary. Later, it was a weary workhorse in the age of steam. But the story of the Edwin Fox reveals how an everyday merchant ship drew together a changing world and its people in an extraordinary age of rising empires, sweeping economic transformation, and social change. This fascinating work of global history offers a vividly detailed and engaging narrative of globalization writ small, viewed from the decks and holds of a single vessel. The Edwin Fox connected the lives and histories of millions, though most never even saw it.
Built in Calcutta in 1853, the Edwin Fox was chartered by the British navy as a troop transport during the Crimean War. In the following decades, it was sold, recommissioned, and refitted by an increasingly far-flung constellation of militaries and merchants. It sailed to exotic ports carrying luxury goods, mundane wares, and all kinds of people: not just soldiers and officials but indentured laborers brought from China to Cuba, convicts and settlers being transported from the British Empire to western Australia and New Zealand-with dire consequences for local Indigenous peoples-and others. But the power of this story rests in the everyday ways people, nations, economies, and ideas were knitted together in this foundational era of our modern world. Readers will never see globalization the same way again.
Built in Calcutta in 1853, the Edwin Fox was chartered by the British navy as a troop transport during the Crimean War. In the following decades, it was sold, recommissioned, and refitted by an increasingly far-flung constellation of militaries and merchants. It sailed to exotic ports carrying luxury goods, mundane wares, and all kinds of people: not just soldiers and officials but indentured laborers brought from China to Cuba, convicts and settlers being transported from the British Empire to western Australia and New Zealand-with dire consequences for local Indigenous peoples-and others. But the power of this story rests in the everyday ways people, nations, economies, and ideas were knitted together in this foundational era of our modern world. Readers will never see globalization the same way again.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Product notice
Cloth
Illustrations
35 halftones, 4 maps
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
600 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4696-7655-5 (9781469676555)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Boyd Cothran | Adrian Shubert
The Edwin Fox
How an Ordinary Sailing Ship Connected the World in the Age of Globalization, 1850-1914
E-Book
10/2023
The University of North Carolina Press
€24.49
Available for download
Persons
Boyd Cothran is associate professor of history at York University.
Adrian Shubert is professor emeritus of history at York University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Adrian Shubert is professor emeritus of history at York University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.