Was the British Empire a maritime empire? Certainly the first English empire, centred on the British islands, depended in part on sea power to transport soldiers and supplies to and from France and Ireland. The wider, overseas empire that developed from the ‘age of reconnaissance’, first in the Americas and then in Asia, relied on mastery of the seas and protection of trade routes. It also required a naval strength, developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that could resist and thwart other competing imperial maritime powers, notably the Spanish, Dutch and the French, and then control overseas territories acquired from them by treaty and conquest. By the late eighteenth century Britain’s overseas empire, with its vital trade in commodities and manufacturers essential for a newly industrialising power, included territories in all five continents and in the major oceans of the world. Through the nineteenth century that empire expanded, as did Britain’s naval supremacy, so that by 1880 the United Kingdom possessed the largest overseas empire and also the world’s largest naval and mercantile fleets. Informal empire also relied largely on naval power, although that extended only to limited areas of littoral and the lower reaches of navigable rivers.

Whether, when and if Britain’s empire was essentially a maritime enterprise are questions addressed in this book of essays. Certainly in the last few decades there has been a growing interest in all aspects of maritime history. The large number of books on aspects of the sea, new journals and a flow of articles devoted to what has become a recognisably distinct discipline within history all demonstrate that popularity and interest. Although an established tradition of maritime history continues, mainly concerned with ships, commerce, and naval strategy, some of the more recent work has been informed by new developments and ideas from social, economic and particularly cultural history. The agenda is now much broader and includes history from below as well as micro-histories that bring into focus the lives of sailors, women on board ship and those left on land, the processes of migration, and the activities of ports and of overseas communities. It interrogates that complex weave of the past, touching aspects of life and experience only a few years ago generally thought inaccessible to historians. Greater use has been made of material culture as museums have made their rich collections more accessible to the public.