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For centuries, the transportation provided by the Roanoke River, North Carolina, has played a vital role in the economic and military history of the area. The Civil War illustrated the importance of the waterway as a military consideration, when both the Union and the Confederacy strove to control the river. The conflict inflicted grievous harm upon the region's maritime transportation. Taken as a whole, the shipwrecks and abandoned vessels of the river provide an exceptional vantage point regarding questions of technology and economy, both in times of peace and when these tranquil periods are juxtaposed against warfare and upheaval. This research uses statistical and geo-spatial analyses of the shipwrecks and abandoned vessels of the Roanoke River in an attempt to discern anthropological patterns. Both historical and archaeological data are the subject of investigation. Three major themes: manner of loss, trade, and technology, are explored primarily to interpret how cultural change is reflected in the assemblage of shipwrecked and abandoned vessels of the waterway. The trends that emerge are often interwoven among these themes, and through them, this paper attempts to explain such diverse phenomena as shifting trade patterns, wreck clustering, vessel dimensions, and the dichotomy of behavior between times of war and times of peace.

This article provides a critical examination of the way in which Britain's trading firms coped with radical changes in local business conditions. Recent work by Jones has shown that a small number of such companies successfully 'reinvented' themselves in the post-war period. Using evidence drawn from the archives of one of these firms, John Swire & Sons, the article shows that this process of reinvention came about as a result of the firm's willingness to experiment with different organisational forms over an extended period of time. The Swire case suggests that certain trading companies began the process of evolution and adaptation long before 1945, reforming their internal and external architecture to deal with changing conditions in China, such as the demise of the comprador system. However, the network-based culture of these firms tended to mean that they did so in a more gradual and piecemeal way compared with those modern, managerial firms who had begun to set up operations abroad in the early twentieth century., It is hard to imagine any group of enterprises whose experience more perfectly mirrors Britain's economic history since 1800 than that of its commercial trading companies. Propelled into the international [...]

The flows of people and goods for modern production and consumption societies were channeled through global maritime business networks in the twentieth century. The principal instrument was the business trip for constructing and sustaining these networks.

Scholars concerned with an information-based view of an economy make an implicit assumption that firm efficiencies are based on information of good quality. In this firm-specific study an explanation of the importance of information quality is given by utilising and extending Casson's diagrammatic methodology for representing information flows. This has been done by measuring aspects of the information flows through Wm. Holyman & Sons Ltd and Holymans Ltd, for five years during the period 1904 to 1935. The shipping firms of Union Steamship Company of New Zealand (USSCo.), Wm. Holyman & Sons Ltd (Holyman's), and Huddart Parker Company Ltd (HP) were joint-venture partners. A content analysis methodology was applied to the Head Office records of USSCo. The results have provided a way of extending Casson's diagrammatic methodology and in so doing, added to Casson's own contribution to the theory of the firm. The evidence from the archives suggests that a high quality of information underpinned the joint venture a nd ensured success for a 75-year period. Furthermore, the research findings support the thesis that information of high quality contributes in a significant way to firm efficiencies., While adopting different investigative apparatus, scholars in fields allied to business history have attributed central importance to information and knowledge in shaping economic processes. For example, Mark Casson argues that [...]

Governments often respond to crisis situations with radical economic policies. The Shipping Act of 1916 created a government-owned shipping company. This significant departure from prior policy arose in the atmosphere of crisis surrounding the war in Europe. The Wilson Administration was able to use political institutions to its advantage and ensure that alternative, more moderate proposals would not be considered by the legislature. Initially thwarted by a filibuster, the administration was forced to compromise in order to maintain party loyalty and pass the bill in 1916.

The expansion of Dutch and English shipping in the Mediterranean in the 16th and 17th centuries came, in part, as a result of decisions by merchants in the Republic of Genoa to refocus their resources into trade with Spain and Spanish territories. Genoese merchants used their financial strength to expand ties to the Spanish court to ensure security. Ship ownership and shipping was conceded to foreign interests because of the risks involved. Free port policies in Genoa in the 17th century helped to ensure that adequate food was available for inland Italian populations.

The transport of goods by water has been found by historians to have more cost advantages over land carriage before the construction of railways. Factors such as the length, direction, capacity and reliability of the navigation need to be considered for towns found in navigable waterways. It is determined whether urban growth was a main characteristic of towns located in important river navigations during the years 1660-1760.

The Atlantic cities of Europe and the US became important manufacturing sectors with the industrialization of shipping from the 1870s to the 1910s. The development of ports affected art, literature and space. Expansion of ports to permit big ships affected the space available to the cities, and enhanced the importance of the port.

HANS CHR. JOHANSEN. Scandinavian shipping in the late eighteen century in a European perspective. During the eighteenth century the British Navigation Acts were used as a powerful weapon to increase the size of the British merchant navy. Other European countries also experienced significant growth rates for their shipping, among them the Scandinavian countries. The development in these countries was partly the result of a range of protective measures, and was partly based on a strong competitiv position on several routes.

Networks as much as hierarchies, it is becoming clear, provide a key to understanding the organisation and behaviour of the shipping industry. A substantial wave of scholarship has recently pushed [...]

A team of archaeologists were able to find evidence of migration by Homo erectus into the island of Crete. The discovery of primitive stone tools that probably came from this early human species pushes back the history of seafaring in the region by over 100,000 years.