Research Catalog

Title

Unlocking the world : port cities and globalization in the age of steam, 1830-1930 / John Darwin.

Author

Darwin, John

Publication

London : Penguin Books, 2021.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxxviii, 454 pages : illustrations (black and white); 20 cm

Summary

Steam power transformed our world, initiating the complex, resource-devouring industrial system the consequences of which we live with today. It revolutionized work and production, but also the ease and cost of movement over land and water. The result was to throw open vast areas of the world to the rampaging expansion of Europeans and Americans on a scale previously unimaginable. Unlocking the World is the captivating history of the great port cities which emerged as the bridgeheads of this new steam-driven economy, reshaping not just the trade and industry of the regions around them but their culture and politics as well. They were the agents of what we now call 'globalization', but their impact and influence, and the reactions they provoked, were far from predictable. Nor were they immune to the great upheavals in world politics across the 'steam century'. This book is global history at its very best. Packed with fascinating case histories (from New Orleans to Montreal, Bombay to Singapore, Calcutta to Shanghai), individual stories and original ideas, Darwin's book allows us, for better or worse, to see the modern age taking shape. --

Subject

• Port cities > History
• Globalization
• Steam-engines
• Steam locomotives
• globalism
• steam locomotives
• steam engines (engines)
• Globalization
• Port cities
• Steam-engines

Genre/Form

History

Note

• Originally published: 2020.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: they keys and the lock -- Part one. Making global connections -- The port city in the old world -- Columbian prelude -- Steam globalization -- Oceans of change -- Part two. The dominion of steam -- American gateways -- The maritime Raj -- From the Nanyang to the Yangzi: the port-city world in the China Seas -- The crisis of the metropoles -- Lessons from Smyrna.

ISBN

• 9781846140877
• 1846140870

OCLC

• on1285696548
• 1285696548
• SCSB-14692037

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library