Автор: Steven Gray
Название: Steam Power and Sea Power: Coal, the Royal Navy, and the British Empire, c. 1870-1914
Издательство: Palgrave Macmillan
Год: 2017
Серия: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
ISBN: 978-1-137-57641-5
Язык: English
Формат: pdf
Размер: 10,3 mb
Страниц: 289

In particular, it considers how steam propulsion made vessels utterly dependent on a particular resource – coal – and its distribution around the world. In doing so, it shows that the ‘coal question’ was central to imperial defence and the protection of trade, requiring the creation of infrastructures that spanned the globe. This infrastructure required careful management, and the processes involved show the development of bureaucracy and the reliance on the ‘contractor state’ to ensure this was both robust and able to allow swift mobilisation in war. The requirement to stop regularly at foreign stations also brought men of the Royal navy into contact with local coal heavers, as well as indigenous populations and landscapes. These encounters and their dissemination are crucial to our understanding of imperial relationships and imaginations at the height of the imperial age.