From the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, Liverpool was frequently referred to as the ‘second city of the empire’. Yet, the role of Liverpool within the British imperial system and the impact on the city of its colonial connections remain underplayed in recent writing on both Liverpool and the empire. However, ‘inconvenient’ this may prove, this specially-commissioned collection of essays demonstrates that the imperial dimension deserves more prevalence in both academic and popular representations of Liverpool’s past. Indeed, if Liverpool does represent the ‘World in One City’ – the slogan for Liverpool’s status as European Capital of Culture in 2008 – it could be argued that this is largely down to Merseyside’s long-term interactions with the colonial world, and the legacies of that imperial history. In the context of Capital of Culture year and growing interest in the relationship between British provincial cities and the British empire, this book will find a wide audience amongst academics, students and history enthusiasts generally.

Historians today like to preach the virtues of comparison and cross-national work. In the last decade, cross-national histories have prospered, yielding important work in the subjects as diverse as the transatlantic trade in slaves and the cultures of celebrity. In the meantime, comparative history has also enjoyed a renaissance, but what is largely missing in the rush beyond the nation is any sense of how to tackle this research. This volume brings together scholars who have worked either cross-nationally or comparatively to reflect upon their own research. In essays that engage practical, methodological, and theoretical questions, these contributors assess the gains--but also the obstacles and perils--of research that traverses national boundaries. Drawn from the subject-areas that have attracted the most comparative and cross-national attention: war, welfare, labor, nation, immigration, and gender. Taken together, these essays provide the first critical analysis of the cross-national turn in European history.

This book examines the role of mercantile networks in linking Asian economies to the global economy. It contains fourteen contributions on East, Southeast and South Asia covering the period from 1750 to the present.

This guide covers the following major collections hosted at the Merseyside Maritime Museum:- records deposited or presented under the 1958 Public Records Act; official organisations, including the Merseyside Docks and Harbour Board (MDHB), antecedents, and successors; shipping and trade associations; and shipowners. Other, smaller categories are published in the accompanying Part II (Vol 17 of Research in Maritime History, ISBN: -0-9681288-7-4) and together they form a comprehensive catalogue of contents. The guide summarises each collections as follows:- a brief historical introduction; a list of main items; an archival code; a datespan; a quantity of records; and a reference to any key printed sources held in the museum's Reading Room. The museum archives are made up of crucial maritime documentation and are an invaluable resource for maritime historians. The museum focuses primarily on Liverpool due to its previous status as the second major port of the United Kingdom, it also houses a great deal of national and international records in a vast variety of media.

Liverpool has been shaped by its historic dependence on ships and seaborne trade to an extent unequalled anywhere else in Britain. This history has left its birthmark on the present. In a unique analytical essay blending economic and social history with sociology, Tony Lane shows how the structures and the everyday life experiences of shipowners and seafarers, merchants and dockers have together produced a city with a distinctive social character. The city’s dependence on shipping and commerce has ended, but it passing is recent enough for it still to exert a powerful influence and give this remarkable city a "feel" of being noticeably different from anywhere else in England. This book is a second fully revised and updated edition of Tony Lane’s Liverpool: Gateway of Empire (Lawrence and Wishart, 1987).

This guide follows the Guide to the Records of Merseyside Maritime Museum Volume I (Vol 8 of Research in Maritime History) and covers the remaining collections hosted at the Merseyside Maritime Museum relating to a wide variety of subjects:- merchants; shipbuilding; slavery; emigration; maritime families; maritime charities; seafarers; the Titantic; and the Lusitania. This guide follows the same format as the previous:- a brief historical introduction; a list of main items; an archival code; a datespan; a quantity of records; and a reference to any key printed sources held in the museum’s Reading Room. The subjects are broken down into ten thematic chapters, for ease of navigation.

The fourteen years between 1960 and-1974 saw the trade union and labour movement transformed. In 1959 Labour had been beaten at the polls for the third successive time – with political commentators claiming that class politics in Britain were dead. By 1974 a mobilised trade union movement had forced a Conservative government from office, compelled the abandonment of its anti-trade union legislation, released imprisoned dockers from Pentonville prison and twice provided the miners with the solidarity required for victory. The climax in 1974 was Labour victory in the 1974 general election with a programme calling for an irreversible shift of wealth and power in favour of working people. This volume of the TGWU’s centenary history documents the role of Britain’s biggest union in this transformation. Two remarkable general secretaries, Frank Cousins and Jack Jones, provided leadership. However, it was the TGWU’s members who achieved it: the women and men in the factories, transport depots and docks, who forged the new class unity. The book records their voices. It brings together their struggles from Clydeside, Dublin and Belfast to Longbridge, Dagenham and Heathrow – and it does so with a wealth of new material revealing the tactics of government and employers and the complexity of the struggles for sex equality and against racial discrimination that helped cement the new class unity.