Staff Profile:Richard Blakemore
- Name:
- Dr Richard Blakemore
- Job Title:
- Associate Professor
- Responsibilities:
I teach on our part 1 courses 'Journeys Through History 1: People and Power', 'Journeys Through History 2: Culture and Concepts', and 'Research Skills and Opportunities', as well as my own part 1 option module 'Exploring the Atlantic World, 1450-1800'.
At part 2 I contribute to 'Historical Approaches and My Dissertation, teach my own option module on 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Empire, Slavery, and Society, 1550-1750', and supervise group projects;
At part 3 I teach a Special Subject called ‘Sea Changes: Britain and the Maritime World, 1500-1800’ and supervise individual dissertation projects.
I am also Department Director of Teaching and Learning, so I oversee the delivery of all our programmes in the Department of History.
Postgraduate supervision
I would be glad to supervise any research students with an interest in the early modern Atlantic world, and more specifically those pursuing studies of cultural encounters, empire, trade, piracy, or social history.
Areas of interest
My research focuses on the social history of seafarers, particularly British sailors during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As British sailors travelled ever further and more frequently during the early modern period, building and maintaining commercial networks and contacts across cultures, they brought home new wealth, objects and ideas. They also contributed to the emergence of new political and legal situations in Britain, Europe, and around the globe.
These centuries witnessed the separate kingdoms of the British Isles and Ireland become united under first a single sovereign and then a single government, at the same time as British traders and colonists established themselves across the Americas, Africa, and Asia. These were messy, uncertain, and very often bloody events; but they had a profound and cumulative impact, forging the first stage of globalisation, and in my work I seek to understand them from the perspective of the workers who made them possible.
I have appeared on historical programmes on BBC Radio 4 and on Channel 5, and I am a trustee of the British Commission for Maritime History and a consultant for various projects at the National Maritime Museum, Plymouth History Centre, the Golden Hinde, the Deutsche Schifffahrts Museum, and Adam Matthew Digital.
- Areas of Interest:
- Research groups / Centres:
- Publications:
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YNumber of items: 15.
2020
- Blakemore, R. and Davey, J., eds. (2020) The maritime world of early modern Britain. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam. ISBN 9789463721301
- Blakemore, R. (2020) Law and the sea. In: Jowitt, C., Lambert, C. and Mentz, S. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds, 1400-1800. Routledge, London, pp. 388-425. ISBN 9780367471842
2018
- Blakemore, R. J. and Murphy, E. (2018) The British Civil Wars at Sea, 1638-1653. Boydell & Brewer, pp239. ISBN 9781783272297
2017
- Blakemore, R. J. (2017) Pieces of eight, pieces of eight: seafarers’ earnings and the venture economy of early modern seafaring. Economic History Review, 70 (4). pp. 1153-1184. ISSN 1468-0289 doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12428
2016
- Blakemore, R. J. (2016) The changing fortunes of Atlantic history. English Historical Review, 131 (551). pp. 851-868. ISSN 0013-8266 doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cew189
2015
- Smith, E. J. and Blakemore, R. J., eds. (2015) Africa in the Atlantic World. Itinerario, 39 (2). Cambridge University Press, pp. 215-220. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0165115315000479
- Blakemore, R. J. (2015) West Africa in the British Atlantic: trade, violence, and empire in the 1640s. Itinerario, 39 (2). pp. 299-327. ISSN 0165-1153 doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0165115315000480
- Blakemore, R. J. (2015) Orality and mutiny: authority and speech amongst the seafarers of early modern London. In: Cohen, T. and Twomey, L. (eds.) Spoken word and social practice: Orality in Europe (1400-1700). Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts (14). Brill, Leiden, pp. 253-279. ISBN 9789004288683
- Fusaro, M., Allaire, B., Blakemore, R. J. and Vanneste, T., eds. (2015) Law, labour, and empire: comparative perspectives on seafarers, c. 1500-1800. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, pp357. ISBN 9781349686049 doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137447463
- Blakemore, R. J. (2015) The legal world of English sailors, c. 1575-1729. In: Fusaro, M., Allaire, B., Blakemore, R. J. and Vanneste, T. (eds.) Law, labour, and empire: comparative perspectives on seafarers, c. 1500-1800. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, pp. 100-120. ISBN 9781137447463
2014
- Blakemore, R. J. (2014) Thinking outside the gundeck: maritime history, the royal navy and the outbreak of British civil war, 1625–42. Historical Research, 87 (236). pp. 251-274. ISSN 0950-3471 doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2281.12049
2013
- Blakemore, R. J. (2013) British imperial expansion and the transformation of violence at sea, 1600-1850: introduction. International Journal of Maritime History, 25 (2). pp. 143-145. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/084387141302500211
- Blakemore, R. J. (2013) The politics of piracy in the British Atlantic, c. 1640-1649. International Journal of Maritime History, 25 (2). pp. 159-172. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/084387141302500213
- Blakemore, R. J. (2013) The ship, the river, and the ocean sea: concepts of space in the seventeenth-century London maritime community. In: Redford, D. (ed.) Maritime history and identity: the sea and culture in the modern world. International Library of War Studies. IB Tauris, London, pp. 98-119. ISBN 9781780763293
2012
- Blakemore, R. J. (2012) Navigating culture: navigational instruments as cultural artefacts, c. 1550-1650. Journal for Maritime Research, 14 (1). pp. 31-44. ISSN 2153-3369 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/21533369.2012.672801