glory and the decisive defeat of British arms at New Orleans generated enthusiasm for an enlarged and modernized fleet. In 1816, Congress authorized the building of nine 74-gun ships of the line, twelve new heavy frigates, and three steam frigates. Even more important than building authorization were the institutional reforms that grew out of the Navy’s 1812–15 experience. Civilian control of the navy was established as a first principle. A system to select, develop, and promote naval leaders was formalized. Financial accountability
Anne T. Converse Photography
Neith, 1996, Cover photograph
Wood, Wind and Water
A Story of the Opera House Cup Race of Nantucket Photographs by Anne T. Converse Text by Carolyn M. Ford Live vicariously through the pictures and tales of classic wooden yacht owners who lovingly restore and race these gems of the sea. “An outstanding presentation deserves ongoing recommendation for both art and nautical collections.” 10”x12” Hardbound book; 132 pages, 85 full page color photographs; Price $45.00 For more information contact: Anne T. Converse Phone: 508-728-6210 anne@annetconverse.com www.annetconverse.com
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was dramatically improved. The Board of Navy Commissioners and the system of naval bureaus were established. In that dangerous time, the navy of John Paul Jones began to grow into the navy that fought at Midway. Laurence Kerr Bainbridge Island, Washington How the Old World Ended: The AngloDutch American Revolution, 1500–1800 by Jonathan Scott (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2019, 392pp, maps, notes, bibliography, and index, isbn 978-0-30024359-8; $35) Jonathan Scott’s How the Old World Ended is an impressive display of brilliant observations that transcend and overwhelm its overall message. Reading it is like watching a major fireworks display or listening to a stirring symphony. It is awe-inspiring, so much so that—once over—little remains but a recollection of something to be savored, put away in one’s memory for future reference. His writing can be pedantic; his thesis breathtaking. The Industrial Revolution, usually considered to have started in Great Britain around 1760, will attract scholarly attention so long as humanity remains capable of research and publication. Most researchers seek to determine why it happened. For Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905), it was religion, the acceptance of Protestantism’s freedoms of action. For Douglas C. North and Robert Thomas in The Rise of the Western World (1973), the establishment and maintenance of property rights made the Industrial Revolution possible. Rondo Cameron, A Concise Economic History of the World from Paleolithic Times to the Present (1989), argues that it was not a revolution but rather a progression. Scott’s focus is to examine how the Industrial Revolution changed the world: “to understand something like the Industrial Revolution, which changed everything, we need to examine every aspect of the life of the societies it changed.” The Industrial Revolution, of course, did change everything, and How the Old World Ended is Scott’s solid case for that conclusion, a succinct history “of three new states…the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1579), the United Kingdom of
Great Britain (1707), and the United States of America (1783).” While fighting to free themselves from Spanish rule, the Dutch introduced innovations in statecraft, watercraft, finance, agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing that put them at the forefront of European development and prosperity. The Dutch advances flowed to the British Isles (some by force of arms), where they prospered and thrust the British ahead of their continental mentors. The DutchBritish advances were carried to the New World, where a market for European products fueled the pre-conditions for an industrial revolution. Scott makes his case through a detailed outline of the history of his geographic base across 300 years. The text can be difficult to follow in spots where the author weaves the writing of contemporaries into his own narrative so seamlessly that it is not easy for the reader to know whose voice is narrating. Notwithstanding, the book is a valuable review of a distinctive period of world history, when events in the Dutch-BritishAmerican archipelago set the course for the modern world. How the Old World Ended will be of interest to those seeking a review of the history they already know and those wanting a crash course in European-American history from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. David O. Whitten, PhD Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina Ireland, Literature, and the Coast: Seatangled by Nicholas Allen (Oxford University Press, New York, 2020, 320pp, isbn 978-0-19885-787-7; $90hc) Predictions of sea level rise warn us of worldwide and, for some, catastrophic changes to the familiar coastlines drawn on maps and globes. Crossing the frontiers of coastlines, shores, and intruding far up rivers, the oceans, or as some name it, the world-ocean, is increasing almost daily its influence on terrestrial human activity. The border between land and sea turns out to be far more porous than our ancestors’ cartography might have imagined. Nowhere is the immediacy—and the porosity— of the land-sea divide more apparent than for those living on an island. Nicholas Allen’s new study explores the history of modern Irish literary entanglements with the sea SEA HISTORY 176, AUTUMN 2021