Law and Maritime Culture 1650-1850 (Workshop)

Organizers: Renaud Morieux (Cambridge) and Jeppe Mulich (City, University of London).
This two-days workshop was supposed to take place on 29-30 June 2020, and has been postponed due to the pandemic. The new date is 1-2 September 2021.

In recent years legal historians have increasingly moved beyond the narrow confines of the courtroom and the law treaty into the wider world of everyday legal practices, rituals, and material cultures. At the same time, maritime history has made something of a comeback, from being the primary domain of naval and social historians to becoming part of the larger conversation about geography, physical environments, and spatial history. The intersection between these two fields is the focus of our workshop, scheduled for June 2021, which seeks to bring together a small group of scholars to discuss issues related to legal and maritime history. By using maritime cultures and the sea changes of the long eighteenth century as focal points, this workshop aims to contribute to the ongoing revitalization of legal history and to further broaden the horizons of scholarship, bringing innovative interdisciplinary research into conversation with existing historiography.

The workshop brings together a group of leading and emerging voices in the fields of legal and maritime history, including senior scholars, early career researchers, and postdoctoral fellows from Britain, continental Europe, and the United States. There are a total of ten papers presented over the course of two days, with precirculated abstracts and significant time for discussion. The format is meant to encourage interaction across regional and thematic specializations, in order to foster a broader conversation about cross-cutting trends and connections. The workshop will be open for researchers and postgraduate students to attend and join in these discussions. Each session will feature three papers and will include a mix of senior and junior speakers.

Speakers: Lauren Benton (Vanderbilt), Richard Blakemore (Reading), Guillaume Calafat (Paris I - Sorbonne University),Margaret Hunt (Uppsala), Renaud Morieux (Cambridge), Jeppe Mulich (City, University of London), Jake Richards (Durham), Katherine Roscoe (Liverpool), Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (University of Southern California), Francesca Trivellato (Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton)

This workshop is supported by the Past and Present Society, the Royal Historical Society and the Trevelyan Fund.