Call for Papers - Conflict and the Sea
Posted: Friday 29th November 2024
Event date: 12-13 September 2025
Location: Royal Museums Greenwich
‘Britain, Conflict and the Sea’ seeks to explore the ways in which modern Britain has been shaped by ideas and practices of maritime war. Understandings of ‘Britishness’ have been bound up with conflict and seafaring for centuries. The sea has served as a barrier, marking the mental borderlines of an ‘island people’ and distinguishing them from European ‘others’. It has also facilitated the development and projection of British imperial power and capital on a global scale. This conference aims to explore the production, consumption, evolution and impact of these ideas and developments between the Napoleonic Wars and today.
This interdisciplinary conference, seeks to reappraise this account, to widen its parameters, and to ask new questions about modern Britain, conflict, and the sea. A key focus of the event will be upon the interaction between stories about ‘Britain, Conflict and the Sea’, and the political, economic, and military contexts and practices that those narratives existed within. As such, the organisers welcome papers that address the following questions or themes:
- How have ideas about conflict and the sea shaped modern British history?
- What are the principal narratives about maritime conflict within modern British history? How have these narratives been mobilised by particular groups and to what end?
- How are emerging or previously under-represented narratives that link questions of identity, conflict, and the sea enriching our understanding of modern British history?
- What role does conflict play in establishing, changing, or revealing forms of national identity?
- How can transnational and imperial frames shed new light on Anglo-centric accounts of maritime identity?
- To what extent does the First World War represent a rupture in Britain’s relationship with the sea?
Proposals are welcomed from independent or institutionally based researchers in a range of disciplines, for papers presenting original research that speak to these questions or to the themes of the conference as a whole, or wider historiographical reflections related to key ideas, trends or works in this area.
Submission deadline: 12:00 on 24 January 2025
Further details on how to submit a paper are available here.
