The Meta Incognita Project investigates Martin Frobisher’s Arctic expeditions of 1576-1578 (which included the first English attempt to establish a colony in Canada and mine its mineral resources) and their effects on the culture of the Inuit he encountered. This report focuses mainly on the field investigations conducted in 1991 by a number of Canadian and American archaeologists, anthropologists and geologists and includes papers on their preliminary findings as well as on the historical context and the issues of the project.

The Meta Incognita Project was initiated to cast new light on the Arctic voyages of Martin Frobisher and their significance for the histories of North America and Britain. Although the Elizabethan venture failed to discover a northwest passage to mines and precious metals, and to establish a colony in the future Canadian Arctic, it left valuable legacies.

The Meta Incognita Project was initiated to cast new light on the Arctic voyages of Martin Frobisher and their significance for the histories of North America and Britain. Although the Elizabethan venture failed to discover a northwest passage to mines and precious metals, and to establish a colony in the future Canadian Arctic, it left valuable legacies.

This fascinating study examines how Victorian fixation on disastrous Northwest Passage expeditions has conditioned our understanding of the Arctic and Polar exploration.

The Northwest Passage was repeatedly sought for over four centuries. From the first attempt in the late 15th century to Roald Amundsen's famous voyage of 1903-1906 where the feat was first accomplished to expeditions in the late 1940s by the Mounties to discover an even more northern route, author Alan Day covers all aspects of the ongoing quest that excited the imagination of the world. This compendium of explorers, navigators, and expeditions tackles this broad topic with a convenient, but extensive cross-referenced dictionary. A chronology traces the long succession of treks to find the passage, the introduction helps explain what motivated them, and the bibliography provides a means for those wishing to discover more information on this exciting subject.

This volume is a tribute to the career of J. Brendan Murphy and features papers by over 100 authors from countries all over the world: a testament to the high-profile and far-reaching influence of Brendan’s work. The topics covered fall into three broad categories that encompass Brendan’s main fields of influence: (1) supercontinents and the supercontinent cycle, including reconstructions and modelling; (2) orogenesis and terranes, with a focus on the Appalachian–Variscan and Central Asian orogenic belts and the oceans with which they are associated; and (2) magmatism and magmatic processes, centring on the geochemistry and isotopic compositions of magmas in arc and rift setting. Like Brendan’s own research, the scope of the papers spans the globe and ranges from strongly field-based studies to conceptual analyses. All of the articles, however, are focused on unravelling some critical aspect of geology or aimed at clarifying some crucial geological process. Hence, they also share a theme common to Brendan’s many contributions in emphasizing the importance of process-oriented research.

“Brilliant, ambitious, and often surprising. A remarkable contribution to the current global debate about Empire and a small masterpiece of research and conceptual reimagining.” —William Dalrymple, author of The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire An award-winning historian places the corporation—more than the Crown—at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empire, raising questions about public and private power that were just as troubling four hundred years ago as they are today. Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial companies were also relentlessly controversial, frequently in debt, and prone to failure. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was an elusive contradiction: public and private; person and society; subordinate and autonomous; centralized and diffuse; immortal and precarious; national and cosmopolitan—a legal fiction with very real power. Breaking from traditional histories in which corporations take a supporting role by doing the dirty work of sovereign states in exchange for commercial monopolies, Philip Stern argues that corporations took the lead in global expansion and administration. Whether in sixteenth-century Ireland and North America or the Falklands in the early 1980s, corporations were key players. And, as Empire, Incorporated makes clear, venture colonialism did not cease with the end of empire. Its legacies continue to raise questions about corporate power that are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago. Challenging conventional wisdom about where power is held on a global scale, Stern complicates the supposedly firm distinction between private enterprise and the state, offering a new history of the British Empire, as well as a new history of the corporation.

Do you only have a week to spare? For those of us who are time poor but who want to seize the moment, either on our own boat or on a charter, it’s reassuring to know that there are plenty of cruising hubs from where we can enjoy some of the best of the region in only a few days. Imray Pocket Pilots are a new series of affordable PDF books, companions to the Yachting Monthly series A Week Afloat. They visit some ideal destinations and suggest a one week itinerary, and include expanded sailing directions for cruising each area based on printed Imray pilot books. Familiar Imray chartlets cover marina detail and approaches, and photos add both information and colour to the downloads. This Imray Pocket Pilot covers The Ionian, Greece.

First published in 1985, Quaternary Environments represents the culmination of Quaternary research in the region of Baffin Island, Baffin Bay and West Greenland over a period of twenty years and it will serve as a timely and complementary balance to the paleo- oceanographic studies in the NE North Atlantic. The region of Baffin Island, Baffin Bay and West Greenland is probably the best place in the world to examine the interactions between ice, land and oceans on timescales of a few hundred to many thousands of years. Two introductory chapters outline the history of research and the physical background. In Part II the evidence for glacial erosion and deposition over the eastern Canadian Arctic is examined and the history of the Baffin Island continental shelf is described. Part III deals with the paleo- oceanography of Baffin Bay and the Labrador Sea through an examination of deep-sea cores dated by several different methods. In Part IV there is a comprehensive account of the stratigraphy of Baffin Island, Bylot Island, and West Greenland, from the Pliocene to the late Wisconsin. Part V examines the climatic effects of the past 10,000 years, considering evidence from pollen analysis, glacier fluctuations, changes of sea level and the response of early (Eskimo) man. This important volume will interest all quaternary scientists, especially those in glaciology, glacial geology, marine geology, and geomorphology.