A hundred years ago it was impossible to forecast with any accuracy how long a journey might take to accomplish, and the traveller by land or sea was liable to “moving accidents by flood and field”; but side by side with the growth of the steam-ship, and the accompanying increase of certainty in the times of departure and arrival, came the introduction of the railway system inland. Between the two, however, there is the fundamental difference that the sea is a highway open to all, while the land must be bought or hired of its owners; and the result of this was that inland transportation, implying a huge initial outlay on railroad construction, became the business of wealthy companies, whereas any man was free to build a steamboat and ply it where he would. The shipowner, moreover, has a further advantage in his freedom to choose his route, because he is at liberty to “follow trade”; but if, as has happened before now, the traffic of a town decreases, owing to a change in, or the disappearance of, its manufactures, the railway that serves it becomes proportionately useless. In another essential, the development of steam-transport on land and sea provides a more striking contrast. The main features of George Stephenson’s “Rocket” showed in 1830, in however crude a form as regards detail and design, the leading principles of the modern locomotive engine and boiler; but the history of the marine engine, as of the steam-ship which it propels, has been one of radical change. The earliest attempts were made, naturally enough, in the face of great opposition. Every one will remember Stephenson’s famous retort, when it was suggested to him that it would be awkward for his engine if a cow got across the rails, that “it would be very awkward—for the cow”;—and at sea it was the rule for a long while to regard steam merely as auxiliary to sails, to be used in calms. While ships were still built of wood, and while the early engines consumed a great deal of fuel in proportion to the distance covered, it was impossible to carry enough coal for long voyages, and a large sail-area had still to be provided. Progress was thus retarded until, in 1843, the great engineer Brunel proved by the Great Britain that the day of the wooden ship had passed; and the next ten years were marked by the substitution of iron for wood in shipbuilding. Thenceforward the story of the steam-ship progressed decade by decade. Between 1855 and 1865 paddle-wheels gave place to screw propellers, and the need for engines of a higher speed, which the adoption of the screw brought about, distinguished the following decade as that in which the “compound engine” was evolved. Put shortly, “compounding” means the using of the waste steam from one cylinder to do further work in a second cylinder. The extension of this system to “triple expansion,” whereby the exhaust steam is utilised in a third cylinder, the introduction of twin screws, and the substitution of steel for iron in hull-construction, were the chief innovations between 1875 and 1885. The last fifteen years of the century saw the tonnage of the world’s shipping doubled, and the main features of mechanical progress during that period were another step to “quadruple expansion” and the application of “forced draught,” which gives a greater steam-pressure without a corresponding increase in the size of the boilers. The first decade of the present century has been already devoted to the development of the “turbine” engine.

The Steamboat Phoenix and the Archaeology of Early Steam Navigation in North America offers an in-depth exploration of the archaeological and cultural aspects of early American steamboat development. It also tells the story of Phoenix, the second steamer to operate on Lake Champlain and the world’s earliest archaeologically studied steamboat wreck. In doing so, this book provides a unique insight into early perceptions of steam navigation, including both the wonder and fear elicited by the comfort and efficiency they promised and the hazards with which they came to be associated. The advent of steam navigation contributed significantly to the economic transformation of early America, facilitating trade through the transportation of goods along the country’s lakes, rivers, and canals. Despite their significant role, however, few details on the construction and operation of early steamboats have survived in historical documents. This book helps address this gap by examining the archaeological record. Using Phoenix as a case study and comparing it with the archaeological remains of other contemporary steamers, this book offers a detailed and extensive insight into the development of early steam propulsion and of steamboat culture in America, as well as a look at what life was like on board through the analysis of recovered artifacts and contemporary accounts. With over 90 illustrations, including a reconstruction of the steamboat, The Steamboat Phoenix and the Archaeology of Early Steam Navigation in North America is ideal for archaeologists and maritime historians, but also for those with a general interest in American maritime history.

Gibbons v. Ogden, Law, and Society in the Early Republic examines a landmark decision in American jurisprudence, the first Supreme Court case to deal with the thorny legal issue of interstate commerce. Decided in 1824, Gibbons v. Ogden arose out of litigation between owners of rival steamboat lines over passenger and freight routes between the neighboring states of New York and New Jersey. But what began as a local dispute over the right to ferry the paying public from the New Jersey shore to New York City soon found its way into John Marshall’s court and constitutional history. The case is consistently ranked as one of the twenty most significant Supreme Court decisions and is still taught in constitutional law courses, cited in state and federal cases, and quoted in articles on constitutional, business, and technological history. Gibbons v. Ogden initially attracted enormous public attention because it involved the development of a new and sensational form of technology. To early Americans, steamboats were floating symbols of progress—cheaper and quicker transportation that could bring goods to market and refinement to the backcountry. A product of the rough-and-tumble world of nascent capitalism and legal innovation, the case became a landmark decision that established the supremacy of federal regulation of interstate trade, curtailed states’ rights, and promoted a national market economy. The case has been invoked by prohibitionists, New Dealers, civil rights activists, and social conservatives alike in debates over federal regulation of issues ranging from labor standards to gun control. This lively study fills in the social and political context in which the case was decided—the colorful and fascinating personalities, the entrepreneurial spirit of the early republic, and the technological breakthroughs that brought modernity to the masses.

Here, David Livingstone and Charles Withers gather essays that deftly navigate the spaces of science in this significant period and reveal how each is embedded in wider systems of meaning authority, and identity.

The story of The Making of India begins in the seventeenth century, when a small seafaring island, one tenth the size of the Indian subcontinent, despatched sailing ships over 11,000 miles on a five-month trading journey in search of new opportunities. In the end they helped build a new nation. The sheer audacity and scale of such an endeavour, the courage and enterprise, have no parallel in world history. This book is the first to assess in a single volume almost all aspects of Britain's remarkable contribution in providing India with its lasting institutional and physical infrastructure, which continues to underpin the world's largest democracy in the twenty-first century.

This monograph tracks the development of the socio-economic stance of early Mormonism, an American Millenarian Restorationist movement, through the first fourteen years of the church’s existence, from its incorporation in the spring of 1830 in New York, through Ohio and Missouri and Illinois, up to the lynching of its prophet Joseph Smith Jr in the summer of 1844. Mormonism used a new revelation, the Book of Mormon, and a new apostolically inspired church organization to connect American antiquities to covenant-theological salvation history. The innovative religious strategy was coupled with a conservative socio-economic stance that was supportive of technological innovation. This analysis of the early Mormon church uses case studies focused on socio-economic problems, such as wealth distribution, the financing of publication projects, land trade and banking, and caring for the poor. In order to correct for the agentive overtones of standard Mormon historiography, both in its supportive and in its detractive stance, the explanatory models of social time from Fernand Braudel’s classic work on the Mediterranean are transferred to and applied in the nineteenth-century American context.