Islands and the British Empire in the Age of Sail

Douglas Hamilton, Professor of History, Sheffield Hallam University, UK,John McAleer, Associate Professor of Imperial and Global History, University of Southampton, UK

Douglas Hamilton (Sheffield Hallam University) is a historian of the British Empire in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World, with a particular focus on the Caribbean. His publications include Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic World (2005), and (as editor) Slavery, Memory and Identity (2012) and Jacobitism, Enlightenment and Empire (2014). He is currently working on a history of the Royal Navy in the eighteenth-century Caribbean.


John McAleer (University of Southampton) is a historian of the British encounter and engagement with the wider world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, situating the history of empire in its global and maritime contexts. His recent monograph, Britain's Maritime Empire: Southern Africa, the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, 1763-1820 (2016), focused on the relationship between Britain's maritime empire and the crucial strategic locations at the gateway to the Indian Ocean World. He is currently working on a history of travellers' experiences of the voyage to Asia in the age of sail.

1. Islands and the British Empire in the Age of Sail, Douglas Hamilton and John McAleer
2. Islands, Voyaging, and Empires in the Age of Sail, Stephen A. Royle
3. Britain's European Island-Empire, 1793-1815, James Davey
4. Islands of Settlement: Britain's Western North Atlantic Islands in the Age of Sail, 1497-1835, Michael J. Jarvis
5. 'Sailing on the Same Uncertain Sea': The Windward Islands of the Caribbean, Douglas Hamilton
6. The Route to the East: Atlantic Islands and Britain's Maritime Empire, John McAleer
7. Britain's Western Indian Ocean Island-Scape, Sarah Longair
8. Islands and the Age of Revolutions in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Sujit Sivasundaram
9. Empire in Oceania: Knowing the Sea of Islands, Alison Bashford
10. Islands of Incarceration and Empire Building in Colonial Australia, Katherine Roscoe
11. Afterword. Islands and the British Empire: From the Age of Sail to the Age of Steam, H. V. Bowen