Unlocking The World : Port Cities And Globalisation In The Age Of Steam, 1830 1930

Author: John Darwin

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $55.00 NZD
  • : 9781846140860
  • : Penguin Books, Limited
  • : Allen Lane
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  • : 0.742
  • : December 2020
  • : ---length:- '24'width:- '15.6'units:- Centimeters
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  • : 55.0
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • :
  • : John Darwin
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  • : Hardback
  • : 2012
  • :
  • : English
  • : 307.709034
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  • :
  • : 496
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Barcode 9781846140860
9781846140860

Description

Steam power transformed our world, initiating the complex, resource-devouring industrial system the consequences of which we live with today. It revolutionized work and production, but also the ease and cost of movement over land and water. The result was to throw open vast areas of the world to the rampaging expansion of Europeans and Americans on a scale previously unimaginable.


Unlocking the World is the captivating history of the great port cities which emerged as the bridgeheads of this new steam-driven economy, reshaping not just the trade and industry of the regions around them but their culture and politics as well. They were the agents of what we now call 'globalization', but their impact and influence, and the reactions they provoked, were far from predictable. Nor were they immune to the great upheavals in world politics across the 'steam century'.


This book is global history at its very best. Packed with fascinating case histories (from New Orleans to Montreal, Bombay to Singapore, Calcutta to Shanghai), individual stories and original ideas, Darwin's book allows us, for better or worse, to see the modern age taking shape.