Whaling Will Never Do For Me: The American Whaleman in the Nineteenth Century

] just begin to find out that whaling will never do for me and have determined to leave the ship here if possible. That sentiment, expressed by a foremast hand aboard the ship Caroline in 1843, is one shared by many of the whalemen in this fascinating book. Interest in Herman Melville\u27s Moby Dick has contributed to a substantial literature on the history and lore of the industry. But not until now has the vast body of surviving whaleship logs and journals been used to paint an encompassing picture of the difficult but colorful life aboard nineteenth-century American whaling vessels.Briton Cooper Busch, author of a definitive history of the American sealing industry, in this book only incidentally discusses the actual chase for whales. His focus instead is the life of whalemen at sea, and particularly the harsh discipline that kept men aboard through long and often dispiriting years. Busch depicts the complex social world aboard ship, defining and detailing such issues as crime and punishment, competing racial elements, the social distance between officers and men, sexual behavior, and the role of women aboard ships.For oppressed, discouraged, or simply bored whalemen, several escapes existed, from the rarest of all mutiny through labor protests of various types, to individual desertion or appeal to an American consul abroad. To each of these topics Busch devotes a chapter. He also provides glimpses of those occasional moments of relief such as a Fourth of July celebration and such somber moments as a death at sea.Fascinating details and original quotations from individual whalemen make this book more than a study of general trends. For anyone with even a casual interest in whaling, it is indispensable. Briton Cooper Busch is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of History at Colgate University, where he has been chairman of the department and director of the division of social sciences. He is author of eight previous books in maritime and diplomatic history.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_social_history/1001/thumbnail.jp

Revolution and Foreign Policy

Tsarist foreign policy in the years before 1917 was shaped by a variety of long‐term and short‐term factors. The same was true of the foreign policy pursued by the Provisional Government that came to power in 1917. Ministers in the Provisional Government also had to balance international and domestic pressures when seeking to promote policies designed to ensure the country's survival in the War against the central powers. The leaders of the Bolshevik Party, which overthrew the Provisional Government in October 1917, rejected traditional forms of ‘bourgeois’ diplomacy in favor of a proletarian internationalism that emphasised class solidarity across national boundaries. When the October Revolution did not lead to a world revolution, the Bolshevik leadership had to adapt their foreign policies and find ways of ensuring their survival in a world of hostile states. They sought to achieve their objectives by combining traditional diplomatic methods with a continued programme of revolutionary propaganda and subversion in foreign countries. The enduring character of the international global order placed limits on the ability of any single country to operate outside its established institutional and cultural forms. It is as a result possible to see continuities in Russian foreign policy across the 1917 divide