Chapter 8 Sea Levelling: Britain’s Early Modern Port Infrastructure as Environmental Context
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Abstract
The phenomenal growth in British shipping industry that occurred during second half of the long eighteenth century resulted in parts from developments in sailing ships and pioneering sea routes, but also from rising demands for luxury goods like sugar tobacco that enlarged trade. Market demands and new manufacturing industries hastened global resource extraction of these and other commodities (including timber, cotton, furs, cetaceous oils, and forced labour) and fostered awareness of a world of things ready for the taking, if not, for most people, an “environment” vulnerable to degradation given the term’s contemporary currency.
This chapter acknowledges these developments while outlining an additional set of factors contributing to growth in eighteenth century shipping industry and its intersection with proto-environmental reasoning. This chapter focuses on advances in early modern port infrastructure and intertidal technology, specifically the construction of enclosed wet docks that made for a kind of level playing field on which ships could more easily sail and goods conveyed, securely and profitably. There was opposition to these developments, including community resistance to the wholesale transformation of Britain’s port districts to serve a narrowed range of state and commercial interests. This chapter proposes that this resistance highlights a novel architectural milieu and context for activism worthy of further study.