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A History of the Independent Reefer Operators
Snow in the Tropics by Thomas Taro Lennerfors and Peter Birch offers the first comprehensive history of the independent reefer operators. These shipping companies, such as Lauritzen, Salén, Seatrade, Star Reefers, and NYK Reefer, developed the dedicated transport of refrigerated products like meat, fish, and fruit by ship, from the early 20th century to the present. Snow in the Tropics describes how the history of the reefer operators has been formed in relation to shippers, such as Dole and Chiquita, in a constant struggle with the liner companies, such as Maersk, and in relation to global economic and political trends. It also covers how the industry is discursively constructed and the psychological drivers of the business decisions in it.
Volume Editors: , , and
The Making of the African Road offers an account of the long-distance road in Africa. Being a latecomer to automobility and far from saturated mass mobility, the African road continues to be open for diverging interpretations and creative appropriations. The road regime on the continent is thus still under construction, and it is made in more than one sense: physically, socially, politically, morally and cosmologically. The contributions to this volume provide first-hand anthropological insights into the infrastructural, economic, historical as well as experiential dimensions of the emerging orders of the African road.

Contributors are: Kurt Beck, Amiel Bize, Michael Bürge, Luca Ciabarri, Gabriel Klaeger, Mark Lamont, Tilman Musch, Michael Stasik, Rami Wadelnour.
Emergence, Functions and Structure of the Low Countries’ Maritime Transport System, ca. 1300-1850
In Dutch Deltas, Werner Scheltjens examines the emergence, functions and structure of the Low Countries’ maritime transport system between ca. 1300 and 1850. Scheltjens introduces the delta as a suitable geographical unit of analysis for understanding the regional economic origins of communities of maritime transporters. The author proves that changes in maritime trade networks and in the structure of regional economies entailed a process of specialisation, which led to the emergence of ‘professional’ maritime transport communities and the development of an integrated maritime transport market with Amsterdam and Rotterdam as its main centres.

Dutch Deltas offers the first comprehensive study of the economic geography of the Low Countries’ maritime transport sector and its long-term development between 1300 and 1850.