*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
School of History and Sociology presents:
Dissertation Defense for Paul J. McKittrick
“Modernity and the Spirit of the Sea: Maritime Influences on Early Modern English State Institutions and Society, 1485-1763”
Friday, December 1, 2017, 10:00 am
Room 104, Old CE Building, 221 Bobby Dodd Way
ABSTRACT
Beginning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Europeans developed and applied science and technology in a project of oceanic exploration, trade, and colonization, that when coupled with messianic fervor, entrepreneurial energy, and imperial ambition, was truly world changing. It is the purpose of this thesis to examine the concomitant development of institutions of the modern state and the society that emerged in the Early Modern period, with a specific focus upon England from the Tudor dynasty through the Georgian era. Atlantic maritime programs did not produce modernity, but did play an integral role in its fitful emergence, especially in this most nautically focused island nation. It is my contention that the modern nation state and society - centrally organized and secretive; bureaucratically controlled; invested in scientific progress for economic and political aggrandizement; technologically dependent and adaptable; and industrial in both economics and war - was both a product and a source of European, and specifically English dominance at sea. The rewards for its maritime prominence were profound as England’s naval and merchant fleets came to dominate all the earth’s oceans throughout the nineteenth century.
Advisor:
Dr. Kristie Macrakis
Committee Members:
Dr. Carla Gerona
Dr. John Krige
Dr. John Tone
Dr. Nick Wilding (Georgia State)
