Citizenship, Subversion, and Surveillance in U.S. Ports: Sailors Ashore

The book argues that industrialization transformed ship technology and the working-class lives of merchant seamen, intensifying class conflict and producing collective networks of subversion and resistance. Merchant seamen have occupied essential roles in US urban, legal, labor, immigration, and wartime history, representing a unique perspective on US citizenship.

Format: Hardback
Length: 185 pages
Publication date: 22 December 2023
Publisher: Springer International Publishing AG

This book contends that the forces of industrialization that reshaped ship technology also profoundly impacted the working-class lives of merchant seamen, exacerbating class conflict and fostering collective networks of subversion and resistance within the urban borderland spaces of sailortowns, where sailors fought to maintain control over their mobility, agency, and rights. Second, it asserts that merchant seamen, due to their social, cultural, economic, geographic, and legal marginalization, have played significant roles in shaping US urban, legal, labor, immigration, and wartime history. Third, it argues that the interconnectedness of these histories, rooted in the interactions and negotiations that merchant seamen initiated along the nation's coastlines and sailortowns, collectively offer a distinctive and indispensable perspective on the history of US citizenship.

Dimension: 210 x 148 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783031456176
Edition number: 1st ed. 2023