Ports of the World : Prints from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich c.1700-1870

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Summary: Dr Cindy McCreery's "Ports of the World" in Review
Review: Dr Cindy McCreery has presented us with a truly beautiful book about the development of selected ports around the world. "Ports of the World" is produced to a very high standard and includes a large number of high-quality color and black-and-white reproductions of prints. Dr McCreery uses these prints - housed at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London - to develop an historical narrative that makes "Ports of the World" a refreshing alternative to other books of this type. There is a distinctly British flavour to this book that is certainly not out of place given Britain's status as an ancient seafaring nation. The style of writing is easily understandable for a non-historian (myself included). However, useful references are included for the true historian who wishes to delve more deeply into the subject area.

"Ports of the World" is an excellent buy and will appeal to people interested in seafaring in general, maritime history or historical prints of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I feel certain that anyone who receives this book will read it from cover to cover - what better recommendation could a book have?

Rating:
Summary: great read, great gift, great book
Review: Ports of the World is both a beautiful coffee table book and a well-written history of prints and print-making during the age of exploration and empire building. As European nations extended their influence over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, increasingly wealthy consumers longed for images of the places and peoples that were gathering attention in the press, either as new discoveries or as centers of conflict. Artists and print-sellers were happy to oblige. Many of the drawings that were printed for the popular market are preserved in the collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. The Oxford-educated author, Cindy McCreery, has used that collection to produce this magnificent book.

Organized geographically, the book first examines British and European ports and then turns its attention further afield: African, Asian, American, and Australian ports are all considered and their images reproduced. As the world underwent dramatic changes, the ports that served the world also changed. For example, McCreery includes a plate of a thriving New York City from the mid-nineteenth century, as well as an earlier image of Montreal during the Seven Years War. Cities and ports famous for what they later became are not the only images considered. Progress, Pennsylvania, never achieved the hopes of its developers who printed a view of the town's location in an ill-fated attempt to attract buyers who never came. McCreery also questions the accuracy of the way native peoples were presented in these maritime prints and speculates as to the reasons for both the inaccuracies and the representations that seem closer to what the truth might have been. All of these prints and the questions the author raises about them make for engaging reading and provide some insight into the historical world which produced them.

Travelers of both the armchair and more adventurous varieties, naval buffs, and anglophiles would all relish and enjoy this book. With well over 100 plates, many of them in color, this book is lavishly illustrated and would make an excellent gift for either art lovers and historians.