Blue Revolution: Development, Environment, and Tropical Fisheries from the Late 19th to the 21st Century

FAIN: FEL-257145-18

Corey Ross
University of Birmingham (Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom)

Historical research and writing leading to a book-length study of fishery development in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean during the 20th century.

This project will provide the first history of the international effort to ‘develop’ fisheries in the global South over the course of the twentieth century. Its primary aims are: to determine how the transfer and adoption of new knowledge and technologies from the industrial world transformed the use of aquatic resources elsewhere; to understand the social and environmental impacts of these transformations, and how different groups drove or opposed them; and more generally to re-consider hitherto terra-centric histories of overseas development that have largely ignored water-based resources and initiatives. By venturing beyond the shoreline, the project explores how empires, nation-states, and non-state organizations approached these fluid spaces throughout the long twentieth century, and what this tells us about the present-day focus on fisheries as a key target of development policy.