About me
I am an independent historian and my work often focusses on the eighteenth century and the development of navies for the projection of geo-political power. My publications include books examining the navies of the various Islamic sea powers of the eighteenth century, the navies of Great Britain, the Russian Empire and the pre-colonial states of India. Recognising that power at sea is mediated by stages of economic and industrial development existing within a nation or state, I make a close connection between the creation of a powerful blue-water navy and the shore-based infrastructure that keeps these nation’s navies afloat. The more advanced the nation, the more technically advanced will be its naval infrastructure and the navy it supports. Here, Chatham, Plymouth/Devonport and Portsmouth, and the other naval yards of Great Britain, are of significance in under-writing Britain’s power at sea. During the eighteenth century, other nations and Empires, such as Russia and the Ottoman Empire drew heavily upon industrial advances witnessed within British naval yards.
I am a frequent contributor to Mariner’s Mirror, and other journals, I have also contributed to the highly prestigious Dictionary of National Biography.
On leaving university during the early 1970s, I moved to the Isle of Grain, taking up a teaching post on the Hoo Peninsula, writing my first book, The Story of the Hoo Peninsula. Over time my interests broadened, gaining an interest in what was then the naval dockyard at Chatham, witnessing the effects of the closure of that yard, and the slow revival of the Medway area that followed. I have always shown a close attachment to the Medway, and among my most recent books are a three-part ‘Secret’ series, each book focussing on little known aspects of the three Medway towns: Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester. While I no longer live within Medway, my daughter and grandchildren live in Gillingham while my son teaches in China.
As an undergraduate of Lancaster University, I studied Politics and History, with my doctorate awarded by the University of Kent at Canterbury and where I later went on to teach in the Economic History Department. My doctoral thesis, entitled From Somerset Place to Whitehall: Reformng the Civil Departments of the Navy, 1832-34, examined reforms to the civil branches of the British Navy that resulted in the abolition of the Navy Board in 1832.
For me, it is people that are important, rather than the institutions that dominated their lives. For this reason I regard myself as an Economic and Social Historian over and above any other label.
I am a frequent contributor to Mariner’s Mirror, and other journals, I have also contributed to the highly prestigious Dictionary of National Biography.
On leaving university during the early 1970s, I moved to the Isle of Grain, taking up a teaching post on the Hoo Peninsula, writing my first book, The Story of the Hoo Peninsula. Over time my interests broadened, gaining an interest in what was then the naval dockyard at Chatham, witnessing the effects of the closure of that yard, and the slow revival of the Medway area that followed. I have always shown a close attachment to the Medway, and among my most recent books are a three-part ‘Secret’ series, each book focussing on little known aspects of the three Medway towns: Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester. While I no longer live within Medway, my daughter and grandchildren live in Gillingham while my son teaches in China.
As an undergraduate of Lancaster University, I studied Politics and History, with my doctorate awarded by the University of Kent at Canterbury and where I later went on to teach in the Economic History Department. My doctoral thesis, entitled From Somerset Place to Whitehall: Reformng the Civil Departments of the Navy, 1832-34, examined reforms to the civil branches of the British Navy that resulted in the abolition of the Navy Board in 1832.
For me, it is people that are important, rather than the institutions that dominated their lives. For this reason I regard myself as an Economic and Social Historian over and above any other label.
Contact
philip.macdougall@btinternet.com
