All at Sea: international conference on Prize Papers
06 October 2014
During the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, the navies of maritime powers and privately owned fighting ships competed in the race for the spoils of war. Ships that became prizes often carried, besides passengers and cargo, mail that was to be delivered at the ship's destination. All ships' papers, including this private mail, were seized and made part of the dossier kept by the British High Court of Admiralty.
Intercepted mail and legal documents of the British High Court of Admiralty were kept in the court's archives stores. There they were forgotten for many years. They finally ended up as the 'Prize Papers', part of the High Court of Admiralty archives as record series HCA 30 and 32 in The National Archives.
Rediscovery of the letters
After the rediscovery of the value of these letters by Dutch researchers in the 1980s, the Prize Papers have given new perspectives on the early modern global world. The Prize Papers Consortium is a network of researchers who work on the Prize Papers, and the Prize Papers European Network has organised this conference.
This international conference aims to bring together scholars who have worked on the Prize Papers (or related materials) to discuss their research and to think about ways of using the source material for future research. This one of several steps towards establishing a European research network on the Prize Papers.
The conference is organised around the following themes:
politics and economy
seafaring
language and literacy
family and friends
colonial cross-overs and confrontations
practices, artefacts, spaces and body
Registration starts at 11:00 on Monday 6 October, and the conference will finish on Wednesday 8 October at 14:00.
See the full progamme below and instructions to book at
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/events/all-at-sea-conference.htm
This conference has been organised by the Prize Papers European Network, and is supported by the Friends of The National Archives and the German Historical Institute.
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For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website at
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=archives-nra
