Whaling history is a bit of an umbrella term. It can (and does) encompass numerous different strands of historical subject. Traditionally, the ‘fields’ that whaling history tends to fall under have chiefly been economic and sociological, like much of maritime history as a whole. In that sense, the whaling history of humanity has largely been viewed through the exclusive lense of humanity: a ship’s crew on a mission, an agent in port profiting, an indigenous tribe surviving off their bounty. These among so many other people whose lives were involved in the hunts have been, by and large, the most intense (some might say, only) focus of whaling history.

It is significant, then, that in more recent decades the whaling history has seen a dramatic shift of focus away from these established groups to the whales themselves. I have written before that whaling history, at its core, is an examination of interaction between human and whale. That said, this examination has been exceedingly one sided for the humans and against the whales. Reflecting the larger rise of environmentalist activism and consciousness, we see that Man and Whale has been given an increasingly equal weight in our examination and discussion of our whaling cultures. Not only does recent scholarship examine the effect of whaling history on peoples, but has come in leaps and bounds to discussing the effect of whaling history on whale populations.

I am not overtly familiar with environmental history as a field, but I imagine this shift might be relatable to those here who have backgrounds in the area. Taking whaling out of a vacuum of being an area that is only influenced and influences Man, we can place it in a wider context of cause-and-effect, our relationship with our world as a whole, and even the instances where the consequences of our interactions with the environment have lead to developments in human history. Perhaps reflecting the larger discussion of the symbol of the Whale in our present cultural conscious, and our ever increasing understanding of their lives and interactions, we are almost beginning to treat Whales like Man when we discuss the development of whaling in history.

This all may sounds pretentious (it felt a little writing it out, I must admit), but this has also real consequence in turning our preconceptions and views around. The narrative can begin to change and our perspectives are opened up further. A successful harvesting of whales can be seen beyond being a haul of value, but of a real (and in many cases, drastic) loss among a species’ population. An examination of the development of technology is now not only affecting how humans were able to cultivate whales, but it is affecting whales in their shifting interactions with man. Like a historian of 20th Century Europe would look at the effects of the World Wars on population and the consequences thereof, a whaling historian or scientist might now be able to create a ‘natural history’ of whales and the consequences of those shifts.

Much of the current literature that discusses statistics of whale hunts is used by, and often collected and authored by, scientists in the present. In that sense, the numbers that are attached to whale cultivation are not viewed through a lense of economic gain, but through the lense of population dynamics and impact. It is necessary to examine the population levels of whale species in the past to gain a sense of the normality (or abnormality) of current population sizes.

This work isn’t even exclusively in use by cetologists; whaling records and journals are in use to examine our climate past.

Now, does this mean that the older lenses of viewing whaling history are obsolete, or due to be ignored? Absolutely not. We still have a wealth of information and resources to examine how humans whaled, why they did, and how they were affected by the experience. It’s a common theme that we see across maritime history, and it is just as relevant in the whaling history. As we continue to develop our interactions with these animals, we also develop the way we look at how we have interacted with them in the past. It is exciting to see the narratives evolve, and they continue to do so today.

one of the big historiographical developments in recent years has been the rise of global history. a quick definition: global history seeks to understand the interconnections between various regions, and focuses on the movement of goods, people, and information from place to place, and their effects.

the context here is that the histories of the 19th and 20th century have overwhelmingly been national. from overtly nationalistic political/military/diplomatic histories to those that tried to tease out the stories of the working class, women, and ethnic and religious minorities, the focus has overwhelmingly been on single political units.

obviously in the past few decades we've become increasingly aware that we live in a globalized world, where the nation-state is declining in importance, national economies are inextricably intertwined, and communities and cultures, as well as health and environmental problems, are transnational.

so people have sought to trace the increasing interconnection of the world's political and cultural communities, and some pretty fascinating work has resulted. as you might imagine, it turns out that globalization is a process that has been a long time in the making.

the majority of this work has focused on the expansion of european empires in the period after columbus and da gama, the period in which the new world was brought into the eurasian world-system, and when the spanish and portuguese, and later the english, dutch and french, tied the world together in the first truly global empires.

of course, this is a highly eurocentric story, so others have sought to explain the highly complex and bustling regional systems that tied various parts of the world together before european arrival.

what i personally plan to write my dissertation on is the ways in which european knowledge of the non-european world contributed to the death of classical and biblical knowledge during the enlightenment, and the rise of a new system of thought that was better able to incorporate all the new information flowing in from far-flung regions.

i can provide reading suggestions if anyone is interested.

I'm newish here so hopefully this isn't breaking any rules, but I recently read about the field of Medieval History having issues with ties to the White Nationalist movement and other racist groups, and that there was a push to fight that also from within the community. Can anyone here speak to how that might effect (or already is effecting) the study of this era as far as including more people of color and women (which seems to be a general trend in historical research for the past 10/15 years or so)?

I feel like history books written in the late 20th century, particularly popular history books, often went out of their way to "correct" nostalgia and mythology about the past. I think after the social history of the 1970s, and maybe also with the field of history becoming more scientific, historians recognized that there was (in the earlier 20th and 19th centuries) sometimes a reactionary impulse to glorify the past, and so books from the late 20th century often purposely emphasized the dirtier, nastier, unpleasant parts of history, which had been glossed over up until then, as a way of showing "reality" or "the true story". But I think in the 21st century people are coming to understand the limits of that approach, and how smug and patronizing it can be. Instead of glorifying the past, it glorifies the present, by situating the modern world in a superior position, and assuming that as time goes by, everything progresses forward along a linear path, always getting better and never worse. At this point I think it's been thoroughly established that people throughout history have had difficult and uncomfortable lives compared to what we know today--i.e. very few people would deny that (plus, just in the past few years of increased political awareness, it's become easier to acknowledge that lots of people have difficult and uncomfortable lives TODAY)--so more recent history books allow room for compassion and empathy toward people of the past, instead of treating them with contempt and disdain for not knowing what we know now. I think in the 21st century there is less risk of romanticizing history, AND less risk of idealizing the present, and so there is more willingness to learn from and be patient with people of the past, instead of demeaning them and assuming they are unworthy of respect.