Hannah Gibbons
Postgraduate Researcher
History
PhD working title:
'Maritime Matriarchs: women, credit, goods and services in the dockland communities of eighteenth-century London'
Eighteenth-century London was at the centre of British and European trade, and provided the necessary finance networks to help develop Britain’s burgeoning global economy. The Royal navy, merchant navy, and their mariners, have been rightly recognised as key to this process. However, maritime women have gained less historical attention.
This project seeks to show that women were key in the development of, and engagement with, Britain’s maritime economy.
The central questions which frame my research are:
- In what types of work did women engage in eighteenth-century maritime parishes?
- What can female economic engagement teach us about the legal, cultural and consumer patterns of maritime communities?
- How far can female economic activity be linked to the development of the British economy at large?
