Theodore J. Karamanski's sweeping maritime history demonstrates the far-ranging impact that the tools and infrastructure developed for navigating the Great Lakes had on the national economies, politics, and environment of continental North America. Synthesizing popular as well as original historical scholarship, Karamanski weaves a colorful narrative illustrating how disparate private and government interests transformed these vast and dangerous waters into the largest inland water transportation system in the world.
Karamanski explores both the navigational and sailing tools of First Nations peoples and the dismissive and foolhardy attitude of early European maritime sailors. He investigates the role played by commercial boats in the Underground Railroad, as well as how the federal development of crucial navigational resources exacerbated sectionalism in the antebellum United States. UltimatelyMastering the Inland Seashows the undeniable environmental impact of technologies used by the modern commercial maritime industry. This expansive story illuminates the symbiotic relationship between infrastructure investment in the region's interconnected waterways and North America's lasting economic and political development.
Theodore J. Karamanski is a professor of history at Loyola University of Chicago. His books includeCivil War Chicago: Eyewitness to History,Blackbird's Song: Andrew Blackbird and Odawa Survival, andNorth Woods River: The St. Croix Valley in Upper Midwest History.
Helps explain the history of Great Lakes lighthouses and navigational aids and the importance of protecting them.
Karamanskis prodigious research anchors the book. He provides the kind of gritty detail that derive only from exhaustive research in primary sources. He mines archival and newspaper collections from around the Great Lakes, the records of government agencies, diaries of ship captains and more.
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![Mastering the Inland Seas: How Lighthouses, Navigational Aids, and Harbors Transformed the Great Lakes and America [Hardcover]](/itemImage/2/6/2/4/2_5367224.jpg "Mastering the Inland Seas: How Lighthouses, Navigational Aids, and Harbors Transformed the Great Lakes and America [Hardcover]")