Citizenship, Subversion, and Surveillance in U.S. Ports: Sailors Ashore (Global Studies in Social and Cultural Maritime History)

This book argues first, that the forces of industrialization that transformed ship technology simultaneously transformed the working-class lives of merchant seamen, intensifying class conflict and producing collective networks of subversion and resistance within the urban borderland spaces of sailortowns in which sailors fought to maintain control over their mobility, agency, and rights. Second, that given their social, cultural, economic, geographic, and legal marginalization, merchant seamen have occupied essential roles at the parameters of US urban, legal, labor, immigration, and wartime history. Third, that the constellation of these histories, embedded in the encounters and negotiations that merchant seamen provoked along the nation’s coastlines and sailortowns, collectively represents a unique and essential perspective on the history of US citizenship. Acknowledgments Contents List of Figures Introduction: Sailors Ashore Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapters 3 and 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 1: Saiors’ Wardship, Maritime Ministry, and the Contest for New York City’s Sailortown, 1843–1915 Invasion Conversion Control 25 South Street: “The Million-Dollar Home for Sailors” Janet Lord Roper, “Mother to 50,000 Seamen” Conclusion Chapter 2: Merchant Seamen and the Parameters of Involuntary Servitude: The Arago Deserters and the United States Supreme Court, 1895–1897 Legal History, Labor History, and Merchant Seamen Desertion and Mobility in “Pirate City” The Right to Desert Robertson v. Baldwin Reaction Conclusion Chapter 3: “Pandemonium on the Quay”: The Titanic Disaster, the Olympic Mutiny, and the 1912 Transport Workers’ Federation Strike The Cornerstone-Laying Ceremony at 25 South Street Mutiny on the RMS Olympic The Transport Workers General Strike in New York Conclusion Chapter 4: The 1915 Seamen’s Act: Maritime Labor and Progressive Era Maritime Reform Historical Context Political Context White Supremacy Safety at Sea Emancipation Equalization Conclusion Chapter 5: Deserters, Stowaways, and Mala Fide Sailors: Merchant Seamen and the Shaping of U.S. Immigration Policy, 1917–1936 1917–1924 The Johnson-Reed Act, 1924–1925 The Raker Amendments, 1925–1930 Raids: 1930–1931 Conclusion Chapter 6: The “Million-Dollar Home for Sailors,” Industrial Maritime Unionism, and Sailors’ Agency in New York City’s Sailortown, 1930–1932 25 South Street Industrial Maritime Unionism Conclusion Conclusion: Currents, Past and Future Recruitment and Training Losses and Casualties After the War Conclusion References Archival Collections Newspapers Court Cases Legislation Congressional Records Manuscripts and Publications Index