ABSTRACT
Steamship services connected imperial, colonial and extra-imperial sites during the nineteenth century, facilitating ‘the movement of capital, people and texts’ around the world (Lambert and Lester 2006: 10). Steamships can thus be understood as one of the nineteenth century’s key ‘technologies that enhance the mobility of some peoples and places even as they also heighten the immobility of others’ (Hannam, Sheller and Urry 2006: 3). A company that represents well such technology and corresponding mobility is the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSPC), which connected Britain with the Caribbean and South America. The RMSPC sought to privilege the circulation of imperial news and correspondents, and the movements of ‘imperial careerists’ (Lambert and Lester 2006: 2). At the same time, the RMSPC enabled various unintended trans- and circum-Atlantic mobilities. In this chapter (following Bear, this collection), I use the case study of the RMSPC to examine the significance of more-than-human geographies in the maritime world.
