Over spiring break I felt I might mix up my blog posts a bit and write about something a bit different (although it is still related to Welsh history I’m afraid!). This is a story which I heard about a couple of weeks ago and wanted to share it on the blog. Although it has absolutely nothing to to with my project I found it really interesting and I hope you do too.
In Porthmadog, there is a small island which sits just outside the tourist port. At first glance it appears rather in unremarkable. However, once you take a closer look, it becomes much more interesting.
Slate from he nearby Blaenau Ffestiniog quarry was transported to Porthmadog whereby it would be shipped all over the world. Like most shipping operations these ships would pick up additional cargo along the way and transport it to wherever it needed to go.
On the return journey back to Porthmadog the ships were loaded with Ballast from the ship’s trading destination to provide balance and stability. Upon returning to Porthmadog, the ballast was dumped in the harbour which over the course of a century created an island. Thus, this manmade island creates a picture of the global reach of the North Wales slate industry. For example, on Cei Ballast one finds a large collection of eclectic rocks such as altered mudstone from Portugal and marble from Italy as well as rocks native to Greece, Scandinavia, Canada and more.
So how does this relate to transnational history?
This collection of rocks brings together material from all over the world and tells us about the nature and scale of trade that occurred. This is a fascinating example of a physical reminder of the transnational flows and transfers which have taken place and in this case have left a physical monument of these connections. Thus, perhaps we should look for alternate sources to consider when doing transnational history. This may offer an alternative way of looking at the world around us to try and spot any potential transnational links. Perhaps, then we could look out for similar ballast islands and compare them to Cei Ballast to learn more about the global shipping of materials and the transfer of goods.
Angus, I found this entry on Cei Ballast to be super interesting, thank you for sharing! Before doing the readings for our tutorial last week I had not really considered how the non-human plays a role in history. It now seems ridiculous that I so easily excluded these aspects from my conception of history. As we learned in our seminar discussion this past week, perhaps my thinking was informed by the exclusion of non-human histories from most of our curriculum as history students at St Andrews and from my history education prior to university. This is really a shame, because as the example of Cei Ballast demonstrates, taking nature as the object of analysis can illuminate the way in which physical materials are used by humans to shape historical outcomes. However, this is only scratching the surface, the benefits of telling non-human histories go far beyond their utility as explanations for human manipulation of nature.
Emily O’Gorman and Andrea Gaynor in their article, “More-Than-Human Histories” supply an example of the non-human which really stuck with me. In discussing long-nosed fur seals in southeastern Australia, the authors point out the “dynamic response of the seals to changing management regimes, as they are emboldened in the absence of human violence against them” (p. 720). In this region in Australia, local fishers argue the seals are no longer intimidated by them because the seals are aware that the fishers cannot harm them. Obviously the seals probably do not know that there are laws in place preventing their harm, but they do act in a way that reflects this knowledge. This account reminds us that animals have agency and make decisions using similar powers of deduction as humans do. The inclusion of non-human aspects into historical accounts allows historians and students alike to approach a situation from many different angles in order to create a more complete picture of our world. By focusing on Cei Ballast instead of other aspects of trade in Wales, you have demonstrated how much the non-human can tell us about local and transnational realities.