| During the second half of the nineteenth century American trading vessels began to ply the Pacific Ocean in ever increasing numbers, incorporating the Pacific and its peoples into a global capitalist system and altering the maritime community that developed in the Atlantic from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In ports and aboard sailing ships in the Atlantic sailors created a labor culture that emphasized masculine identity based on bravery, strength, and professional skill, and de-emphasized racial differences and shoreside concepts of masculinity based on family, stability, and independence. The nineteenth century Pacific environment, however, challenged sailors' labor culture and sense of self-worth, forcing maritime laborers to reexamine and redefine their work and the identity associated with it.; My study deals directly with the Pacific world's impact on traditional Atlantic maritime laborers and their community during the second half of the nineteenth century, and how increased interaction with Pacific maritime laborers created a separate maritime labor identity in the Pacific. Ultimately, this study illustrates how international labor markets, while unifying consumer markets, fragmented workers and communities in often unforeseen ways, forcing laborers to look for new methods to protect themselves from exploitation and powerlessness.; Various Pacific Islanders and Asian peoples entered the maritime labor market in growing numbers throughout the nineteenth century, bringing with them their own cultural identities and masculine ideals. Pacific peoples imposed their own motives and values onto the well-established Atlantic maritime culture as it entered and expanded in the Pacific. The growing presence and shaping influence of Pacific peoples, who were neither familiar with, nor interested in, the Atlantic's maritime labor model, caused the maritime community aboard American vessels to begin to disintegrate. To complicate matters further, technological advances mechanized the shipping industry, deskilling the maritime profession and allowing Pacific peoples, with few or no skills required to work sailing vessels, to work aboard steamships for low wages. The racial and cultural diversity aboard Pacific vessels, combined with professional deskilling and job competition, created tensions among seamen and destroyed the racial tolerance and masculine identity of the maritime labor community. |
