Thomas Hine

Department: History
Discipline: History

Project Summary

My research is on the subject of smuggling in Britain during its  "golden age" in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, an area covered relatively little in academic literature . More specifically, I am attempting to uncover the role of private individuals and organisations in efforts to prevent and reduce smuggling. Through this, I hope to add some colour to what is often a somewhat black and white "adversarial model" of state vs society, or central government vs local communities/commerce. In this search, I anticipate encountering a variety of topics and debates, ranging from the nature of the eighteenth-century British state and the development of tax and its avoidance, through the history of commerce, commercial relations between countries and the "mercantile system", to the social history of isolated coastal and rural communities and the concept of "social crime".

Supervisory Team

I am supervised by Prof Henry French and Dr Helen Doe.