David Hansen-Miller planted the seeds of this project when I was flailing for something totally new, something really different, something less bloody and grim to research after my counterinsurgency project had wound down (and ‘beaches and bars in Beirut’ wasn’t cutting it as a long-term proposition). He also hooked me up with the lovely people at the International Transport Workers’ Federation, and especially Jeremy Anderson, without whom this project would not have gotten off the ground. Rafeef Ziadah, Charmaine Chua, Deb Cowen, and Katy Fox-Hodess have been fellow travellers from the first, their intellectual companionship all the more fabulous for all of them being such kickass women. Rafeef in particular has been a marvellous colleague and sounding board and friend throughout. I am grateful to Fahad Bishara, Rosie Bsheer, John Chalcraft, Neve Gordon, Toby Craig Jones, Johan Mathew, Catherine Rottenberg, and Al Withrow for reading the whole manuscript or substantial portions thereof and for giving exact and exacting, lucid, constructive feedback. John Gall made me re-write the introduction to appeal to an audience beyond academia. I am humbled by their patience, their generosity and their friendship.

In the glorious three years I set aside to be a student in a field I initially knew so little about, I visited a great many places and was aided by a great many people. Foremost among them were the officers and crew of the two CMA CGM container ships on which I travelled, Corte Real in February 2015 and Callisto in August 2016. The seafarers were, to a person, open, thoughtful, astute, patient, and immensely helpful in answering all my random questions and explaining the details of shipping work. Their insights about the ports we visited, about work aboard ships, about their lives and feelings at sea and at home, all flow through the veins of this book, even if I have not named them here, even in places where the subject or the time period seemingly doesn’t have anything to do with them. I also want to thank Horatio Clare, whose Financial Times piece published in advance of his beautiful Down to the Sea in Ships, made me realise I could travel on freighters as a passenger.

On shore, numerous lovely people gave of their time for interviews or port tours or introduced me to people they knew far away from London. Some of these interviews and visits were foundational or transformative for my thinking and this project. I especially want to thank Jairus Banaji (for perspicacious conversations and very useful introductions in Mumbai); Fahad Bishara (for sharing his Arabic language sources and scanning books and chapters and sending them along with the kind of generosity with one’s precious research materials I have rarely seen in the

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