Mark C. Hunter

Mark C. Hunter, BA Hons, MA, PhD (born 1974) is a Canadian naval historian and currently an employee of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Early life and education

Mark C. Hunter was born in Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. He earned his BA Hons and MA in History in the Department of History, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and his PhD in History at the University of Hull, United Kingdom.

Academic career

After competing his PhD, Hunter was a per-course lecturer at Memorial University of Newfoundland and a research fellow with the Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Hunter's work focuses on naval/military education, training and recruitment and maritime non-state actors (e.g., pirates and slave traders) and relies heavily on social and economic history. His studies of the United States Naval Academy have shown that it shared the view of adolescence in the West as a separate stage of life. Middle-class America, during the nineteenth century, shared this opinion and wanted their children educated in a safe environment for a future career, such as the Naval Academy. It was also an institution that shared this belief as it professionalized its officer corps and reveals that the United States Navy had a professional culture before the outbreak of the American Civil War.[1]

Hunter's work on the Newfoundland Royal Naval Reserve shows that the Admiralty had to contend with local social and political conditions when managing the Newfoundland reserve. In addition, his study shows that rural fishers incorporated reserve service into their ‘occupational pluralism,’ working different jobs throughout the year and the British and political elite in St. John’s saw the reserve as a conduit to uplift colonial citizens, and instill in them imperial sentiments.[2]

His work on piracy and slave-trade suppression illustrates that Washington and London used their maritime and naval policies to further economic goals in the Atlantic while suppressing piracy and the slave trade and naval relations acted as a safety valve in wider Anglo-American relations until the outbreak of the American Civil War, within the context of suppressing piracy and the slave trade.[3]

Hunter's studies have been influenced primarily by the works of Jan Glete, Andrew Lambert, William B. Skelton, David Starkey (maritime historian) and the statistical methodologies employed by maritime historians of the Atlantic Canada Shipping Project.

Books

Major articles

Suggested reading

References

  1. Robinson, Michael D., "review of Society of Gentlemen: Midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, 1845-1861, by Hunter, Mark," Civil War Book Review, (Spring 2010).
  2. Lambert, Andrew, “Review of Mark C. Hunter, To Employ and Uplift Them: The Newfoundland Naval Reserve Unit [sic], 1899-1926,” Mariner’s Mirror 96, no. 1 (February 2010): 116-117.
  3. Hunter, Mark C. “Anglo-American Political and Naval Response to West Indian Piracy,” International Journal of Maritime History 13, no. 1 (June 2001): 63-93.
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