The Age Of Cargo | Globalisation and the Oceans | 2
Legacy
Original Legacy Productions
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
From colliers carrying coal out of Newcastle to Marshall Plan grain crossing the Atlantic, Peter and Afua trace how the movement of goods by sea built the modern world. This is the story of bulk cargo — and why the ships that carried it changed everything.
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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | After last time, we were talking about cargo ships, we looked at ancient Rome, the Baltics, |
| 0:04.7 | the Hanseatic, and we did everything, did we timber, rice, sugar, slaves, you name it. |
| 0:12.0 | How about thinking about the era of globalisation and the ways in which ships play such an |
| 0:17.2 | important role in today's world? Have you ever been on a big cargo ship? What's the |
| 0:21.4 | biggest vessel you've been on? I have never been on a cargo ship. Have I even been on a really |
| 0:26.9 | big commercial vessel? I don't believe I have, Peter. I did produce a documentary about a young |
| 0:36.2 | women who sailed on a shipping container across what would have been |
| 0:41.9 | the first leg of the triangular trade. She was kind of retracing her heritage as someone |
| 0:46.8 | descended from enslaved people and she went on this shipping container voyage to kind of |
| 0:52.5 | try and tap into what her ancestors had been so |
| 0:57.0 | affected by. And it's a really powerful poem, documentary story she created. So I feel like through |
| 1:04.8 | her, I've had this experience, but shipping container ships sound like quite strange places and a |
| 1:10.3 | little bit ghostly because there are these huge |
| 1:12.1 | vessels with relatively few people on board and they tend to be very international. You know, |
| 1:17.6 | the flag will be from, I don't know, Liberia, the crew will be Filipino, the master will be Spanish, |
| 1:22.6 | really like weird arrangements. That's globalization there, Afwer. That's exactly right. You have the ships registered in Monrovia. That's globalization, though, Afwer. That's, that's exactly right. You have the |
| 1:28.6 | ships registered in Monrovia. That has a whole, I'd love to, actually, that I've got to write that |
| 1:33.6 | down. I want to do something on... I've been to the street in Monrovia where something like 70% |
| 1:39.2 | of the world's ships are registered. And let me tell you, I don't believe there was a single building standing on |
| 1:45.5 | that street when I visited. So that's a whole other story. Okay, well, I don't need to go and |
| 1:50.2 | change our notes because that would have been helpful when we were trying to script this one out, |
| 1:54.2 | because we could have done lots on what Montrovia looks like. I've never been, what's Monrovia |
... |
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