Nick White is Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History in the History Department at Liverpool John Moores University.  He is Co-director of the Centre for Port and Maritime History, a Trustee of the British Commission for Maritime History, and Life Vice-President of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.  Nick’s research interests, related to maritime history, are focused upon British international shipping lines in the twentieth century and especially their responses to decolonisation and globalisation after 1945 – indeed, Nick has contributed two articles to the society’s Bulletin (one on the Blue Funnel Line in Indonesia and the other on containerisation). His particular geographical expertise lies in East and Southeast Asia but, Nick’s research is also concerned with the Port of Liverpool and its relative decline. These interests, international, imperial and local led to the Heritage Lottery Funded, Homeward Bound; A Liverpool West-Africa Heritage project for which Nick was principal investigator and the creation of the Captain Morgan Archive and Exhibition hosted by LJMU’s Special Collections and Archives. 

Notable publication on maritime history

• ‘Decolonisation, Diversification and Decline: Liverpool Shipping and the End of Empire’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire, 171 (2022), pp. 105–30.
• Niels P. Petersson, Stig Tenold, Nicholas J. White (Eds), Shipping and Globalisation in the Post-War Era: Contexts, Companies, Connections, Palgrave, 2019, including a chapter by White, ‘Thinking Outside “The Box”: Decolonisation and Containerization’, pp. 67-99. (This book is available open access).
• Anthony Webster and Nicholas J. White (Eds), Singapore – Two Hundred Years of the Lion City, Routledge, 2019, including a chapter by White, ‘The Economics of Singapore’s Exit from Malaysia’, pp. 96-116.
• Nicholas J. White and Catherine Evans, ‘Holding back the tide: Liverpool Shipping, Gentlemanly Capitalism and Intra-Asian Trade in the Twentieth Century’ in Ulbe Bosma and Anthony Webster (Eds), Commodities, Ports and Asian Maritime Trade Since 1750, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 218-240.
• ‘Ferry off the Mersey”: The Business and the Impact of Decolonisation in Liverpool’, History, Vol. 96, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 188-204.

Sherllynne Haggerty, Anthony Webster and Nicholas J. White (Eds), The empire in one city? Liverpool’s inconvenient imperial past, MUP, 2008, including a chapter by White, ‘Liverpool shipping and the end of empire: the Ocean group in East and Southeast Asia, c. 1945-73, pp. 165-187.