Carl E. Swanson Associate Professor of History Director of Graduate Studies Ph.D., University of Western Ontario Phone: 252-328-6485 Office: Brewster A319 Fax: 252-328-6774 Email: swansonc@ecu.edu

Carl E. Swanson specializes in colonial American history.  He teaches undergraduate students in the first half of the US survey course and in an upper division course examining colonial American history to 1763.  He teaches graduate students in the maritime history of the Atlantic world, 1415-1815, and in American colonial history.  In 1999, the East Carolina University Alumni Association honored Swanson with the Robert and Lina Mays Award for Teaching Excellence.

Swanson’s research interests include colonial American maritime and economic history.  He has published articles in the William and Mary Quarterly, the International Journal of Maritime History, the Northern Mariner/le marin du nord, and the American Neptune.  His essay, “American Privateering and Imperial Warfare, 1739-1748,” received the Canadian Nautical Research Society's Keith Matthews Prize.  His book, Predators and Prizes: American Privateering and Imperial Warfare, 1739-1748, won the John Lyman Book Award presented by the North American Society for Oceanic History.  His current research focuses on the shipping and merchant community of eighteenth-century Charles Town, South Carolina.  He is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Maritime History.

In addition to teaching and research, Swanson has served many years as the History Department’s director of graduate studies.  This position has afforded him the opportunity to spend countless hours advising every graduate student in the History Department within recent memory.

Selected Publications:
Predators and Prizes: American Privateering and Imperial Warfare, 1739-1748.  Columbia:  University of South Carolina Press, 1991.

"'The unspeakable Calamity this poor Province Suffers from Pyrats':  South Carolina and the Golden Age of Piracy,"  Northern Mariner/le marin du nord 21 (2011):  117-142.

"'To Procure a Good Freight':  Charles Town Merchants in the Eighteenth Century," International Journal of Maritime History 20 (2008):  111-141.

Courses Offered:
HIST 1050: American History to 1877
HIST 3210: Colonial America to 1763
HIST 6010: Maritime History of the Atlantic World 1415-1815
HIST 6020: American Colonial History