Shipbuilding and the English International Timber Trade, 1300-1700: a framework for study using Niche Construction Theory

Much scholarship has been undertaken with regards to the evolution of the European shipbuilding traditions and their physical changes, but few explanations for the changes are given. This paper seeks to identify the correlations between the expansion of the English timber trade in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries and the changes in shipbuilding at the time, thereby creating a framework for future study of this correlation and its possible relatedness using Niche Construction Theory as a framework. Directions the research can take and the data needed are the focus of this work