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The book highlights especially the Marines' roles as guards against mutiny and desertion and as an imperial 'rapid reaction force' and provides details of the many and varied actions in which they were involved, worldwide.
In an extraordinary move, in 1797, the British government pressed a small group of French and German prisoners of war into the New South Wales Corps, gave them firearms and placed them as guards on a ship carrying sixty-six convict women and two convict men to New South Wales. The result was a mutiny some months into the voyage in which the captain of the Lady Shore was killed and the fates of all of those on board were tied together when the ship was taken to South America. The true story of what happened to those on board is told here in detail for the first time, in part through the eyes of sailor George Drinkald whose fascinating and articulate first-hand testimony has recently emerged.
The sources in this volume focus on Great Britain’s moral, financial, and diplomatic interventions and ambitions in Latin America. It begins during the wars of independence spanning 1810-1825, when Foreign Secretary George Canning prematurely declared, "Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly, she is English." The independence movements of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies, as well as their ancient past, inspired Romantic writers such as Anna Letitia Barbauld and spurred British military support and political debate, as attested by mercenary Richard Vowell’s Campaigns and Cruises in Venezuela and James Mill's "Emancipation of Spanish America."
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Whether you are interested in the career of an individual Royal Marine or just want to know more about the part played by the Marines in a particular battle or campaign, this book will point you in the right direction. Assuming that the reader has no prior knowledge of the Royal Marines, their history or organization, Richard Brooks and Matthew Little explain which records survive, where they can be found and how they can help you in your research. They also describe in vivid detail the evolution of the Royal Marines, from the tentative beginnings of the service in the seventeenth century to their present position as a key part of the British armed forces.
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