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The Evil Necessity
A fundamental component of Britain's early success, naval impressment not only kept the Royal Navy afloat--it helped to make an empire. In total numbers, impressed seamen were second only to enslaved Africans as the largest group of forced laborers in the eighteenth century. In The Evil Necessity, Denver Brunsman describes in vivid detail the experience of impressment for Atlantic seafarers and their families. Brunsman reveals how forced service robbed approximately 250,000 mariners of their livelihoods, and, not infrequently, their lives, while also devastating Atlantic seaport communities and the loved ones who were left behind. Press gangs, consisting of a navy officer backed by sailors a...
Mob Town
A captivating history of a notorious neighborhood and the first book to reveal why London’s East End became synonymous with lawlessness and crime Even before Jack the Ripper haunted its streets for prey, London’s East End had earned a reputation for immorality, filth, and vice. John Bennett, a writer and tour guide who has walked and researched the area for more than thirty years, delves into four centuries of history to chronicle the crimes, their perpetrators, and the circumstances that made the East End an ideal breeding ground for illegal activity. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain’s industrial boom drew thousands of workers to the area, leading to overcrowding and squalor. But crime in the area flourished long past the Victorian period. Drawing on original archival history and featuring a fascinating cast of characters including the infamous Ripper, highwayman Dick Turpin, the Kray brothers, and a host of ordinary evildoers, this gripping and deliciously unsavory volume will fascinate Londonphiles and true crime lovers alike.
Subjects and Sovereign
Subjects and Sovereigns reexamines the traditional bond between subject and sovereign and argues that this relationship endured as a powerful site for claims-making in the eighteenth-century British Empire.
The Myth of the Press Gang
Overturns the generally held view that the press gang was the main means of recruiting seamen by the British navy in the late eighteenth century. SHORTLISTED for the Society for Nautical Research's prestigious Anderson Medal. The press gang is generally regarded as the means by which the British navy solved the problem of recruiting enough seamen in the late eighteenth century. This book, however, based on extensive original research conducted primarily in a large number of ships' muster books, demonstrates that this view is false. It argues that, in fact, the overwhelming majority of seamen in the navy were there of their own free will. Taking a long view across the late eighteenth century ...
Town Born
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, British colonists found the New World full of resources. With land readily available but workers in short supply, settlers developed coercive forms of labor—indentured servitude and chattel slavery—in order to produce staple export crops like rice, wheat, and tobacco. This brutal labor regime became common throughout most of the colonies. An important exception was New England, where settlers and their descendants did most work themselves. In Town Born, Barry Levy shows that New England's distinctive and far more egalitarian order was due neither to the colonists' peasant traditionalism nor to the region's inhospitable environment. Instead, Ne...
Free Trade and Sailors' Rights in the War of 1812
Examines the slogan 'free trade and sailors rights', tracing its sources to eighteenth-century thought and Americans' experience with impressment into the British navy.
Poseidon's Curse
Poseidon's Curse interprets the American Revolution from the vantage point of the Atlantic Ocean. Christopher P. Magra traces how British naval impressment played a leading role in the rise of Great Britain's seaborne empire, yet ultimately contributed significantly to its decline. Long reliant on appropriating free laborers to man the warships that defended British colonies and maritime commerce, the British severely jeopardized mariners' earning potential and occupational mobility, which led to deep resentment toward the British Empire. Magra explains how anger about impressment translated into revolutionary ideology, with impressment eventually occupying a major role in the Declaration of Independence as one of the foremost grievances Americans had with the British government.
The Weight of Vengeance
In early 1815, Secretary of State James Monroe reviewed the treaty with Britain that would end the War of 1812. The United States Navy was blockaded in port; much of the army had not been paid for nearly a year; the capital had been burned. The treaty offered an unexpected escape from disaster. Yet it incensed Monroe, for the name of Great Britain and its negotiators consistently appeared before those of the United States. "The United States have acquired a certain rank amongst nations, which is due to their population and political importance," he brazenly scolded the British diplomat who conveyed the treaty, "and they do not stand in the same situation as at former periods." Monroe had a p...
Africans in the Old South
The Atlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in history, and its toll in lives damaged or destroyed is incalculable. Most of those stories are lost to history, making the few that can be reconstructed critical to understanding the trade in all its breadth and variety. Randy J. Sparks examines the experiences of a range of West Africans who lived in the American South between 1740 and 1860. Their stories highlight the diversity of struggles that confronted every African who arrived on American shores. The subjects of Africans in the Old South include Elizabeth Cleveland Hardcastle, the mixed-race daughter of an African slave-trading family who invested in South Carolina rice plan...
