Download or read book British Privateering Voyages of the Early Eighteenth Century written by Tim Beattie and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2015 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of hugely ambitious and risky long-distance private voyages, only one of which brought huge returns for investors. The three great privateering expeditions into the South Sea, which set out, respectively, in 1703, led by William Dampier; in 1708, led by Woodes Rogers; and in 1719, led by George Shelvocke, were costly and ambitious long distance voyages, carrying great risk for their investors but promising great reward. This book tells the story of the voyages and their impact. It argues that, far from being anachronistic activities more in keeping with an earlier age, as some scholars have asserted, the voyages were significant events and had a huge impact - on politicians, influencing future maritime and naval strategy; on investors, swelling enthusiasm for the South Sea Company which ended in the disastrous Bubble; and in literature, where the narratives of the voyages became an important source for some of the greatest literature of the period, including Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The book provides a great deal of original detail about the voyages, including the difficulties of undertaking such lengthy expeditions, unrest among the crews, and financial details of investmentsand returns - and losses. Tim Beattie completed his doctorate at the University of Exeter.

Download or read book British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century written by David J. Starkey and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important part of eighteenth-century maritime conflict involved the destruction of enemy commerce and the protection of home trade. In performing these tasks, state navies were augmented by privateers, vessels owned, equipped and manned by private individuals authorised by their governments to attack and seize the enemy’s seabourne property. For their reward, the investors and seafarers engaged in privateering ventures shared in the proceeds of any ships and goods taken and condemned as lawful prize. Privateering therefore represented a business opportunity to the maritime community, a chance to acquire instant wealth at the enemy’s expense; at the same time, it appeared as a cheap convenient means by which the state might supplement its naval strength. In this important analysis David J. Starkey draws upon a wealth of documentary evidence to throw fresh light upon the character, scale and significance of the British privateering business.

Download or read book Buccaneers and Privateers written by Richard Frohock and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late seventeenth century, Spain dominated the Caribbean and Central and South America, establishing colonies, mining gold and silver, and gathering riches from Asia for transportation back to Europe. Seeking to disrupt Spain's nearly unchecked empire-building and siphon off some of their wealth, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British adventurers--both legitimate and illegitimate--led numerous expeditions into the Caribbean and the Pacific. Many voyagers wrote accounts of their exploits, captivating readers with their tales of exotic places, shocking hardships and cruelties, and daring engagements with national enemies. Widely distributed and read, buccaneering and privateering narratives contributed significantly to England's imaginative, literary rendering of the Americas in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and they provided a venue for public dialogue about sea rovers and their position within empire. This book takes as its subject the literary and rhetorical construction of voyagers and their histories, and by extension, the representation of English imperialism in popular sea-voyage narratives of the period.

Download or read book Life Aboard a British Privateer written by Robert C. Leslie and published by . This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Woodes Rogers-the man who rescued 'Robinson Crusoe' In the history of the British at sea, the names of many of its greatest men have long been familiar to almost everyone. For many, however, the name Woodes Rogers may not be foremost among them. Yet in the time of Queen Anne this master mariner, sailing from Bristol, circumnavigated the globe in a momentous two and a half year odyssey with his two ships-Duke and Duchess. He was an English privateer of some repute and was successful against the Spanish, taking several prizes in the Pacific on his epic voyage. It was he who rescued the 'real' marooned hero of Daniel Defoe's adventure Robinson Crusoe-Alexander Selkirk-from Juan Fernandez Island and promptly made him captain of one of his own prize ships the Increase. This astonishing man went on to be the first Royal Governor of the Bahamas, held the post twice, beat off Spanish attempts to gain influence in the region and substantially cleared the Caribbean seas of pirates. This fascinating book combines the research of historian Robert Leslie with Woodes Rogers own journals to make a vital account of an extraordinary mariner from the great age of sail. Through its pages the reader may trace Rogers' career and voyages of the early eighteenth century which inevitably are full of incident and interest. Available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket.

Download or read book Suppressing Piracy in the Early Eighteenth Century written by David Wilson and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2021 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts the surge and decline in piracy in the early eighteenth century (the so-called "Golden Age" of piracy), exploring the ways in which pirates encountered, obstructed, and antagonised the diverse participants of the British empire in the Caribbean, North America, Africa, and the Indian Ocean. The book's primary focus is on how anti-piracy campaigns were constructed as a result of the negotiations, conflicts, and individual undertakings of different imperial actors operating in the commercial and imperial hub of London; maritime communities throughout the British Atlantic; trading outposts in West Africa and India; and marginal and contested zones such as the Bahamas, Madagascar, and the Bay Islands. It argues that Britain and its empire was not a strong centralised imperial state; that the British imperial administration and the Royal Navy did not have the resources to mount a state-led, empire-wide war against piracy following the sharp increase in piratical attacks after 1716; and that it was only through manifold activities taking place in different colonial centres with varied colonial arrangements, economic strengths, and access to resources for maritime defence - which was often shaped by competing and contradictory interests - that Atlantic piracy was gradually discouraged, although not eradicated, by the mid-1720s.

Download or read book Defoe s Tour and Early Modern Britain written by Pat Rogers and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-17 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authoritative yet accessible, this is the first-ever comprehensive account of a true landmark in eighteenth-century travel writing. Daniel Defoe's Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain is constantly cited even now by students in practically every branch of history, and there are few topics essential to our understanding of the nation in the early modern period that do not show up in its pages. Historians since the late nineteenth century have looked to the Tour as one of the richest and most insightful works describing Britain in the lead-up to the Industrial Revolution, and critics and biographers of Defoe have regularly named it as among his most characteristic and central works. Indispensable for virtually any interdisciplinary approach to the nation in this period, this new study provides wide-reaching, up-to-date analysis of the content of the Tour, and of its methods, sources, form, and vast historical significance.

Download or read book Ireland s Farthest Shores written by Malcolm Campbell and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2022-01-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irish people have had a long and complex engagement with the lands and waters encompassing the Pacific world. As the European presence in the Pacific intensified from the late eighteenth century, the Irish entered this oceanic space as beachcombers, missionaries, traders, and colonizers. During the nineteenth century, economic distress in Ireland and rapid population growth on the Pacific Ocean's eastern and western shores set in motion large-scale migration that exerted a deep political, social, and economic impact across the Pacific. Malcolm Campbell examines the rich history of Irish experiences on land and at sea, offering new perspectives on migration and mobility in the Pacific world and of the Irish role in the establishment and maintenance of the British Empire. This volume investigates the extensive transnational connections that developed among Irish immigrants and their descendants across this vast and unique oceanic space, ties that illuminate how the Irish participated in the making of the Pacific world and how the Pacific world made them.

Download or read book British Maritime Enterprise in the New World written by Peter T. Bradley and published by Peter Bradley. This book was released on 1999 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a survey of the voyages of English navigators, from the pioneers of the late 15th century to the scientific expeditions of the early 19th century, not only in South American waters, but also the Caribbean and North America.

Download or read book The Trafalgar Chronicle written by and published by Seaforth Publishing. This book was released on 2024-01-30 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Trafalgar Chronicle is the publication of choice for new, scholarly research about the Georgian Navy, sometimes called ‘Nelson’s Navy’; the journal’s scope, however, includes all the sailing navies of the period 1714 to 1837. This year’s volume includes three articles on highly original topics. First, an analysis of the various swords the Duke of Clarence gave as gifts to Royal Navy officers. Second, is a deeply researched piece into early nineteenth-century court records to document the many incarnations of a Royal Navy schooner, Whiting, which, after capture by a French privateer in the War of 1812, became, herself, a privateer and a pirate ship. The last of three articles in this section gives an analysis of what Nelson thought of privateers, especially after the French xebec L’Esperance took his cutter Swift as a prize. To recognize the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Swedish Navy, there are included three articles from a new compilation The Baltic Cauldron, a collection of papers on the Swedish Navy, from 1522 to the present. It includes a piece by Christer Hägg, former captain in the Royal Swedish Navy and an accomplished maritime artist whose painting graces the cover of this edition. Readers will also find outstanding biographical portraits. First, there is a recounting of Charles Cunningham’s daring decisions and steely resolve when he extricated his ship, HMS Clyde, from the heated Nore Mutiny. Another article describes the parallel and contemporary naval service exploits of Admirals Rodney and Kempenfelt, who were actually distant cousins of one another. The final biographical paper takes readers to Bermuda where a twenty-first century archeological dig found the remains of Captain Sir Jacob Wheate, who commanded the ill-fated Fifth Rate frigate HMS Cerberus. Authors in this volume reside in six countries: UK, US, India, Australia, Canada, and Sweden. Through extensive research, they tell dramatic stories of mutiny, piracy, privateering, battles at sea, diplomacy, international alliances, victory and advancement, loss and defeat, all in the quest for sea power. Handsomely illustrated throughout, this issue will make a fascinating and admired addition to any naval library. ‘Well written, well researched, well-illustrated, this is a publication that will both delight and inform. A most enjoyable read.’ - D J Paul in Naval Review

Download or read book Britain and Colonial Maritime War in the Early Eighteenth Century written by Shinsuke Satsuma and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2013 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early modern Britain, there was an argument that war at sea, especially war in Spanish America, was an ideal means of warfare, offering the prospect of rich gains at relatively little cost whilst inflicting considerable damage on enemy financial resources. This book examines that argument, tracing its origin to the glorious memory of Elizabethan maritime war, discussing its supposed economic advantages, and investigating its influence on British politics and naval policy during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13) and after. The book reveals that the alleged economic advantages of war at sea were crucial in attracting the support of politicians of different political stances. It shows how supporters of war at sea, both in the government as well as in the opposition, tried to implement pro-maritime war policy by naval operations, colonial expeditions and by legislation, and how their attempts were often frustrated by diplomatic considerations, the incapacity of naval administration, and by conflicting interests between different groups connected to the West Indian colonies and Spanish American trade. It demonstrates how, after the War of the Spanish Succession, arguments for active colonial maritime war continued to be central to political conflict, notably in the opposition propaganda campaigns against the Walpole ministry, culminating in the War of Jenkins's Ear against Spain in 1739. The book also includes material on the South Sea Company, showing how the foundation of this company, later the subject of the notorious 'Bubble', was a logical part of British strategy. Shinsuke Satsuma completed his doctorate in maritime history at the University of Exeter.

Download or read book Law Labour and Empire written by Maria Fusaro and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-05-04 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seafarers were the first workers to inhabit a truly international labour market, a sector of industry which, throughout the early modern period, drove European economic and imperial expansion, technological and scientific development, and cultural and material exchanges around the world. This volume adopts a comparative perspective, presenting current research about maritime labourers across three centuries, in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, to understand how seafarers contributed to legal and economic transformation within Europe and across the world. Focusing on the three related themes of legal systems, labouring conditions, and imperial power, these essays explore the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between seafarers' individual and collective agency, and the social and economic frameworks which structured their lives.

Download or read book Privateer Ships and Sailors written by Howard M. Chapin and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds 1400 1800 written by Claire Jowitt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book has been nominated for The Mountbatten Award for Best Book in the Maritime Media Awards 2021. The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds, 1400‒1800 explores early modern maritime history, culture, and the current state of the research and approaches taken by experts in the field. Ranging from cartography to poetry and decorative design to naval warfare, the book shows how once-traditional and often Euro-chauvinistic depictions of oceanic ‘mastery’ during the early modern period have been replaced by newer global ideas. This comprehensive volume challenges underlying assumptions by balancing its assessment of the consequences and accomplishments of European navigators in the era of Columbus, da Gama, and Magellan, with an awareness of the sophistication and maritime expertise in Asia, the Arab world, and the Americas. By imparting riveting new stories and global perceptions of maritime history and culture, the contributors provide readers with fresh insights concerning early modern entanglements between humans and the vast, unpredictable ocean. With maritime studies growing and the ocean’s health in decline, this volume is essential reading for academics and students interested in the historicization of the ocean and the ways early modern cultures both conceptualized and utilized seas.

Download or read book All That Glittered written by Timothy Alborn and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the century after 1750, Great Britain absorbed much of the world's supply of gold into its pockets, cupboards, and coffers when it became the only major country to adopt the gold standard as the sole basis of its currency. Over the same period, the nation's emergence was marked by a powerful combination of Protestantism, commerce, and military might, alongside preservation of its older social hierarchy. In this rich and broad-ranging work, Timothy Alborn argues for a close connection between gold and Britain's national identity. Beginning with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which validated Britain's position as an economic powerhouse, and running through the mid-nineteenth century gold rushes in California and Australia, Alborn draws on contemporary descriptions of gold's value to highlight its role in financial, political, and cultural realms. He begins by narrating British interests in gold mining globally to enable the smooth operation of the gold standard. In addition to explaining the metal's function in finance, he explores its uses in war expenditure, foreign trade, religious observance, and ornamentation at home and abroad. Britons criticized foreign cultures for their wasteful and inappropriate uses of gold, even as it became a prominent symbol of status in more traditional features of British society, including its royal family, aristocracy, and military. Although Britain had been ambivalent in its embrace of gold, ultimately it enabled the nation to become the world's most modern economy and to extend its imperial reach around the globe. All That Glittered tells the story of gold as both a marker of value and a valuable commodity, while providing a new window onto Britain's ascendance after the 1750s.

Download or read book Marque and Reprisal written by Kenneth B. Moss and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2019-04-22 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Letters of marque” might suggest privateers of the Elizabethan era or the American Revolution. But such conventions are duly covered in the US Constitution, and the private military instruments they sanction are very much at work today in the form of mercenaries and military contractors. A history of such practices up to the present day, Marque and Reprisal by Kenneth B. Moss offers unique insight into the role of private actors in military conflicts and the reason they are increasingly deployed in our day. Along with an overview of mercenaries and privateers, Marque and Reprisal provides a comprehensive history of the “marque and reprisal” clause in the US Constitution, reminding us that it is not as arcane as it seems and arguing that it is not a license for all forms of undeclared war. Within this historical context Moss explains why governments and states have sought control over warfare and actors—and why private actors have reappeared in force in recent conflicts. He also looks ahead to the likelihood that cyberwar will become an important venue for “private warfare.” Moss wonders if international law will be up to the challenges of private military actors in the digital realm. Is international law, in fact, equipped to meet the challenges increasingly presented in our day by such extramilitary activity? A government makes no more serious decision than whether to resort to military force and war; and when doing so, Moss suggests, it should ensure that such actions are accountable, not on the sly, and not decided in the marketplace. Marque and Reprisal should inform future deliberations and decisions on that count.

Download or read book The Speedwell Voyage written by Kenneth Poolman and published by Berkley Trade. This book was released on 2000 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This tale of real-life adventure on the high seas brings readers back to 1718, when the 22-gun privateer Speedwell set sail under the command of George Shelvocke. A Royal Navy veteran recalls the mutinies, battles, storms, and other adversities, with authentic period detail and rich characterizations.

Download or read book The Social History of English Seamen 1650 1815 written by Cheryl A. Fury and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of a wide range of new research on many aspects of life at sea in the early modern period.