Download or read book The Evil Necessity written by Denver Alexander Brunsman and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 615 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 and occasionally local toughs, often used violence or the threat of violence to supply the skilled manpower necessary to establish and maintain British naval supremacy. Moreover, impressments helped to unite Britain and its Atlantic coastal territories in a common system of maritime defense unmatched by any other European empire. Drawing on ships' logs, merchants' papers, personal letters and diaries, as well as engravings, political texts, and sea ballads, Brunsman shows how ultimately the controversy over impressment contributed to the American Revolution and served as a leading cause of the War of 1812. Early American HistoriesWinner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an Outstanding Work of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Studies

Download or read book The Myth of the Press Gang written by Jeremiah Ross Dancy and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2015 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 but concentrating on the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of 1793-1815, the book provides great detail on the sort of men that were recruited and the means by which they were recruited, and includes a number of individuals' stories. It shows how manpower was a major concern for the Admiralty; how the Admiralty put in place a range of recruitment methods including the quota system; how it worried about depleting merchant shipping of sufficient sailors; and how, although most seamen were volunteers, the press gang was resorted to, especially during the initial mobilisation at the beginning of wars and to find certain kinds of particularly skilled seamen. The book also makes comparisons with recruitment methods employed by the navies of other countries and by the British army. J. Ross Dancy is Assistant Professor of History at Sam Houston State University.

Download or read book Free Trade and Sailors Rights in the War of 1812 written by Paul A. Gilje and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-18 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 2 July 1812, Captain David Porter raised a banner on the USS Essex proclaiming 'a free trade and sailors rights', thus creating a political slogan that explained the War of 1812. Free trade demanded the protection of American commerce, while sailors' rights insisted that the British end the impressment of seamen from American ships. Repeated for decades in Congress and in taverns, the slogan reminds us today that the second war with Great Britain was not a mistake. It was a contest for the ideals of the American Revolution bringing together both the high culture of the Enlightenment to establish a new political economy and the low culture of the common folk to assert the equality of humankind. Understanding the War of 1812 and the motto that came to explain it – free trade and sailors' rights – allows us to better comprehend the origins of the American nation.

Download or read book Impressment of American Seamen written by James Fulton Zimmerman and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Naval War of 1812 Or the History of the United States Navy During the Last War with Great Britain to Which Is Appended an Account of the Battle of New Orleans Volume 1 written by Theodore Roosevelt and published by Franklin Classics. This book was released on 2018-10-12 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book The Causes of the War of 1812 written by Reginald Horsman and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years immediately preceding the War of 1812, England was dominated by a faction that pledged itself not only to defeat Napoleon but also to maintain British commercial supremacy. The two main points of contention between England and America—impressment and the restrictions imposed by the Orders in Council—were direct results of these commitments. America finally had no alternative but to oppose with force British maritime policy. In addition to tracing the gradual drift to war in America, Professor Horsman shows that the Indian problem and American expansionist designs against Canada played small part in bringing about the struggle. He examines the efforts made by America to avoid conflict through means of economic coercion, efforts the failure of which confronted the nation with two alternatives: war or submission to England. This volume offers the first analysis of the causes of the war from both the British and American points of view, showing clearly that, contrary to the popular misconception, the war’s basic causes are to be found not in America but in Europe.

Download or read book Mr Madison s War written by John Lowell and published by . This book was released on 1812 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Sanctuary written by A. Roger Ekirch and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1797 the bloodiest mutiny ever suffered by the Royal Navy took place on the British frigate HMS Hermione off the coast of Puerto Rico. Jonathan Robbins, a reputed American sailor who had been impressed into service, made his way to American shores. President John Adams bowed to Britain’s request for his extradition. Convicted of murder and piracy by a court-martial in Jamaica, Robbins was hanged. Adams’s catastrophic miscalculation ignited a political firestorm, only to be fanned by Robbins’s failure to receive his constitutional rights of due process and trial by jury by an American court. American Sanctuary brilliantly lays out in riveting detail the story of how the Robbins affair, amid the turbulent presidential campaign of 1800, inflamed the new nation and set in motion a constitutional crisis, resulting in Adams’s defeat and Thomas Jefferson’s election as the third president of the United States. Robbins’s martyrdom led directly to the country’s historic decision to grant political asylum to foreign refugees—a major achievement in fulfilling the promise of American independence.

Download or read book Don t Give Up the Ship written by Donald R. Hickey and published by . This book was released on 2007-10 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clearing the fog from the War of 1812

Download or read book Sons of the Waves written by Stephen Taylor and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant telling of the history of the common seaman in the age of sail, and his role in Britain’s trade, exploration, and warfare British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson but has given little voice to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Now Stephen Taylor draws on published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and naval records, including court-martials and petitions, to present these men in their own words. In this exhilarating account, ordinary seamen are far from the hapless sufferers of the press gangs. Proud and spirited, learned in their own fashion, with robust opinions and the courage to challenge overweening authority, they stand out from their less adventurous compatriots. Taylor demonstrates how the sailor was the engine of British prosperity and expansion up to the Industrial Revolution. From exploring the South Seas with Cook to establishing the East India Company as a global corporation, from the sea battles that made Britain a superpower to the crisis of the 1797 mutinies, these "sons of the waves" held the nation’s destiny in their calloused hands.

Download or read book Jack Tar Vs John Bull written by Jesse Lemisch and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1997 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Download or read book The American Remembrancer written by and published by . This book was released on 1795 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Citizen Sailors written by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-12 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades after the United States formally declared its independence in 1776, Americans struggled to gain recognition of their new republic and their rights as citizens. None had to fight harder than the nation’s seamen, whose labor took them far from home and deep into the Atlantic world. Citizen Sailors tells the story of how their efforts to become American at sea in the midst of war and revolution created the first national, racially inclusive model of United States citizenship. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal immerses us in sailors’ pursuit of safe passage through the ocean world during the turbulent age of revolution. Challenged by British press-gangs and French privateersmen, who considered them Britons and rejected their citizenship claims, American seamen demanded that the U.S. government take action to protect them. In response, federal leaders created a system of national identification documents for sailors and issued them to tens of thousands of mariners of all races—nearly a century before such credentials came into wider use. Citizenship for American sailors was strikingly ahead of its time: it marked the federal government’s most extensive foray into defining the boundaries of national belonging until the Civil War era, and the government’s most explicit recognition of black Americans’ equal membership as well. This remarkable system succeeded in safeguarding seafarers, but it fell victim to rising racism and nativism after 1815. Not until the twentieth century would the United States again embrace such an inclusive vision of American nationhood.

Download or read book The War of 1812 written by Donald R Hickey and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface to the First Edition -- Preface to the Bicentennial Edition -- Introduction -- 1. The Road to War, 1801-1812 -- 2. The Declaration of War -- 3. The Baltimore Riots -- 4. The Campaign of 1812 -- 5. Raising Men and Money -- 6. The Campaign of 1813 -- 7. The Last Embargo -- 8. The British Counteroffensive -- 9. The Crisis of 1814 -- 10. The Hartford Convention -- 11. The Treaty of Ghent -- Conclusion -- A Note on Sources -- Notes -- Index -- back cover.

Download or read book Perry at Put in Bay written by Charles Wesley Porter (III) and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book An Inquiry Into the Causes and Consequences of the Orders in Council written by Alexander Baring Baron Ashburton and published by . This book was released on 1808 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Poseidon s Curse written by Christopher P. Magra and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of the Atlantic origins of the American Revolution, focusing on the British navy's impressment of American ships and mariners.