Foreign Jack Tars

The British Navy and Transnational Seafarers during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Inbunden, Engelska, 2022

AvSara Caputo,Sara (University of Cambridge) Caputo

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The British Royal Navy of the French Wars (1793-1815) is an enduring national symbol, but we often overlook the tens of thousands of foreign seamen who contributed to its operations. Foreign Jack Tars presents the first in-depth study of their employment in the Navy during this crucial period. Based on sources from across Britain, Europe, and the US, and blending quantitative, social, cultural, economic, and legal history, it challenges the very notions of 'Britishness' and 'foreignness'. The need for manpower during wartime meant that naval recruitment regularly bypassed cultural prejudice, and even legal status. Temporarily outstripped by practical considerations, these categories thus revealed their artificiality. The Navy was not simply an employer in the British maritime market, but a nodal point of global mobility. Exposing the inescapable transnational dimensions of a quintessentially national institution, the book highlights the instability of national boundaries, and the compromises and contradictions underlying the power of modern states.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2022-11-17
Mått158 x 235 x 22 mm
Vikt600 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieModern British Histories
Antal sidor310
FörlagCambridge University Press
ISBN9781009199797

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Sara Caputo is Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, and Research Fellow at Magdalene College. Her work has won the Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prize and Seeley Medal for a historical doctoral thesis completed at Cambridge, and the British Commission for Maritime History Prize for best UK thesis on maritime history. She has also been awarded the international Ideas Prize, the Sir Julian Corbett Prize in Modern Naval History, and the Scottish History Society Rosebery Prize. She has published several articles on maritime social and cultural history, and held visiting fellowships at various institutions in Britain, Germany, and the US.

Introduction; Part I. The State: 1. Countable 'foreigners': birthplace and demographic profiles; 2. 'Sacred and indestructible' bonds: alien seamen, subjecthood, and the Navy; Part II. The Nation: 3. A Babel and a Gehenna: languages and religions; 4. 'Complexions of every varied hue': racial beliefs, biopower, and acclimatisation; 5. 'They cannot keep the sea beyond a passage': the Royal Navy and recruitment in the Two Sicilies; 6. 'From among the Northern nations alone': Dutchmen, Danes, and Norwegians in the fleet; Part III. Displacement: 7. Mercenaries, migrants, and refugees: Navy crews as 'motley crews'; Conclusion.

'Sara Caputo's Foreign Jack Tars is an impressive debut by a gifted young historian. Based on a heroic trawl of the archives, her study combines clear and concise writing with a command of quantitative methods. It also marries transnational and national history, revealing that the Royal Navy, the focus of much national pride and widely perceived as a symbol of Britishness, in fact relied to a significant extent on foreign manpower.' Stephen Conway, University College London