Friday, January 8, 2010: 9:30 AM
Edward B (Hyatt)
Niklas Frykman,
“The Revolution at Sea: Naval Warworkers and Political Radicalism in the 1790s”
Mutinies tore like wildfire through the wooden warships of the revolutionary era. In navy after navy, shipboard discipline was pushed to the brink of collapse as common seamen by the thousands refused orders and turned their guns on the quarterdeck instead. By the late 1790s, relations between officers and men had plunged to such a low in many navies that violent, treasonous mutinies had become recurrent events throughout the Atlantic naval world. This was an international frontline movement of both unprecedented and still wholly unsurpassed proportions, and yet, thanks to the subdivision of the discipline into national units, it has remained largely obscure.
This paper will therefore first outline the history of mutiny during the French Revolutionary Wars in a number of representative navies before going on to focus especially on the political dimensions of shipboard radicalism. How did unruly seamen explain or justify their actions? Did they understand them as strictly internal to the service or as an extension of struggles carried on in their home countries, or its colonies? How strong were feelings of patriotism and nationalism amongst them? What was their understanding of loyalty and treason? How subjectively aware were they of participating in a movement that crossed frontlines? How did their experience of shipboard society – one of most cosmopolitan, hierarchical, and violent to be found anywhere outside of the slave plantation zone – modify ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity? How did ideas of a universal republic fare on the gundecks of warships? How, ultimately, do they fit into the history of radicalism in the era of Atlantic revolution?
“The Revolution at Sea: Naval Warworkers and Political Radicalism in the 1790s”
Mutinies tore like wildfire through the wooden warships of the revolutionary era. In navy after navy, shipboard discipline was pushed to the brink of collapse as common seamen by the thousands refused orders and turned their guns on the quarterdeck instead. By the late 1790s, relations between officers and men had plunged to such a low in many navies that violent, treasonous mutinies had become recurrent events throughout the Atlantic naval world. This was an international frontline movement of both unprecedented and still wholly unsurpassed proportions, and yet, thanks to the subdivision of the discipline into national units, it has remained largely obscure.
This paper will therefore first outline the history of mutiny during the French Revolutionary Wars in a number of representative navies before going on to focus especially on the political dimensions of shipboard radicalism. How did unruly seamen explain or justify their actions? Did they understand them as strictly internal to the service or as an extension of struggles carried on in their home countries, or its colonies? How strong were feelings of patriotism and nationalism amongst them? What was their understanding of loyalty and treason? How subjectively aware were they of participating in a movement that crossed frontlines? How did their experience of shipboard society – one of most cosmopolitan, hierarchical, and violent to be found anywhere outside of the slave plantation zone – modify ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity? How did ideas of a universal republic fare on the gundecks of warships? How, ultimately, do they fit into the history of radicalism in the era of Atlantic revolution?
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