Foreign Jack Tars
Foreign Jack Tars
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.
- Offers an original and topical angle on a popular historical subject - the Royal Navy
- Offers the reader a broader view than traditional British history, to appeal to those interested in European and transnational history
- Based on material in nine languages, including primary sources from five different countries
Reviews & endorsements
'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
'This book shows the signal importance of foreign sailors to the British Navy in the Age of Revolutions, while offering original interpretations of wartime manning policies, the impressment debates, race and ethnicity on the ships, and the meaning of national belonging. This is one of the best transnational histories I have read.' Margaret R. Hunt, Uppsala University
'In this very fine book about foreign seamen in the British Navy during the European wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Sara Caputo examines their demographic characteristics, their participation in naval enterprises, their racial, national, linguistic, and religious differences, and their personal experiences in the Navy. … her book is germane to the current differences between attitudinal and structural/conjunctural approaches to the study of racial and ethnic inequalities. You do not have to be a historian to profit from reading it.' Sam Clark, International Journal of Military History and Historiography
'This book should mark the beginning of a new era in the history of the lower deck. … It is a sign of a quality work of scholarship that it leaves the reader with an exciting new research agenda.' Evan Wilson, International Journal of Maritime History
Product details
No date availableAdobe eBook Reader
9781009199827
0 pages
Table of Contents
- 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.
