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
Copyright:
2013
Book Details
Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780813933528
Related ISBNs:
9780813933511
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Date of Addition:
05/07/13
Copyrighted By:
the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
