Yankee Sailors in British Gaols

Yankee Sailors in British Gaols PDF Author: Sheldon Samuel Cohen
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874135640
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
"Yankee Sailors in British Gaols offers the first comprehensive account of American servicemen detained within the confines of Mill and Forton prisons, the principal land-based detention centers in Britain during the American Revolution. Forton and Mill during the course of the War of Independence held approximately 3,000 American prisoners, almost all of them naval personnel. In a few cases, these American prisoners were incarcerated for more than four years, a longer recorded period of incarceration in overseas prisons than in any United States war prior to Vietnam. Professor Cohen's examination of wide-ranging and widely scattered primary and secondary sources provides an extraordinarily detailed picture of life within the closed society of each prison, as well as insight into the various ways in which Britons and Americans outside the prisons provided legal and extralegal help to the rebel detainees."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Yankee Sailors in British Gaols

Yankee Sailors in British Gaols PDF Author: Sheldon Samuel Cohen
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874135640
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
"Yankee Sailors in British Gaols offers the first comprehensive account of American servicemen detained within the confines of Mill and Forton prisons, the principal land-based detention centers in Britain during the American Revolution. Forton and Mill during the course of the War of Independence held approximately 3,000 American prisoners, almost all of them naval personnel. In a few cases, these American prisoners were incarcerated for more than four years, a longer recorded period of incarceration in overseas prisons than in any United States war prior to Vietnam. Professor Cohen's examination of wide-ranging and widely scattered primary and secondary sources provides an extraordinarily detailed picture of life within the closed society of each prison, as well as insight into the various ways in which Britons and Americans outside the prisons provided legal and extralegal help to the rebel detainees."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

British Supporters of the American Revolution, 1775-1783

British Supporters of the American Revolution, 1775-1783 PDF Author: Sheldon Samuel Cohen
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 9781843830115
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
America's Declaration of Independence, while endeavouring to justify a break with Great Britain, simultaneously proclaimed that the colonists had not been `wanting in attention to our British brethren', but that they had `been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity'. This overstatement has since been modified in comprehensive histories of the American Revolution. Gradually a more balanced portrait of British attitudes towards the conflict has emerged. In particular, studies of pro-American Britons have exemplified this fact by concentrating on only a small upper-class minority. In contrast, this work focuses on five unrenowned men of Britain's `middling orders'. These individuals actively endeavoured to aid the American cause. Their efforts, often unlawful, brought them into contact with Benjamin Franklin, for whom they befriended rebel seamen confined in British gaols. Their stories - rendered here - open up new areas for study of the American War on this middling segment of Britain's social structure.

Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution

Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution PDF Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631498266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award A Massachusetts Center for the Book "Must-Read" Finalist for the New England Society Book Award Finalist for the Boston Authors Club Julia Ward Howe Book Award The bestselling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters reclaims the daring freelance sailors who proved essential to the winning of the Revolutionary War. The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation’s character—above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos. In Rebels at Sea, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission, and contends that privateers, as they were called, were in fact critical to the American victory. Privateers were privately owned vessels, mostly refitted merchant ships, that were granted permission by the new government to seize British merchantmen and men of war. As Dolin stirringly demonstrates, at a time when the young Continental Navy numbered no more than about sixty vessels all told, privateers rushed to fill the gaps. Nearly 2,000 set sail over the course of the war, with tens of thousands of Americans serving on them and capturing some 1,800 British ships. Privateers came in all shapes and sizes, from twenty-five foot long whaleboats to full-rigged ships more than 100 feet long. Bristling with cannons, swivel guns, muskets, and pikes, they tormented their foes on the broad Atlantic and in bays and harbors on both sides of the ocean. The men who owned the ships, as well as their captains and crew, would divide the profits of a successful cruise—and suffer all the more if their ship was captured or sunk, with privateersmen facing hellish conditions on British prison hulks, where they were treated not as enemy combatants but as pirates. Some Americans viewed them similarly, as cynical opportunists whose only aim was loot. Yet Dolin shows that privateersmen were as patriotic as their fellow Americans, and moreover that they greatly contributed to the war’s success: diverting critical British resources to protecting their shipping, playing a key role in bringing France into the war on the side of the United States, providing much-needed supplies at home, and bolstering the new nation’s confidence that it might actually defeat the most powerful military force in the world. Creating an entirely new pantheon of Revolutionary heroes, Dolin reclaims such forgotten privateersmen as Captain Jonathan Haraden and Offin Boardman, putting their exploits, and sacrifices, at the very center of the conflict. Abounding in tales of daring maneuvers and deadly encounters, Rebels at Sea presents this nation’s first war as we have rarely seen it before.

The Society of Prisoners

The Society of Prisoners PDF Author: Renaud Morieux
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191035467
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
In the eighteenth century, as wars between Britain, France, and their allies raged across the world, hundreds of thousands of people were captured, detained, or exchanged. They were shipped across oceans, marched across continents, or held in an indeterminate limbo. The Society of Prisoners challenges us to rethink the paradoxes of the prisoner of war, defined at once as an enemy and as a fellow human being whose life must be spared. Amidst the emergence of new codifications of international law, the practical distinctions between a prisoner of war, a hostage, a criminal, and a slave were not always clear-cut. Renaud Morieux's vivid and lucid account uses war captivity as a point of departure, investigating how the state transformed itself at war, and how whole societies experienced international conflicts. The detention of foreigners on home soil created the conditions for multifaceted exchanges with the host populations, involving prison guards, priests, pedlars, and philanthropists. Thus, while the imprisonment of enemies signals the extension of Anglo-French rivalry throughout the world, the mass incarceration of foreign soldiers and sailors also illustrates the persistence of non-conflictual relations amidst war. Taking the reader beyond Britain and France, as far as the West Indies and St Helena, this story resonates in our own time, questioning the dividing line between war and peace, and forcing us to confront the untenable situations in which the status of the enemy is left to the whim of the captor.

The Evil Necessity

The Evil Necessity PDF Author: Denver Brunsman
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813933528
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 616

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Book Description
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

Harvard Law Review: Volume 125, Number 4 - February 2012

Harvard Law Review: Volume 125, Number 4 - February 2012 PDF Author: Harvard Law Review
Publisher: Quid Pro Books
ISBN: 161027959X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
Featured articles in this issue of the Harvard Law Review are from such recognized scholars as Amanda Tyler, on the core meaning of the Suspension Clause, and Kenneth Mack, reviewing Tomiko Brown-Nagin's new book on the grass roots origins of the civil rights movement. Also, several scholars contribute to a tribute honoring Frank Michelman. Student contributions explore the law relating to international delegation, the First Amendment and student speech, criminal sentencing, public jury selection, sovereign immunity for alien tort claims, and corporate governance. Finally, the issue includes several Book Notes. This issue of the Review is for February 2012, the fourth issue of academic year 2011-2012 (Volume 125). The digital edition features active Table of Contents, linked footnotes and cross-references, active URLs, legible tables, and proper ebook formatting.

Mosquito

Mosquito PDF Author: Richard Jones
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861899475
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Bug zappers were invented for one purpose: to kill mosquitoes, the bane of many summer evenings, camping trips, and exotic vacations. These blood-sucking insects do more than leave us with itchy bites, though. The diseases they carry and inject, such as yellow fever, dengue fever, and the West Nile virus, make them responsible for more human deaths than any other animal. The most deadly of these, malaria, has been mostly eradicated from the northern hemisphere, but it continues to pose a mortal threat in developing countries. It kills nearly 700,000 of the 350 million that succumb to the infection each year, and the majority of the deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on scientific fact, historical evidence, and literary evocation, Mosquito provides a colorful portrait of this tiny insect and the notorious diseases it carries. Richard Jones explores the mosquito’s sinister reputation, tracing its transformation from trivial gnat into a serious disease-carrying menace. While Jones recounts the history of mosquitoes’ relationship with humans, he also offers a persuasive warning against the contemporary complacency surrounding malaria and other diseases in Western society. Mosquito is a compelling look at tropical medicine, diseases, and their connection to one of our smallest adversaries.

The Papers of Henry Laurens

The Papers of Henry Laurens PDF Author: Henry Laurens
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570033070
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description


Naval Documents of the American Revolution: American theater: June 1, 1778-August 15, 1778 ; European theater: June 1, 1778-August 15, 1778

Naval Documents of the American Revolution: American theater: June 1, 1778-August 15, 1778 ; European theater: June 1, 1778-August 15, 1778 PDF Author: United States. Naval History Division
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Government publications
Languages : en
Pages : 1352

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Book Description
In the tradition of the preceding volumes - the first of which was published in 1964 - this work synthesizes edited documents, including correspondence, ship logs, muster rolls, orders, and newspaper accounts, that provide a comprehensive understanding of the war at sea in the spring of 1778. The editors organize this wide array of texts chronologically by theater and incorporate French, Italian, and Spanish transcriptions with English translations throughout.

Patriot Pirates

Patriot Pirates PDF Author: Robert H. Patton
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307390551
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
In this lively narrative history, Robert H. Patton, grandson of the World War II battlefield legend, tells a sweeping tale of courage, capitalism, naval warfare, and international political intrigue set on the high seas during the American Revolution. Patriot Pirates highlights the obscure but pivotal role played by colonial privateers in defeating Britain in the American Revolution. American privateering-essentially legalized piracy-began with a ragtag squadron of New England schooners in 1775. It quickly erupted into a massive seaborne insurgency involving thousands of money-mad patriots plundering Britain's maritime trade throughout Atlantic. Patton's extensive research brings to life the extraordinary adventures of privateers as they hammered the British economy, infuriated the Royal Navy, and humiliated the crown.