Description
Book SynopsisThe global legacy of mutiny and revolution on the high seas. Mutiny tore like wildfire through the wooden warships of the age of revolution. While commoners across Europe laid siege to the nobility and enslaved workers put the torch to plantation islands, out on the oceans, naval seamen by the tens of thousands turned their guns on the quarterdeck and overthrew the absolute rule of captains. By the early 1800s, anywhere between one-third and one-half of all naval seamen serving in the North Atlantic had participated in at least one mutiny, many of them in several, and some even on ships in different navies. In The Bloody Flag, historian Niklas Frykman explores in vivid prose how a decade of violent conflict onboard gave birth to a distinct form of radical politics that brought together the egalitarian culture of North Atlantic maritime communities with the revolutionary era's constitutional republicanism. The attempt to build a radical maritime republic failed, but the red flag that
Trade Review"The 1789 mutiny aboard the Bounty remains the most famous maritime uprising of its era, and perhaps of all time. But in
The Bloody Flag, Niklas Frykman portrays an era of lower-deck turbulence of far greater magnitude. . . . Most uprisings, according to this slender, informative volume, embodied a radical maritime culture that would not again arise on such a spectacular scale until the 20th century." * Wall Street Journal *
"Frykman breathes life into his subject in this vividly written tale of an oft-underrepresented history. Readers interested in maritime, naval, labor, and Atlantic history will greatly enjoy." * Library Journal *
"A significant contribution to Atlantic labor history." * Boston Review *
"As Frykman takes his reader on a whirlwind ride across the Atlantic Ocean during the Era of Revolution, he weaves a compelling narrative that draws on material cultural, ideology and mariner’s biographies. Although numerous studies of the Era of Revolution abound, Frykman’s book employs a novel methodology that connects this age with the Communist Revolution." * Northern Mariner *
"In an extraordinary exercise of archival legwork, the author incorporates material from multiple British, French, Dutch, and Swedish archives. Collectively, his multilingual evidentiary base conclusively demonstrates the striking degree of transnational camaraderie driving many of these mutinies.
The Bloody Flag brings to the fore the ways sailors conversed and collaborated across the era's political and cultural barriers to effect change. . . . Frykman thus provides important inspiration for the present in his insightful treatment of the past." * Journal of American History *
"[An] important new book. . . .
The Bloody Flag leaves little doubt that the convergence of great power militancy, scarce maritime labor, and the growth of radical republicanism account for a crucial phase in the formation of a cohesive Atlantic working class." * Journal of British Studies *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Like a Ship on Fire
Chapter 1 • Barbaric Industry
Chapter 2 • Who Will Command This Empire?
Chapter 3 • Demons Dancing in a Furnace
Chapter 4 • A Revolution in the Fleet
Chapter 5 • To Clear the Quarterdeck
Conclusion: The Marine Republic
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
