Text:
Brian Lavery, Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World. London: Conway, 2009.
Additional reading:
Harding, Richard. The Evolution of the Sailing Navy, 1509-1815. London: St Martin’s Press, 1995.
Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. London: Penguin Books, 2001.
Knight, Roger. The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson. London: Allen Lane, 2005.
Leistungsnachweis
Course requirements will be discussed in the first session.
Studiengänge (für)
Anglistik und Amerikanistik BA 60
Anglistik und Amerikanistik BA 90
LAG, LAS, LA Förderschule
With the rise of the British Empire, the role of the navy in establishing colonies, connecting mercantile ports, battling pirates, discovering new trade routes and continents, supporting the army in colonial and continental wars, and shaping the British national self-image cannot be overrated. We will start our term with a discussion of the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) and such ambiguous figures as Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Richard Hakluyt, the author of the Principall Navigations (1589-1600). Continuing through history, we will discuss the role of the navy during the American War of Independence. Demands for ships and men increased incrementally afterwards, so the question of impressment and its impact will also have to be addressed. Similarly, securing trade routes against pirates (and not only in the Caribbean) became a crucial part of naval duties. During the Napoleonic Wars, Admiral Nelson’s rise to national hero and his affair with Mrs Emma Hamilton divided the nation. Considering the role of the British navy in its more scientific pursuits, we will discuss the example of Matthew Flinders and his circumnavigation of Australia with his tomcat Trim (both commemorated together in various statues). The naval career of Sir Franklin and his disappearance in the Arctic occupied the mid-Victorian public and still reverberates in literature – or, indeed, in the news when his ships were found in 2015 by the Canadian government. Finally, we will consider the eviction of the population of the Chagos Islands in the 1970s to create a naval base for British and American ships in the so-called British Indian Ocean Territory, and its legal ramifications till today. These naval realities will be contrasted with an episode from the hugely successful Hornblower series (1998-2003), to consider the contemporary representation of the navy as quintessentially British.
