Abstract
Reviewed by: Stefano Grassia, University of Milan, Italy
It is no accident that Manchester University Press has published A New Naval History in the series ‘Cultural History of Modern War’. As Richard Harding pointed out in his recent Modern Naval History, naval history cannot be understood unless ‘the importance of navies to social relations and cultures’ is fully recognized. While it is true that naval history has been somehow resistant to the cultural turn, as Quintin Colville and James Davey highlight in their introduction, a growing number of scholars are now understanding the navy ‘as an institution of significant cultural importance’ (6).
The editors decided to organize the essays in two sections, with Part I dealing primarily with the naval communities and Part II with representations of the navy. The first section opens with Evan Wilson’s chapter on warrant officers’ status in the late eighteenth century. Using a quantitative digital approach, the author concludes that the social distance between commissioned officers and warrant officers of wardroom rank was narrower than scholars have long thought, especially after the Admiralty improved their pay between 1802 and 1807. Filling a gap in the research on naval women ashore, Elaine Chalus looks into the separation of families caused by war and its consequences. Using letters and journals of the Fremantle family, she points to the empowering effects of separation: when Mr Fremantle left to serve in the Royal Navy, his wife successfully learned how to manage the family’s finances and represent him in the social arena.
Moving forward, Mary Conley investigates homoerotic practices in the Royal Navy during the Edwardian Age, observing that trials on sodomitical charges were more likely to involve boy ratings. Despite the efforts of the courts martial ‘in determining whether the boys were victimized or culpable’ (73), boys named in alleged sexual offences were often dismissed by the Admiralty, whose role was crucial for delimiting the boundaries of sexual relations at sea.
Proving once again the value of photography for cultural history, Cindy McCreery examines two very different albums taken mostly at Simon’s Town in the 1860s. They both reveal the sociability value of public spaces frequented by officers and show personal connections between officers and locals. They also demonstrate the role played by photos in keeping the memory of naval communities alive, even after their dismemberment. Daniel Owen Spence’s following chapter investigates the naval recruitment of indigenous people in British colonies. As he argues, during the interwar years naval elites put great effort into identifying specific seafaring races among their indigenous subjects, as a response ‘to internal as much as external threats to British imperial power’ (113).
The second part of the volume focuses on representations of the Royal Navy and the tradition of naval heroism. The chapter by Katherine Parker looks at how the Royal Navy and its members were portrayed in commemorative medals; to this end she discusses the case of a late-eighteenth-century medal celebrating George Anson’s naval achievements. As she puts it, the selection of images and texts prioritized heroic battles and explorations over any administration and policy activities.
Naval heroism is also investigated in the essay by Cicely Robinson, who surveys the structure of the National Gallery of Naval Art (1824–1936). Visitors would gaze at a massive statue of Nelson, followed by a collection of pictures and memorabilia that celebrated the apotheosis of the Admiral and fed an ideology of patriotic devotion. The heroic paradigm is at the heart of Barbara Korte’s chapter, whose review of three mid-Victorian general magazines shows the then perceived necessity to maintain a well-armed powerful fleet. The magazines contributed to the democratization of the heroic by remarking how ‘the famous men were not the only heroes of the battles’ (182).
Similarly, Jonathan Rayner studies the navy’s public image in War Illustrated magazine during the Great War. He convincingly argues that the periodical played an important role as an intermediary between popular expectations and actual naval wartime duties whenever the editors debated topics of public concern, such as the submarine menace or, later on, the battle of Jutland. Finally, Emma Hanna analyses the exhibition arranged by the Greenwich Night Pageant in June 1933, when roughly 80,000 people assisted in the re-enactment of some episodes from British history. The Pageant was largely naval in character and turned into a spectacular ensemble of rituals, tradition and maritime identity aimed at strengthening the cult of the navy.
This first-class collection of essays follows the path of important works such as The Great Naval Game by Jan Rüger, editor of the foreword of the volume and whose research and insights reverberate through many of the mentioned contributions. All chapters cover a wide range of topics and make use of innovative approaches that might well be fruitfully applied to the study of cases beyond Britain. Overall, this book is an excellent addition to academic literature and an important contribution for scholars working in naval history and adjacent fields of research.