British Naval Impressment in the Revolutionary Atlantic

FAIN: FT-61759-14

Denver Alexander Brunsman
George Washington University (Washington, DC 20052-0001)

Citizens and Subjects explores the impact of British naval impressment, or forced service, during the era of Atlantic Revolutions (1760s-1830s). In addition to capturing British subjects, the Royal Navy seized about 10,000 American sailor-citizens in the years before the War of 1812. More than any other practice or institution, impressment exposed the shifting relationship between the individual and the state in the revolutionary era. Whereas subjects owed lifetime allegiance to monarchs, citizens enjoyed more consensual relations with states. Despite the topic's significance, the last monograph centered on the relationship between impressment and American state formation was published in 1925. My interdisciplinary approach will appeal to scholars with broad interests. Impressment was the subject of intense social, legal, political, economic, and cultural analysis in its day, and my study incorporates each of these perspectives.

Associated Products

“Pirates vs. Press Gangs: The Battle for the Atlantic" (Article)
Title: “Pirates vs. Press Gangs: The Battle for the Atlantic"
Author: Denver Brunsman
Abstract: Pirates in the Atlantic Ocean have excited imaginations ever since they stole from merchant ships and battled naval vessels in the Age of Sail. But pirates also illustrate an underappreciated process in the development of modern states and empires: the struggle between state and non-state actors to establish a monopoly of violence on the high seas. This essay traces this contest over violence in three stages: (1) the challenge posed by English pirates to Europe’s dominant imperial power, Spain, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; (2) the threat made by these same pirates to the emerging British Empire in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; and (3) the successful efforts of the British state to exert control over the Atlantic through state-sponsored forms of piracy, privateers and press gangs, in the eighteenth century. The British established naval supremacy and consolidated imperial control over the Atlantic by monopolizing the same violent methods once used by pirates.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.scielo.br/j/his/a/pjB6Z36Pck85fj37XyNVg5b/?lang=en
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: História (São Paulo)
Publisher: História (São Paulo)

“‘Executioners of Their Friends and Brethren’: Naval Impressment as an Atlantic Civil War” (Book Section)
Title: “‘Executioners of Their Friends and Brethren’: Naval Impressment as an Atlantic Civil War”
Author: Denver Brunsman
Abstract: The traditional categories of patriots and loyalists and of British and Americans, which have been used to define the civil war on land, do not fully capture the rich dynamics of forced partisanship at sea. The British captured native-born British subjects and colonial subjects, particularly in Canada, as well as newly independent American citizens. At the same time, Americans captured British sailors and other loyal subjects and forced them into service while also impressing fellow Americans.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15598.html
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Book Title: The American Revolution Reborn
ISBN: 9780812248463

“De-Anglicization: The Jeffersonian Attack on an American Naval Establishment” (Book Section)
Title: “De-Anglicization: The Jeffersonian Attack on an American Naval Establishment”
Author: Denver Brunsman
Abstract: The Jeffersonians pursued a concerted program of "de-Anglicization" after twelve years of Federalist rule under the Washington and Adams administrations. As a project, de-Anglicization was committed to reversing trends in American state building patterned after the British fiscal-military state, particularly a government dependent on ever increasing tax revenue and debt financing to fund continuous war. The Jeffersonian attack on a permanent naval establishment was emblematic of their larger ideological views on the proper role of government.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15359.html
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Book Title: Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic
ISBN: 9780812246988

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