The 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 flew from the masts of mutinous ships survived to become the most enduring global symbol of class struggle, economic justice, and republican liberty to this day.
Niklas Frykman is Assistant Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh.
"Adhering to the highest standards of world scholarship with sources in multiple languages buried in dispersed archives, Niklas Frykman balances brilliant story telling with impeccable analysis. During the cauldron of the revolutionary 1790s tens of thousands of sailors were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. They created a third option, namely, mutiny, and it evolved from armed riot to economic strike to insurrectionary challenge. The origins of the red flag, of the maritime republic, and of the internationalism of the working class are found in the tremendous events discovered here and told by a master historian."—Peter Linebaugh, author of Red Round Globe Hot Burning
"This indispensable book imagines a revolution made by common people subject to the churning forces of capitalism, empire, and war. Examining shipboard mutinies with startling clarity, Niklas Frykman illuminates the sailors' vision of a transnational radical republicanism. Written with vivid intensity, the narrative conveys the sensory worlds of ships, their unique forms of antagonism and fellowship, the mortal terror seamen felt during wartime engagements, and their solidarity in struggles against imperial states. This is maritime history at its rollicking best."—Vincent Brown, author of Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War
"Deeply researched and superbly illustrated, Frykman's study of mutiny across British, Scandinavian, Dutch, and French navies, is groundbreaking, detailed, and rich in anecdote, offering fresh insights into life at sea during the late eighteenth century."—Margarette Lincoln, author of Trading in War: London's Maritime World in the Age of Cook and Nelson
"Frykman's account of the great age of mutiny is one of the most illuminating, accessible, and elegantly written works of maritime history in years. The revolutions afloat in the 1790s came to different ends, but The Bloody Flag shows that they were animated by shared grievances over the horrific treatment of common sailors and shaped by political ideas then in wide circulation."—Lincoln Paine, author of The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World
"This gripping book immerses the reader in the rough and tumble world of working class sailors consigned to rickety vessels spread across the Atlantic. Tens of thousands rebelled, forging transnational bonds of solidarity and developing republican modes of self-government in defiance of ruthless, authoritarian regimes. I highly recommend you take the plunge and let The Bloody Flag transport you to an age when the spirit of revolution traveled by ship and democratic aspirations confronted hell and high water."—Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone
"Niklas Frykman spins a spellbinding yarn about the brave and mutinous motley crews who rose from the lower deck to challenge the global order and pose revolutionary solutions to the problems of their day. Brilliantly restoring to history a world-shaking maritime movement long divided, buried, and denied in narrow nationalist accounts of the past, The Bloody Flag forever transforms our vision of the Age of Revolution. This is history from below at its vivid, dramatic best."—Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History
304 pp.6 x 9Illus: 10 b/w illustrations, 4 maps
9780520355477$32.95|£28.00Hardcover
Sep 2020