A history book charting the impact of the French Revolutionary Wars upon the Royal Navy during the late 18th century has been awarded a prestigious national prize.
Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions has received the Anderson Medal for 2024 from the Society for Nautical Research - its highest honour for books on maritime history.
Written by Dr James Davey, a maritime historian at the University, the book explores the tumultuous period when revolutionary politics seeped into the Navy while they were defending Britain from the French Republicans.
This resulted in sailors becoming ideologically engaged and politically active, followed by rioting, strikes, petitions, and mutinies - all bringing them into opposition with their own government.
"I was delighted when I was told that I had won," said Dr Davey, Director of Postgraduate Research in Exeter's Department of Archaeology and History. "This is one of the most significant prizes in the field of maritime history, and certainly the most prestigious book prize. I've attended the prize-ceremony a few times over the past decade and seen many excellent historians recognised, so it will be wonderful to be the one collecting the medal this time around."
Fourteen books were shortlisted for the Anderson Prize, which recognises excellence in research into maritime history and contributions to preserving maritime heritage.
In selecting Tempest as its winner, the judging committee said it had "put the naval history firmly into the social and political context of the time". They added that Dr Davey, who receives an engraved bronze medal for his achievement, had "sensitively navigated his narrative through the passionately argued disputes of many decades, acknowledging his own perspective, while tackling complex problems and bringing new research to the subject".
Tempest was published by Yale University Press in 2023, and followed four years of research by Dr Davey, aided by fellowships at the Huntington Library, in Pasadena, California, and the National Maritime Museum in London.
"I wanted to write a history 'from below' that explored the political lives of late-eighteenth-century sailors," he said. "Much has been written about Britain's 'Age of Revolution', a tumultuous period in which the call for political reform became widespread and prompted unprecedented state repression. Sailors - by far the largest community of labourers in Britain at the time - have been overlooked, I think in part because they are seen as being distant to or separate from land-based developments.
"On the contrary, I argue that sailors remained closely connected to Britain's wider political culture, and that the Royal Navy was home to a complex and often fractured political community."
Dr Davey's research interests lie in the political, social and cultural forces that shaped the Navy, and which in turn, were shaped by it. He is a key member of the University's Centre for Maritime Historical Studies, and has co-edited several books on naval history.
