A New Naval History brings together the most significant and interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary naval history. The last few decades have witnessed a transformation in how this field is researched and understood and this volume captures the state of a field that continues to develop apace. It examines - through the prism of naval affairs - issues of nationhood and imperialism; the legacy of Nelson; the socio-cultural realities of life in ships and naval bases; and the processes of commemoration, journalism and stage-managed pageantry that plotted the interrelationship of ship and shore. This bold and original publication will be essential for undergraduate and postgraduate students of naval and maritime history. Beyond that, though, it marks an important intervention into wider historiographies that will be read by scholars from across the spectrum of social history, cultural studies and the analysis of national identity.

Reviews

'This volume may be a landmark in the evolution of the field . a carefully selected cross-section of the latest high grade academic research in the field of naval history, a description that the editors have stretched far beyond the old limits of ships, battles and sailors.'
Professor Andrew Lambert, King's College, London

'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.'
European History Quarterly

List of figures and tables
Notes on contributors

Introduction
Quintin Colville and James Davey

Part I Sociocultural analyses of the Royal Navy

1 Particular skills: warrant officers in the Royal Navy, 1775-1815
Evan Wilson
2 My dearest Tussy': coping with separation during the Napoleonic Wars (the Fremantle papers, 1800-14)
Elaine Chalus
3 The Admiralty's gaze: disciplining indecency and sodomy in the Edwardian fleet
Mary Conley
4 Navy, nation and empire: nineteenth-century photographs of the British naval community overseas
Cindy McCreery
5 Salt water in the blood: race, indigenous naval recruitment and British colonialism, 1934-41
Daniel Owen Spence

Part II Representations of the Royal Navy

6 Memorialising Anson, the fighting explorer: a case study in eighteenth-century naval commemoration and material culture
Katherine Parker
7 The apotheosis of Nelson in the National Gallery of Naval Art
Cicely Robinson
8 Naval heroism in the mid-Victorian family magazine
Barbara Korte
9 'What is the British Navy doing?' The Royal Navy's image problem in War Illustrated magazine
Jonathan Rayner
10 Patriotism and pageantry: representations of Britain's naval past at the Greenwich Night Pageant, 1933
Emma Hanna

Afterword: Britain and the sea: new histories
Jan Rüger

Editors

Quintin Colville was Senior Curator: Research at Royal Museums Greenwich, and is Visiting Professor at the University of Portsmouth

James Davey is Lecturer in Naval and Maritime History at the University of Exeter