Book Review: Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500–1830

Abstract

and Wales. The authors provide an informative discussion of the role of private enterprise at sea, concluding that, despite the extensive damage inflicted on shipping, in the longer term it was ill-equipped to present a serious challenge to parliament’s navy. But the renewal of the civil war was followed by the desertion of part of the fleet to the royalist cause, leaving the remainder to face the persistent problem of Irish predators. This study provides a detailed discussion of the mutiny of 1648 and its wider political ramifications, which takes issue with historians who have discounted its impact on the outcome of the war. Blakemore and Murphy argue that the royalist leadership missed an opportunity, with profound and swift consequences. Yet the execution of the king and the establishment of a republican regime failed to end maritime hostilities. In combating the threat of a royalist force, under Prince Rupert, based for a time in Ireland, the republic invested in consolidating and enlarging the navy. Carefully linking its deployment with Cromwell’s actions on land, the final chapter of this study focuses on the complex use of the navy and other maritime forces. By this stage the authors argue that the navy had demonstrated its growing capability in domestic and distant waters, while noting that progress was uneven and not sustained. Richard Blakemore and Elaine Murphy have provided an excellent survey and analysis of the maritime dimension to the British civil wars. They clearly demonstrate the significance and impact of the sea conflict, and break new ground in linking it closely to the land war. Although their discussion of the wider consequences of the conflict, particularly for imperial development, is compressed, they convincingly demonstrate that it was neither peripheral nor limited in effect. Based on wide-ranging research and informed by serious engagement with previous work on the subject, this study will be of particular interest to historians of naval and seaborne warfare. More generally, however, students of maritime history will find it an invaluable example of how the study of the sea can be enriched by bringing into focus its wider political context.