Skip to main content
University of California Press

The Bloody Flag

Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution
by Niklas Frykman (Author)
Hardcover eBook
Price: $29.95 / £25.00
Publication Date: Sep 2020
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780520975927
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 10 b/w illustrations, 4 maps
Series:
Endowments:
Read an Excerpt(opens in new window)
Recommend to your Library (PDF)(opens in new window)Rights and Permissions

About the Book

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.
 

About the Author

Niklas Frykman is Assistant Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh.
 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Like a Ship on Fire 
Chapter 1 • Barbaric Industry 
Chapter 2 • Who Will Command This Empire? 
Chapter 3 • Demons Dancing in a Furnace 
Chapter 4 • A Revolution in the Fleet 
Chapter 5 • To Clear the Quarterdeck
Conclusion: The Marine Republic 

Abbreviations 
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

"The 1789 mutiny aboard the Bounty remains the most famous maritime uprising of its era, and perhaps of all time. But in The Bloody Flag, Niklas Frykman portrays an era of lower-deck turbulence of far greater magnitude. . . . Most uprisings, according to this slender, informative volume, embodied a radical maritime culture that would not again arise on such a spectacular scale until the 20th century."
— Wall Street Journal
"Frykman breathes life into his subject in this vividly written tale of an oft-underrepresented history. Readers interested in maritime, naval, labor, and Atlantic history will greatly enjoy."
— Library Journal
"A significant contribution to Atlantic labor history."
— Boston Review
"As Frykman takes his reader on a whirlwind ride across the Atlantic Ocean during the Era of Revolution, he weaves a compelling narrative that draws on material cultural, ideology and mariner’s biographies. Although numerous studies of the Era of Revolution abound, Frykman’s book employs a novel methodology that connects this age with the Communist Revolution."
— Northern Mariner
"In an extraordinary exercise of archival legwork, the author incorporates material from multiple British, French, Dutch, and Swedish archives. Collectively, his multilingual evidentiary base conclusively demonstrates the striking degree of transnational camaraderie driving many of these mutinies. The Bloody Flag brings to the fore the ways sailors conversed and collaborated across the era's political and cultural barriers to effect change. . . . Frykman thus provides important inspiration for the present in his insightful treatment of the past."
— Journal of American History
"[An] important new book. . . .The Bloody Flag leaves little doubt that the convergence of great power militancy, scarce maritime labor, and the growth of radical republicanism account for a crucial phase in the formation of a cohesive Atlantic working class."
— Journal of British Studies
"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

Media

Listen to an interview with author Niklas Frykman