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Abstract
This article argues that eighteenth-century Britain was a nation divided between several competing visions of its empire and its domestic political society. Using the example of the 1757 court martial of Admiral John Byng and the hysteria surrounding it, the article examines the diverse roles the navy was imagined to play in those various future scenarios. It additionally explains why the most emphatic supporters of the Seven Years' War were, counter-intuitively, the most vociferous defenders of Admiral Byng, at that stage the war's biggest villain.
In both 1727 and 1739, merchants and traders to the American colonies had pushed for a war which would assure Britain's economic dominance there; on both occasions they were thwarted by the political administration. In the 1750s, they believed they had been offered another opportunity. Yet when Admiral Byng was blamed for the loss of Minorca, some feared it was a sign that the navy was not up to the task. Those with rival continental interests took it as a chance to point out that the navy was not to be relied upon. The pro-war supporters saw the pattern of 1727 and 1739 being repeated: they believed that the administration was betraying Britain's future by ignoring the support system necessary for sea power. Additionally, they were convinced that the professionalised naval system represented by Byng's court martial was a threat to domestic liberties. Thus, for both imperial and domestic political reasons, they blamed the administration while acting to defend Byng. These differing reactions to Byng's court martial help to reveal the insecurity and fragility that lay at the heart of Britain's imperial project.
Notes
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Cardwell, Art and arms, 10–11, 68; Rogers, Crowds, culture, and politics.
Cardwell, Art and arms, 4–5, 74.
TNA PRO 30/8/78, fo 4, Anonymous to William Pitt, 21 Feb. 1757; fo 24, Anonymous to Pitt, 7 Feb. 1757.
Peters, Pitt and popularity, 52, 70; Tunstall, Admiral Byng, 190–8. Tunstall is more concerned with evaluating the wisdom of Byng's and the administration's judgements than with analysing the reaction to Minorca.
Rodger, Command of the ocean; Rogers, Whigs and cities; Spector, English literary periodicals.
Wilson, Sense of the people, 183–9; and, to a certain extent, Rogers, Crowds, culture, and politics, 66, 77–83.
For a recent example of the continuing emphasis on the periphery, see Marshall, Making and unmaking of empires. For an emphasis on continental entanglements, see Simms, Three victories and a defeat.
As Wilson has suggested in Sense of the people, 193.
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