Niklas Frykman, "The Bloody Flag: Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution" (U California Press, 2020)

Beyond the Margins: The University of California Press Podcast · Nov 9, 2020 · 47m

The 1790s were a decade of turmoil and strife across the West. With the French Revolution, a new era of wars began that invoked the language of equal rights. In The Bloody Flag: Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution (University of California Press, 2020), Niklas Frykman recounts how these two factors combined to shape the mutinies that took place throughout the era. As he explains, recruiting crews for the navies of the era was typically a coercive process, one that took sailors away from more remunerative work in the merchant marine. Crowded aboard wooden warships, these men were often…