Corsairs and Navies, 1600-1760 by J S Bromley
Two societies, two conceptions of justice, collaborated and collided when French forces stormed Cartagena of the Indies in May 1697. For their commander, the baron de Pointis, a naval captain in the mould of Drake, this bloody if strategically pointless success fulfilled a long-postponed design "that might be both honourable and advantageous", with ships lent and soldiers (but not seamen) paid by the King, who in return would take the Crown’s usual one-fifth interest in such "preis de vaisseaux", the remaining costs falling on private subscribers, in this case no less than 666 of them, headed by courtiers, financiers, naval contractors and officers of both pen and sword.’ According to Pointis, peace rumours restricted the flow of advances and the expedition, nearly 4,000 strong when it sailed out of Brest, was weaker than he had planned, especially if it should prove difficult to use the ships’ crews ashore.
Born in 1913, John Selwyn Bromley was educated at Bedford School and at New College, Oxford, before serving briefly as a lecturer at the University of Liverpool before the outbreak of war. He joined the Civil Service and was Private Secretary to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury between 1941 and 1946. He was Fellow in Modern History at Keble College, Oxford, between 1947 and 1960, and Professor of Modern History at the University of Southampton, between 1960 and 1977. He published widely and is best known for Volume VI of the New Cambridge Modern History, published in 1970. He was a keen promoter of Anglo-Dutch historical studies, and initiated a series of conferences in this field; as a result, he was made a Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1976. He was elected an honorary Vice-President of the Society for Nautical Research in 1981, and died in Southampton on 17 April 1985, aged 71.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780907628774 |
| ISBN 10 | 090762877X |
| Title | Corsairs and Navies, 1600-1760 |
| Author | J S Bromley |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Year published | 1987-07-01 |
| Number of pages | 534 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |