Navigating Networks in the Napoleonic Era: a Close Study of Three British Naval Officers and Their Deliberate Use of Networking ______
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NAVIGATING NETWORKS IN THE NAPOLEONIC ERA: A CLOSE STUDY OF THREE BRITISH NAVAL OFFICERS AND THEIR DELIBERATE USE OF NETWORKING ____________________________________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Fullerton ____________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History ____________________________________ By Timothy Knight Thesis Committee Approval: Professor Robert McLain, Chair Professor Gayle Brunelle, Department of History Professor Stephen O’Connor, Department of History Spring, 2016 ABSTRACT The hierarchy of Britain’s social system in the 18th and early 19th centuries was rigidly stratified and patriarchal, with a limited noble class, or peerage, a small but burgeoning middling class, and a substantial lower class of either peasants or urban workers. Those from the middle class frequently found their options for social and economic growth to be limited in the absence of patronal connections. As such, social networking, or interactions between an individual and an array of contacts, though often considered a relatively recent phenomenon, was integral to those who intended to ascend to a higher social or economic status, even in an era that lacked modern communications technologies. This study focuses on the network interactions, specifically deconstructing examples of patronage, deference, and information-brokering, in an attempt to characterize the career construction historical legacy of three British Royal Navy Admirals, Edward Hawke, Horatio Nelson, and Cuthbert Collingwood, as a product of meticulous communications via letter-writing and cultivating connections. While their own deliberate historical agency was important, this study contends that a reciprocal binary interaction between each man and a number of others of different spheres of social contacts, both above and below their own social standing, greatly influenced their ability to ascend to the highest ranks of both social and military standing in Britain during the Age of Napoleon. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1 The Significance of Patronage and Deference ............................................................... 5 Methodology .................................................................................................................. 8 Historical Context: Introducing the Three Admirals ..................................................... 16 Nelson ..................................................................................................................... 16 Hawke ..................................................................................................................... 17 Collingwood ............................................................................................................ 22 2. CLIENTAGE AND INFORMATION BROKERING .................................................. 27 Horatio Nelson – The Deferent Client ........................................................................... 27 Nelson as a Client of Politicians and Nobility ............................................................... 38 Edward Hawke – The Dutiful Client ............................................................................. 43 Promotion to Rear Admiral of the White ................................................................ 48 The Second Battle of Cape Finisterre ..................................................................... 51 Collingwood – Client and Information Broker .............................................................. 55 A Short Visit Home ................................................................................................ 58 A Victory Despoiled ............................................................................................... 59 Missions in the Mediterranean ................................................................................ 62 3. PATRONAGE ............................................................................................................... 66 Nelson as a Patron.......................................................................................................... 66 Hawke as a Patron.......................................................................................................... 77 Collingwood as a Patron ................................................................................................ 87 4. CONNECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS..................................................................... 102 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 111 APPENDIX A: NETWORK MAP ........................................................................................ 124 APPENDIX B: NELSON LETTER GRID............................................................................. 125 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to specifically thank the entire thesis committee for helping me on my journey to formulate, write, and defend my thesis. Without the guidance of particularly Dr. Brunelle and Dr. McLain throughout my entire three-year journey in the Master’s program, this project would not have been possible for me to complete. Naturally, I thank my family for all of the encouragement they continue to provide. I also must thank, though she may never know, Amber for being so supportive during such a prolonged period of stress and heavy workloads. iv 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION For most living in the early modern era, there scarcely existed a need for any of the tools we view as integral to communicating with the people in our modern social networks. In an era before the advent of railroads, a sizable number of people never went beyond a few dozen miles from their birthplace and only regularly interacted with those who lived nearby. In the event someone was compelled to migrate to a new place, their ability to stay active in the network they left behind was surely limited as the only means of distant communication for centuries before the invention of the telegraph was by way of letter. However, throughout the early modern era, a handful of careers necessitated extensive use of correspondence, particularly those professions where people were separated by long distances. Out of the countless people who worked in professions where written communication was imperative, few reached the zenith of historical recognition achieved by capable military commanders. This study aims to deconstruct the correspondence of a few of these men, specifically British Royal Navy admirals whose unlanded, middling backgrounds left them with relatively weak connections early-on in their careers to potential political and military patrons. As brilliant as each of these leaders may have been individually, it was their ability to operate alongside others in a vast network that enabled them to advance their careers. This study will analyze how Horatio Nelson, Cuthbert Collingwood, and Edward Hawke cultivated relationships and maneuvered within their respective, yet intricately connected social networks, while using individual agency to construct their decorated 2 careers. Unlike some previous studies of their careers, which are limited to the historical narrative they provide, this one reveals purpose and meaning behind their correspondence. Not only did they use their networking abilities to advance in Great Britain's highly stratified social system, they also, as their career's advanced, began to write with an eye toward building their personal legacy. Networking, or cultivating relationships with a wide array of people, has served as a defining aspect of human interactions for the better part of recorded history. In the most basic sense, networking is a term that has the prospect to be applied in a sizable number of ways both in and outside the field of history. Historians who have used this term as a crucial part of their own theses have nuanced definitions that most directly fit the scope of their arguments.1 This study contends that networking comprises the interactions between an individual and an array of contacts, some who can be grouped into various spheres (e.g. family, friends, professional, etc.), involving a formal exchange of information (and/or services), for the deliberate purpose of career advancement. It is not uncommon for people to ignore the influence of networking in favor of more readily measurable, individually-attributed evidence. Networks lie outside the realm of what one may describe as tangible assets of land and title, which makes them especially difficult for historians to track and document. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, networking extended beyond these tangible assets, representing a functional mode in which personal contacts with friends, family, and the politically connected supplanted the advantages of an aristocratic birth. In a milieu where primogeniture and entitlement protected caste and 1 Kristin Elizabeth Gager, for example, was particularly interested in the notion of kinship and the bonds created between blood and adoptive relatives. In her book Blood Ties and Fictive