They that go down to the sea in ships hold an ambiguous position in society. Though drawn from society, and molded by its beliefs and values, seamen spend much of their lives isolated from it. The sea is the sailor's home and workplace, the ship itself a society in miniature with its own customs, rules, and language. People ashore know little of the seaman's life and work, and what they do know is usually drawn from observing the seaman on land, where, out of his element, he often appears as a foreigner in his own country.

For this reason, the image of the seaman that appears in literature is frequently an inaccurate reflection of reality. Yet, it is the literary image of the seaman of the late seventeenth century that has held the imaginations of historians until quite recently. The traditional view of the sea officers of the age has been of two antagonistic groups based on social class, with little or no common ground in terms of education, tradition, values, or experience of the sea. One of these groups, the tarpaulins—the source of the popular nickname for the sailor, Jack Tar—consisted of those who had risen to command from the lower deck; bluff and coarse in manner, lacking in education, tact, and good breeding, but excellent seamen, who were brave, sober, and diligent. The other group, the gentleman captains—ignorant of seamanship and navigation, frivolous, drunken, and corrupt—are said to have pushed most of the tarpaulins out of their commands after the Restoration. This displacement of tarpaulins by gentleman captains is usually viewed as a disaster for the navy, leading to incompetence, undiscipline, and sloth, and an adequate explanation in itself for every naval embarrassment of the late seventeenth century. This view has come under increasing criticism as overly simplistic, if not wholly inaccurate, and one may hope that the recent work of J. D. Davies has exploded it forever.

In early April 1826, William Huskisson, President of the Board of Trade, wrote to the Home Secretary, Robert Peel, a gloomy picture of the state of essential foodstuffs in the domestic market: “there is a very serious deficiency in every article of produce even in Great Britain. Unfortunately, that deficiency is most alarming in those crops which are the food of the lowest classes—potatoes and oats. It is further unfortunate that the falling off is likely to be greatest in the parts where the lowest classes most abound…my opinion, founded on these and other considerations, is that some immediate measures ought to be taken.” In the industrial north west this dearth of essential foodstuffs coincided with one of the sharpest downturns in the trade cycle seen thus far in the nineteenth century. What Huskisson sought was some lessening in the application of the Corn Laws “immediately,” and that the question be given priority in Cabinet discussions. But his warning was ignored, the government failed to act, and the result was one of the most serious industrial disturbances of the early nineteenth century.

This article recounts the details of the disturbances themselves, but it also attempts to locate the context of the disputes in a wider historical framework than a traditional one offered by historians, namely, the imposition of new machinery. Although scholars have noted the deteriorating conditions facing industrial workers at this time their narratives have focused on the destruction of machinery. John Stevenson, for example, concedes that the disturbances were not the “blind violence they have been painted,” however, it is implicit in his approach that he views the machines as the weavers' sole target, for he ends by saying that the riots were “ineffective” as the manufacturers quickly brought in new looms. It is important to show that this episode was not mere mindless violence; it was linked to a wider set of circumstances that affected the lives of working people. Although the power looms were the physical representation of the plight of the weavers, and thus rife for attack, their targets were not only the employers and governors of their locality.

Between 1927 and 1932, the policy-making elite of the British Government was presented with a difficult problem. Postwar attempts to explain the origins of the First World War had resulted in the belief that arms production and competition had largely been responsible for instigating the conflict. Such a view became accepted by the general public in Britain. Specifically, the pre-1914 naval competition between Germany and Great Britain was thought to be one of the key events that had contributed directly to the outbreak of the war. Such fears concerning naval armaments were touted by peace activists as having been instrumental in assuring the success of the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22. Yet, this simple explanation does not adequately illustrate the intricate and complex connections that were made between naval armaments and other issues related to Britain's international affairs. Rather than the simple possession of naval arms, British leaders feared that other pressing issues would lead to a re-occurrence of hostilities. Questions concerning world oil supplies, reparations, war debts, tariffs, the value of the pound and the gold standard, and, particularly, belligerent rights and freedom of the seas, were all viewed as having the potential to generate another international conflict. Thus, the existence of armaments themselves was not Britain's primary security problem from the perspective of the policy-making elite. Rather, their common cause was how to protect Britain's position as the center of a world economic system. Safeguarding Britain's own stable position as a focus that provided leadership for the rest of the world was seen as the logical step to ensuring global stability. In order to create an atmosphere of goodwill and security that was necessary to prevent volatile issues from exploding, the British governing elite treated naval arms talks and naval armaments as a form of currency in the realm of international relations.

A British politician starts a successful ministerial career by taking the Privy Council oath of secrecy and ends it by signing a publisher's contract for a volume of memoirs. The works of self-justification after 1914 started the flow, which rose a little higher because Labour ex-ministers needed the money much more than earlier politicians had done, and now has swept everybody away. The mass of diaries and memoirs produced by cabinet ministers—Barnett, Benn, Brown, Callaghan, Castle, Crossman, Griffiths, Healey, Jay, Jenkins, Marsh, Owen, Stewart, Wigg, Wilson—from the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s was larger than ever before but the Conservatives from Thatcher's eleven-year premiership have already caught up. The ministerial memoirs now available have come out unusually quickly, appearing in print on average within three years of retirement, but there are plenty more to come. Howe's memoirs appeared too late for this review; other Thatcher ex-ministers like Joseph and Younger are probably composing their memoirs at this moment, and survivors from her time who are still in the cabinet, like Clarke, Heseltine, Howard, Hurd, and Major, or who are politically active outside the cabinet like Brittan and Chris Patten, will want to publish when they are free to do so. Perhaps a dozen more books will emerge from the Thatcher cabinet.