Maritime Power Before the Making of America

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Charleston Library Society

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Maritime Power Before the Making of America

March 13 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

$25.00 – $35.00

Join early American historian Benjamin C. Schaffer who reveals a number of lesser-known truths about America’s earliest naval forces in his new book, The First Fleets: Colonial Navies of the British Atlantic World, 1630-1775. As both factual resource and engrossing narrative, the book provides insight into the newly established British colonies of pre-Revolutionary America, and the foundations of maritime trade that led to the powerhouse navy we know today. Intertwined with major political and military dynamics of the time, historians and military enthusiasts alike won’t want to miss this opportunity to dive deeper into America’s first fleets.

The ticket price below includes a boxed lunch for you to enjoy during the program.

If you are unable to attend the event but would like to purchase one or more signed copies, please visit Buxton Books.

About the Book

A revealing study on the little-known and misunderstood provincial navies established by North American British colonists. In The First Fleets, Benjamin C. Schaffer reveals how, contrary to widespread beliefs, the American colonies had a long tradition of independent naval defense decades before the Revolution. He demonstrates that Anglo-American governments established and maintained significant provincial naval forces and that the history of provincial navies illuminates broader aspects of colonial history and the colonies’ ultimate break with the British Crown. Based on meticulous research, Schaffer recounts the sea-borne threats that American colonies faced from the French, Spanish, pirates, and others. He reviews colonial governance and the relationships between colonial governments and Great Britain. Highlighting Britain’s scant naval power in North America, Schaffer demonstrates how the vulnerable coastal colonies undertook their own self-defense. Schaffer’s readable study offers many fascinating episodes from colonial history. Establishing a navy was controversial in pacifist-minded, Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania. South Carolina deployed its scout-boat navy to pursue enslaved Africans who fled colonial capture. The first paper money issued in North America was an initiative to pay for a naval expedition against French Quebec in 1690. These and other episodes show the intimate connection between these little-known provincial navies and the major sociopolitical developments of their day. The First Fleets will be of great interest to historians and readers of early American history, particularly colonial maritime and naval activities. Readers interested in the political and military dynamics of pre-Revolutionary America, as well as enthusiasts of naval history and maritime trade, will find The First Fleets both a valuable resource and an engrossing narrative.

About the Author

Benjamin Schaffer is a historian of early American history, with a special focus on maritime conflict and society in the British Atlantic world of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has a Ph.D. In early American/Atlantic-world history from the University of New Hampshire (2021). His doctoral research inspired my first book (which is set to be published in early 2025 with the University of Alabama Press): The First Fleets: Colonial Navies of the British Atlantic World, 1630-1775. This book investigates how Anglo-American naval efforts against European, piratical, and Indigenous maritime threats informed the development of the American naval tradition on the eve of the American Revolution. Overall, his research is not limited to traditional military history studies alone, but considers the wider connections between maritime conflict and larger socio-political issues in the Atlantic world, including diplomacy, slavery, the economy, etc. In addition to this book, he has published work (or has articles in press) at The Northern Mariner and The South Carolina Historical Magazine. He also regularly presents research at conferences such as the McMullen Naval History Conference at the United States Naval Academy, the North American Society for Oceanic History, and many others.