Synopsis:

Naval officers were key actors in nineteenth-century international relations, but their diplomatic role has been rather overlooked by historians. This presentation will discuss the diplomatic activities of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean during the post-Napoleonic era, a time of unprecedent international cooperation and collaborative European imperial expansionism. In so doing, it will shed new light on the diplomatic aspects of naval power, stressing its non-military and cooperative aspects, and thereby lay bare the maritime foundations of international order in the nineteenth century.

Speaker: Erik de Lange

Affiliation: King’s College London

Biography: Erik de Lange is a visiting postdoctoral research fellow at the History and War Studies departments of King’s College, London. He defended his PhD on ideas of security and the repression of Mediterranean piracy (between 1815 and 1856) at Utrecht University in February 2020. His first monograph, Menacing Tides: Security, Piracy and Empire in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean, is under contract with Cambridge University Press and will appear in 2024. He has published articles on maritime aspects of the French invasion of Algiers in The Historical Journal and the Greek Revolution in the Journal of Modern European History.

The King’s Maritime History Seminar is hosted by the Laughton Naval Unit and the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. It is organised by the British Commission for Maritime History in association with the Society for Nautical Research and with the support of Lloyds Register.