Introduction: The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic

Abstract

This chapter introduces the chapters that follow, foregrounding the crucial role of the Royal Navy in creating and consolidating the British Atlantic in the second half of the eighteenth century. It outlines the closely entwined connections between the nurturing of naval supremacy, the politics of commercial protection, and the development of national and imperial identities—all crucial factors in the consolidation and transformation of the British Atlantic empire—which subsequent chapters explore in more specific detail. The chapter also questions the limits, conceptual and geographical, of that Atlantic world, suggesting that, by bringing together historiographies of the Royal Navy and the British Atlantic, we can gain greater insight into Britain’s maritime history.