James Davey

I am a historian of Britain and its maritime world, focusing on the Royal Navy in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I believe that naval and maritime history is central to understanding the past, and offers opportunities to engage with a remarkable range of other historiographies. My research and teaching look beyond the traditional remit of maritime history to analyse the political, economic, social and cultural forces which created the navy, and which were in turn were shaped by its activities.

My specific areas of interest include: the navy’s role in the development of the state and economy of Britain, logistics and naval operations in the eighteenth-century; Britain’s economic and maritime relationship with the Baltic region; the navy’s role in constructing national identity; caricature, satirical print and visual culture; and ballads and popular song in the long eighteenth-century. My recent book, In Nelson’s Wake: The Navy and the Napoleonic Wars was published by Yale University Press in 2015 and placed the Royal Navy’s actions in these broader contexts.

I hold degrees from King’s College London and the University of Oxford, and completed my PhD at the University of Greenwich in early 2010. Between 2006 and 2009 I was also Research Assistant on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project ‘Sustaining the Empire: War, the Navy, and the Contractor State’. I afterward held a research fellowship at the NMM, before joining the curatorial team permanently in 2011. In 2017 I joined the University of Exeter as a Lecturer. I am a Council member of both the Society for Nautical Research and the Navy Records Society, and the Reviews Editor of the Journal for Maritime Research. I am a member of the University of Exeter’s Centre for Maritime Historical Studies and tweet some of my historical musings at @drjamesdavey.