Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom : Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World, 1788-1851

In his deft and astute analysis of the factors that led Britain to global dominance in the nineteenth century, Padfield shows Naval history to be a major determinant and shaper of the modern world.

In the history of warfare at sea, no era can match the glory of the Nelson era, during which Britain gained supremacy over her rival, Napoleonic France, in the Battle of Trafalgar of 1805, and after which she was to find a new rival, the young United States, in the War of 1812. With keen insight into the geopolitical dynamics of the nineteenth century and thrilling mastery of narrative detail, Peter Padfield sets the reader on the gun deck amid the cannons, smoke, blood, and death and "offers naval campaigns and sea battles as vivid as anything you will find in Patrick O'Brian" (former secretary of the U.S. Navy John Lehman, The Wall Street Journal).