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REVIEWS A n d r e w s , Kenneth R., Ships, money and politics: seafaring and naval enterprise in the reign of Charles I, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. x, 240; 4 appendices of tables; R.R.P. AUS$85.00. As an emeritus professor, Kenneth Andrews crowns a career as a historian of English maritime enterprise in the age of exploration with a set of collected short studies on aspects of seafaring in the reign of Charles I. The topics range from the parliamentary navy in the 1640s to the ledgers of a struggling ship's purser. The period has always been seen as a less than glorious one in which English pride was humbled by the Dutch and Spanish, English shores invaded by Barbary corsairs and Sallee pirates and English crews infected by the canker of mutiny. Colonial trade, which had been seen as the salvation of English fortunes, proved in many cases not worth the candlC and ship money, intended to restore the navy to an effective force, merely helped precipitate the Civil War. Andrews' intention is to attempt to consider concunendy the convergence of naval, commercial and political interests in issues which have in the past been treated from only one of these viewpoints. In this way he hopes to illuminate both the nature of the problem and the underlying truths about English seapower in the period. The technique works best in the microcosmic studies of Digby's activities at Scanderoon and Rainborowe's victory at Sallee. In the wider ranging studies of the growth of the shipping industry, the nature and profitability of owning ships, and the re-evaluation of ship money, he has difficulties with his overall desire to maintain a new interpretation whereby the merchant marine and the ship-building industry were developing new strengths and the navy was becoming a distinct entity with its own traditions despite the impediments offluctuatingtrading patterns and government impoverishment. He does not deny much of the difficulties and defeats, conuption, and cheating that figure in earlier accounts, but seeks to modify the conclusions. The evidence he adduces is often ambiguous and although the thesis is plausible he cannot clinch the argument. It is reasonable to suggest that ship owners must have found some profits or the sector would have collapsed; however, it is far from satisfactory proof. It is reasonable to chide historians for repeating, uncritically, the contemporary stories of the ignorant or politically motivated but this is undermined when he himself chooses to accept holus-bolus the report of one commissioner, Gifford, whose views coincide with his own. Andrews' case for the growth in the numbers and size of English based ships between 1580 and 1630 relies heavily on two surviving surveys. These are reasonably complete; however, the fragmentary records of a 1579 survey suggest that at least in the ports covered marked changes in both directions have occuned in a mere three years. The case for specific demands in various trades for the 130 Reviews type of ships that the English yards produced, in opposition to the usual judgment that Dutch fluyts should have been copied, seems good for the merchant marine but does not explain the conservatism of the navy and its failure (with the exception of the Lion's Whelps) to build the lighter frigates which would have been useful in chasing the pirates. Andrews has directed our attention to some interesting new ideas but much further work will be required to confirm them. Sybil M . Jack Department of History University of Sydney Archer, Ian W., The pursuit of stability: social relations in Elizabethan London, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xvi, 307; 2 figures, 19 tables; R.R.P. SAUS99.00. It is cunently fashionable for historians to reconstruct government in terms of community, placing less stress on authoritarian enforcement of order and more on the commonplaces of social relations which reinforce the individual's willingness to co-operate for the common good. This highlights the importance of the substructure of government ran by largely unpaid officials w h o were also known neighbours. It is in these terms that Ian Archer seeks to explain a non-event in...

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