British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Result of the British Academy Book Prize 2005
N.A.M. Rodger is Professor of Naval History at University of Exeter and Anderson Senior Research Fellow, National Maritime Museum. He works include The Wooden World and The Admiralty in addition to the first volume of his naval history of Britain, The Safeguard of the Sea. The citations for this and the five runners up are available here. |
N.A.M Rodger is the winner of the 2005 British Academy Book Prize, for The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815, published by Allen Lane, Penguin Books. The Academy’s Book Prize celebrates scholarly works within the humanities and social sciences that will also appeal to the non-specialist general reader.
At an award ceremony held at the Academy on 12 December, Professor Alan Ryan, (Warden of New College, Oxford and Chairman of the Judging Panel) commented that N.A.M Rodgers’ book 'securely anchors the Royal Navy on the bedrock of the nation, instead of leaving it to drift in the backwaters of maritime history. He argues that the strong, consistent and broadly based political support in Britain for a costly navy was motivated fundamentally by the commitment to defend Protestantism. Rodger shows that in striving for command of the ocean between 1649 and 1815, Britain was undertaking a project of unrivalled size, length, complexity and expense. His exhilarating breadth and authoritative depth of scholarship enable us to understand how this was achieved in the face of formidable odds.'