Steve Murdoch – författare

Field Marshal Alexander Leslie was the highest ranking commander from the British Isles to serve in the Thirty Years’ War. Though Leslie’s life provides the thread that runs through this work, the authors use his story to explore the impacts of the Thirty Years’ War, the British Civil Wars and the age of Military Revolution.

Field Marshal Alexander Leslie was the highest ranking commander from the British Isles to serve in the Thirty Years’ War. Though Leslie’s life provides the thread that runs through this work, the authors use his story to explore the impacts of the Thirty Years’ War, the British Civil Wars and the age of Military Revolution.

This volume examines Scotland's experience of and reaction to European expansion between c. 1600-1800. Although Scotland lacked an independent empire in the seventeenth century, it gained unfettered access to the global empire of England after 1707. The volume argues that, beneath this seemingly stark discontinuity, there lay considerable continuity. Using a series of case studies on Scottish governors serving in the empires of Denmark-Norway, Weden, and their eighteenth century Russian and British equivalents, it highlights the previously underestimated chronological and geographic extent of Scotland's engagement in European expansion. It concludes that a blend of informal networks of kinship and local association complemented the official status of Scottish governors and produced a relatively distinctive and effective strategy for participating in imperialism.

This volume deals with the development, implementation and maintenance of Scottish networks in Northern Europe from c.1600-1746. The book contains nine chapters divided into three parts of original and innovative archival reseach. After an introduction providing a theoretical overview of the subject, the first section focusses on the associations of kith and kin, place and nation and confessional loyalty tested in the numerous case studies throughout the book.Section two provides an analysis of Scottish networks in an economic context providing both quantitative and qualitative evidence to describe their success and failures in a variety of situations and locations. The final section provides three meticulously researched case studies of subversive networks including an espionage network operating in Poland on behalf of Sweden, the confessional network of the irenicist John Durie and rounded off with a review of the Jacobite network stretching across Russia, Sweden, Prussia and Rome.

This important new book provides the first detailed and clear analysis of the Scots involvement in naval warfare during the early modern period. The lazy use by both contemporaries and some modern authors of the word ‘piracy’ as a catch-all for all sorts of maritime activity obscures a complex picture of Scottish maritime warfare. Through the use of letters of marque and reprisal (rightly distinguished in this analysis) as well as dedicated Crown fleets, Scottish warfare against against a wide range of enemies are scrutinised. This is an impressive book that makes and important contribution to our knowledge of European naval warfare. Its formidably broad range of sources sheds light on many previously little known, or unknown, aspects of naval history. It also provides many valuable new perspectives on the importance of the sea to the Scots, and of the Scots to the naval history of the British Isles.

Med sina stora vidder och okända djup har havet under århundraden gett upphov till otaliga skrönor om vidunder och fantastiska upplevelser. Men lika länge har det varit förutsättningen för viktiga upptäckter, långväga handel och militära konflikter. Samtidigt är det något märkligt med Sveriges relation till havet. Å ena sidan finns det där som en integrerad del av en svensk självbild. Många har personliga minnen kopplade till hav och vatten, och i mängder av böcker och filmer spelar havet en viktig roll. Å andra sidan är havet ofta påfallande osynligt i politiken och det historiska medvetandet. "Angöringar" drar fram havet från denna partiella glömska. Författarna är forskare knutna till Centrum för maritima studier vid Stockholms universitet och Statens maritima museer historiker, etnologer och arkeologer. I ett antal fristående essäer visar de hur dagens humanistiska forskning kan närma sig havet som både personlig upplevelse och historisk realitet.