Denver Brunsman, Evil Necessity

Denver Brunsman, Evil Necessity

Special Thursday Presentation!

Professor Denver Brunsman of George Washington University (and formerly of Wayne State University) will discuss his new book, The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, recipient of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an outstanding work of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies. A fundamental component of Britain’s early success, naval impressment not only kept the Royal Navy afloat—it helped to make an empire. In total numbers, impressed seamen were second only to enslaved Africans as the largest group of forced laborers in the eighteenth century. Brunsman shows how ultimately the controversy over impressment contributed to the American Revolution and served as a leading cause of the War of 1812. Copies of the book will be available; a book signing will follow the lecture.

Denver Brunsman is an Assistant Professor of History at George Washington University and an editor of Border Crossings: The Detroit River Region in the War of 1812, among several other works.