One area of research that I am finding especially fascinating is the role of the Russian navy in the Mediterranean during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1814). Using books and primary source material only available in Russian and fortunately available in the National Library of Minsk in Belarus, this being a much safer country to carry out research, I have been able to get an interesting insight as to how senior naval officers of Imperial Russia, alongside later Soviet and Russian historians, have viewed Russia’s participation in those wars. Much suspicion certainly existed of Britain’s own actions, believing that the British government had worked long and hard at financing a war which had brought to Great Britain massive financial benefit. If nothing else Russia could see that Britain had gained a considerable number of colonies, these taken from the French, Danes and Dutch, and which, during that wartime period had reaped huge financial benefits.

New Ideas and Current Research

My realisation that Russian naval officers had a strong feeling of resentment towards Great Britain at this time began when I discovered notes of a conversation in 1814 between a British naval surgeon, James Prior, and officers on board a Russian ship upon which Prior was an acting surgeon. Among those to whom Prior cited as holding an especially negative view towards Britain was ‘Captain R’ , the commander of the ship to which Prior was attached. According to Prior, Captain ‘R’ believed that Britain had only one object in fighting those wars, that of expanding her world-wide empire for the purpose of commercial opportunity, stating that, ‘the selfishness of England was disgusting; —it was more— it was both galling and insulting. Money seemed to be the god of the country … For Russia she had done nothing.’

Among other officers there was a belief that in working alongside Britain at sea, Russian ships had been used only for the benefit of Britain. With this in mind I decided to look more closely at Anglo-Russian relations, and especially at the way officers of the Russian Imperial Navy were either treated by British naval officers or how Russian expeditions at sea had been used in the way that was claimed. The outcome of my research will be two papers, both in preparation. Following a talk I gave to the Malta Historical Society in Rabat (Malta) on the subject of Russia’s Admiral Ushakov relationship with Britain’s Admiral Nelson in connection with the blockade of Malta, one of these papers will be published in Melita Historica, the journal of the Malta Historical Society.