How the French Royal Navy used privateers to augment their naval operations with Henning Hillmann

Henning Hillmann is professor of economic and organizational sociology at the University of Mannheim. He wrote a book on the privateers of France in the long 18th century in order to understand what motivated these privateers and how they organized themselves. We spoke about the book, the privateers, and the French Royal Navy. The Corsairs of Saint-Malo: Network Organization of a Merchant Elite Under the Ancien Régime (Columbia University Press, 2021)

Tags: Books, audio interviews, author, academic, videos, Columbia University Press, age of sail, 18th century war, Naval Warfare, France,

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How the French Royal Navy used privateers to augment their naval operations with Henning Hillmann

Henning Hillmann Privateers saint Malo

How the French Royal Navy used privateers to augment their naval operations with Henning Hillmann

Check out this book here https://amzn.to/3efdp3n

Interview Timeline

Henning Hillmann is professor of economic and organizational sociology at the University of Mannheim. He wrote a book on the privateers of France in the long 18th century in order to understand what motivated these privateers and how they organized themselves. We spoke about the book, the privateers, and the French Royal Navy. The Corsairs of Saint-Malo: Network Organization of a Merchant Elite Under the Ancien Régime (Columbia University Press, 2021)

0:49 – Henning talks about how he got into studying privateering in France.

4:08 – Jenning talks about the region and time range he focused on.

5:43 – Henning talks about privateering in peace and war.

11:36 – Henning talks about economic pressures to go to war.

15:17 – Henning talks about how merchants protect themselves during times of war.

17:42 – Henning talks about relations between privateers and the French Royal Navy.

20:39 – Henning talks about the nationalities of these crews.

24:01 – Henning talks about how the privateers armed themselves.

26:14 – Henning talks about how the privateers fared in various wars.

28:42 – Henning talks about privateer involvement in naval battles.

32:10 – Henning talks about the destruction of enemy merchants.

35:06 – Henning talks about the French Royal Navy taking prize ships.

37:17 – Henning talks about where the privateers operated.

38:40 – Henning talks about cases where privateers would join together to capture ships.

39:19 – Henning talks about the weapons the privateers used.

41:03 – Henning talks about what happened to captured crews.

43:14 – Henning talks about the low ranking sailors.

44:10 – Henning talks about the prize courts.

45:47 – Henning talks about where the prize courts were.

46:52 – Henning talks about the research he did for the book.

51:50 – Henning talks about holding the historical documents.

53:12 – Henning talks about wishing he could have figured out the profits of these ventures.

54:52 – Henning talks about the detective work of history.

56:33- Henning talks about how hard the sailor lives were.

58:14 – Henning talks about the books’ goals and about Saint-Malo.

1:03:02 – Henning talks about what Saint-Malo is like now.

1:05:43 – Henning talks about a museum at Saint-Malo.

1:06:27 – Henning talks about a historic ship at the time.

Links of interest

https://amzn.to/3efdp3n

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-corsairs-of-saint-malo/9780231180399

Suparno Banerjee and the development of Indian science fiction https://wp.me/p7CDU9-59G

Cesare Barbieri and the search for extra-terrestrial life http://spacewalksmoneytalks.com/p/860

Contact Information

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me at www.warscholar.org, on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar. Or subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify Please see historyrabbithole.com for a list of my dozen or so blogs and podcasts. You’re sure to find something you like.

Guests: Henning Hillmann

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: Books, audio interviews, author, academic, podcast, Columbia University Press, age of sail, 18th century war, Naval Warfare, France,

Check out this book here https://amzn.to/3efdp3n

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