CDR Ryan E. Mewett, USN
Assistant Professor (Permanent Military Professor)
History of Early Modern Britain and the British Atlantic
- E-mail: mewett@usna.edu
- United States Naval Academy
107 Maryland Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21402
Education
Ph.D., M.A. in History - Johns Hopkins University
M.A. in Naval History - University of Portsmouth (UK)
M.A. in International Relations - Waseda University (Japan)
B.S. in History (Honors) - U.S. Naval Academy
Courses Taught
HH104 - American Naval History
HH337B - Britain and its Navy, 1660–1815
Scholarship
Current Project
The End of Impunity: Illicit Trade, Mercantile Power, and the Royal Navy, c.1713–1765
Publications
“Beyond Byng: Accountability and Discipline for Commissioned Officers in the 18th Century Royal Navy.” In Virginia Lunsford, ed., New Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers from the 22nd McMullen Naval History Symposium Held at the U.S. Naval Academy 23-24 September 2021. Newport: U.S. Naval War College Press (in press).
“‘To the Very Great Prejudice of the Fair Trader’: Merchants and Illicit Naval Trading in the 1730s.” Historical Research 93, no. 262 (November 2020): 692–714.
Conference Papers, Workshops, and Invited Talks
“Adaptation and Innovation at Trafalgar.” Invited lecture, United States Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfare School, December 2022.
“‘The Trade of the Island is Become the Property of the Men of War’: The British Navy and Caribbean Contraband Trade, 1713-1739.” Southern Historical Association (Latin American and Caribbean Section) annual conference, November 2022.
“‘I Cannot Help Thinking They are Sent Here to Protect Us’: Public Trust and Private Interest at the Imperial Periphery.” North American Conference on British Studies annual conference, November 2021.
“Beyond Byng: Accountability and Discipline for Commissioned Officers in the 18th Century Royal Navy.” McMullen Naval History Symposium, U.S. Naval Academy, September 2021.
“Merchants and the Navy: Politics and the Construction of Naval Professionalism in Early Modern Britain.” 7th Summer Academy of Atlantic History, Lake Starnberg, Germany [virtual due to COVID-19 pandemic], August-September 2021.
“Royal Navy Slave Trading, 1720-1763.” Slavery and the Military Workshop, Trent University Durham, Canada [virtual], July 2021.
“Merchants and Empire in the Caribbean, 1713-1750.” Invited lecture, Idaho State University HIST 3307: Early North America, March 2021.
“The Royal Navy and the Slave Trade Before 1807.” McMullen Naval History Symposium, U.S. Naval Academy, September 2019.
“The Royal Navy’s ‘Great Prejudice of the Fair Trader,’ 1739.” North American Society for Oceanic History annual conference, May 2019.
“‘To the Very Great Prejudice of the Fair Trader’: Merchants and Illicit Naval Trading in the 1730s.” Hattendorf Center for Maritime Historical Research workshop, U.S. Naval War College, March 2019.
“British Naval Officers in the Loyalist Press, 1793-1802.” McMullen Naval History Symposium, U.S. Naval Academy, September 2017.
“Successful Commerce Raiders from Sail to Submarine.” “Winning the Western Approaches” conference, University College Cork, July 2017.
Awards
Sir Julian Corbett Prize in Modern Naval History, Institute of Historical Research, 2020.
Clark G. Reynolds Student Paper Award, North American Society for Oceanic History, 2019.
