ABSTRACT
John Adams, the second president of the United States, was in France in 1779 during America’s War for Independence. Newspapers in Paris alerted Adams that another British admiral, Augustus Keppel, might be ‘bingyfied’. Adams’ use of Byng as a verb indicated his perception that politics in Britain were beyond corruption. To Byngify was to charge an innocent of wrongdoing by way of faction while those responsible escaped justice. Byng’s demise demonstrated the rise of nascent bureaucracy in British naval affairs. This microhistory of Admiral John Byng’s venture to save Minorca, his recall, arrest, trial, and execution focused mainly on social and cultural elements of Britain in the eighteenth century. Eschewing the political and military views, this book works to present a three-dimensional account of the Byng affair and the loss of Minorca at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War. John Byng’s name continues to raise quips about cowardice in the twenty-first century, most undeservedly. English/British nationalism likely played a key role in utilising a warped interpretation of the past, using Byng’s alleged shortcomings to construct a narrative to ‘encourage the others’, as Voltaire put it. Byng’s bloodletting may be a prime example of what occurs when nationalistic rhetoric unleashed.
