Very good hardcover copies of BOTH volumes of Professor Rodger’s Naval history of Britain. The Safeguard of the Sea covers the period 660 to 1649; The Command of the Ocean covers 1649-1815. Both volumes are in like new dust jackets. Volume one has some mild staining to the edge of the page block but is otherwise a very good copy indeed. Volume 2 has a large signature of a previous owner but is otherwise like new. Both dust jackets are unclipped and excellent. 690pp. and 907pp. 9.21 x 6.54 x 2.36 inches; 16 x 24 cms.

Volume one examines the British Navy as an institution as well as an agent of national policy. It describes actions in war and peace, but also its administrative, political, social, economic, financial and technical history, setting each in the context of the development of society at large. It is not so much a history of the Navy but a naval history of the country. It also looks at the British Navy in an international context.

Volume two describes with unprecedented authority and scholarship the rise of Britain to naval greatness, and the central place of the Navy and naval activity in the life of the nation and government. Based on the author's own research in half a dozen languages over nearly a decade, and synthesising a vast quantity of secondary material, it describes not just battles and cruises but how the Navy was manned, how it was supplied with timber, hemp and iron, how its men (and sometimes women) were fed, and above all how it was financed and directed. It was during the century and a half covered by this book that the successful organising of these last three victualling, money and management took the Navy to the heart of the British state. Ocean is a landmark in naval and military history; but it also allows us to see the history of Britain as a whole in a new perspective. Anyone interested in British history at this crucial stage in its development will find it both engrossing and enlightening. 

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