Edward Blaquiere (1779 1832), an Irishman of Huguenot descent, joined the Royal Navy in 1794 and served, chiefly in the Mediterranean, throughout the Napoleonic wars. In 1820, influenced by Jeremy Bentham, he went on his behalf to Spain to observe the revolution there. On the fall of the liberal regime in Spain in 1823, Blaquiere and his friend John Bowring formed the London Greek Committee to raise money for the Greek war of independence and to lobby the British government for support. (It was under the auspices of the Committee, and recruited by Blaquiere, that Lord Byron made his famous,...

Edward Blaquiere (1779-1832), an Irishman of Huguenot descent, joined the Royal Navy in 1794 and served, chiefly in the Mediterranean, throughout the Napoleonic wars. In 1820, influenced by Jeremy Bentham, he went on his behalf to Spain to observe the revolution there, and published this account in 1822. (Blaquiere was later involved in the Greek war of independence, and his accounts of two visits to Greece are also reissued in this series.) He arrived to find the country (still not recovered from the Napoleonic wars) in turmoil, with an ongoing struggle between the recently restored...