Mutiny. Despite its emotional connotation, mutiny is simply defined as collective military insubordination; it is the antithesis of discipline, which is itself the basis of military behavior. As a phenomenon, it is probably as old as armies and navies; in the case of the American armed forces, it dates back to the Revolutionary War. In the American services, as elsewhere, mutiny is nowadays a relatively rare occurrence.

Mutiny can be active or passive; conducted with or without arms, with or without violence. It can take place in peace or war, on ship or on shore, at the front or in the rear. It is the collective aspect of mutiny that presents such a challenge to the stability of the particular military organization, or, when it exists on a very large scale, to the state itself. That, and the disgrace to the affected unit, accounts for the secrecy and lack of candor that is usually associated with mutinous incidents. Thus, actions that are, in fact, mutinies, are often cloaked in euphemisms: during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army referred to its mutinies as “battlefield refusals,” a rhetorical invention without any basis in military law.

Historically, the main sources of mutiny have been rooted in a perception of unfairness on the part of the troops, of burdens inequitably shared vis‐à‐vis their military colleagues or their parent society. In the American military, this sense of relative deprivation has most often occurred as the result of perceived or actual racial discrimination. World War II saw several major mutinies by black soldiers and sailors in which the issues were discriminatory treatment: Bamber Bridge, England (1943); Port Chicago, California (1945); Guam (1944); Port Hueneme, California (1945). During the Vietnam War, in addition to some small unit incidents in the war zone, a major racially motivated mutiny involving over 100 sailors took place on board the USS Constellation (1972).

The notion of unfairness has also resulted from the demands of the military for service beyond an agreed or implied enlistment period. The mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line in June 1783 had as its central grievance the extension of duty beyond the original enlistment term; there were similar cases in the Civil War. In January 1946, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, mutinous outbreaks took place in several overseas garrisons—notably at Manila in the Philippines—in which the troops protested their retention in service following the termination of actual hostilities.

The twentieth century has seen another fundamental source of discontent take root in American and foreign military organizations: the reluctance to serve for ethical, political, or moral reasons. U.S. Army troops questioned the legitimacy of their service in North Russia in 1919; in Vietnam there were many small unit mutinies in which the essential issue centered on the why rather than the how of service.

The process of most American mutinies has followed the pattern of mutinies in general: they tend to be passive refusals to participate rather than acts of violence; of short duration, usually measured in hours rather than days; and spontaneous rather than premeditated.

In spite of the gravity of the offense, the penalties for mutiny in the American military have been minimal. Reluctance even to use the term mutiny has resulted in troops being court‐martialed, if at all, for lesser offenses. The acceptance of the industrial strike as a legitimate expression of collective protest in twentieth‐century civil society has fostered a more lenient view of what was classically considered the most serious of military crimes.
[See also Ethnicity and War; Morale, Troop; Philippines, U.S. Military Involvement in the; Vietnam Antiwar Movement.]

Bibliography

Robert I. Allen , The Port Chicago Mutiny, 1989.
Leonard F. Guttridge , Mutiny, 1992.

Elihu Rose

mutiny, a resistance by force to recognized authority, an insurrection, but applied particularly to any form of sedition in any naval or military force of a nation. In its strict legal sense the term implies the use of force, but by long custom a refusal to obey a legal order of a superior officer is considered to be mutiny. It is not necessarily restricted to naval and military forces: a crew which rises against its officers or a crew member who strikes a superior officer or refuses to obey a legal order is just as guilty of mutiny in a merchant vessel as in a naval ship. Mutiny in a naval or military force is always tried before a court martial, in a merchant ship before a civil court.

Those taking part in the early voyages of exploration by sea frequently suffered mutinies among their crews, Drake, Magellan, and Hudson being just three examples. Often blood was spilt, though the massacre of passengers and crew that followed the shipwreck of the Dutch East Indiaman Batavia, was exceptional. Those who mutinied and escaped often resorted to piracy and any that were caught were hanged from the yardarm without further ado. However, in the case of Magellan not only did one of the principal mutineers, Juan Sebastián del Cano (c.1476–1526), escape punishment—as a pilot he was too valuable to be hanged—but, as the commander of the only ship to survive the expedition, he was honoured, faute de mieux, by the King of Spain with a coat of arms and a pension. A statue to him was also erected, a signal honour for a mutineer.

During the days of sailing navies, the penalty for mutiny in all navies was invariably hanging at the yardarm; when an entire ship's company mutinied, the ringleaders were hanged. However, in the naval mutiny at Spithead in 1797, when all the ships of the Channel Fleet were in mutiny against the pay and conditions of naval service, there were no victims, and indeed no one was brought before a court martial as it was considered that the men were justified in their complaints. However, in the mutiny at the Nore which immediately followed that at Spithead, a number of the ringleaders were hanged, since all the demands of the seamen had already been met at Spithead and there was, in the eyes of the Admiralty, no justification for the mutiny.

One of the best known of all naval mutinies was that on board HMS Bounty in 1789; another was the mutiny aboard the Russian battleship Potemkin in 1905; and a third was the mutiny in the German High Seas Fleet in 1918, which led directly to the defeat of Germany in the First World War (1914–18). Another 20th-century naval mutiny occurred in the British Home Fleet at Invergordon in 1931 when the pay of naval seamen was reduced as a result of a crisis in Britain's economy. A proportion of crew members of several warships mutinied by refusing to obey orders and gathering on the foredeck of their ships, but quick action by the Admiralty in rescinding the pay cuts brought the protests to a swift end.

mutiny concerted disobedient or seditious action by persons in military or naval service, or by sailors on commercial vessels. Mutiny may range from a combined refusal to obey orders to active revolt or going over to the enemy on the part of two or more persons. In the armed forces it is considered one of the gravest crimes against military law. Mutiny may be committed on a private vessel whether it is at sea or in port. As a result of two major naval mutinies in Great Britain in 1797—one at Spithead and one at Nore and Sheerness—many of the abuses in the navy, such as bad food, brutal discipline, and withholding pay, were remedied. Mutinies tend to occur with some frequency in the armed forces of nations on the point of suffering defeat; thus, in 1918 the German navy mutinied at Kiel and the Austrian navy at Cattaro (now Kotor). A mutiny may be the signal for a revolution, as were the Russian mutinies in 1905 and 1917 at Kronshtadt .

Bibliography: See C. Gill, The Naval Mutinies of 1797 (1913); G. E. Manwaring and B. Dobrée, The Floating Republic (1938, repr. 1966); R. L. Hadfield, Mutiny at Sea (1938); E. Fuller, ed., Mutiny (1953); G. Dallas and D. Gill, The Unknown Army: Mutinies in the British Army in World War I (1985); G. E. Manwaring and B. Dobrée, Mutiny (1988).

mutiny an open rebellion against the proper authorities, especially by soldiers or sailors against their officers. The word comes (in the mid 16th century) from obsolete mutine ‘rebellion’, from French mutin ‘mutineer’, based on Latin movere ‘to move’.
Mutiny on the Bounty a mutiny which took place in 1789 on the British navy ship HMS Bounty, when part of the crew, led by Fletcher Christian, mutinied against their commander, William Bligh, and set him adrift in an open boat with eighteen companions. Although a number of the mutineers were captured and executed, others (including Christian) reached the Pitcairn Islands, where they settled.

See also Indian Mutiny at Indian1.

MUTINY

A rising against lawful or constituted authority, particularly in the naval orarmed services.

In the context of criminal law, mutiny refers to an insurrection of soldiers or crew members against the authority of their commanders. The offense is similar to the crime of sedition, which is a revolt or an incitement to revolt against established authority, punishable by both state and federal laws.

mu·ti·ny / ˈmyoōtn-ē/ • n. (pl. -nies) an open rebellion against the proper authorities, esp. by soldiers or sailors against their officers: a mutiny by those manning the weapons could trigger a global war | mutiny at sea. • v. (-nies, -nied) [intr.] refuse to obey the orders of a person in authority.

mutiny open revolt against authority. XVI. f. (after words in -Y3) † mutine — (O)F. mutin rebellious, mutinous, sb. rebel, mutineer, in XVI rebellion, mutiny, f. muete (mod. meute):- Rom. *movita movement, f. *movit-, for L. mōt- (see MOTION).
So mutineer XVII. Hence mutiny vb. XVI, mutinous XVI.

mutiny n. pl. -ies an open rebellion against the proper authorities, especially by soldiers or sailors against their officers: a mutiny by those manning the weapons could trigger a global war | mutiny at sea.
v. -ies, -ied refuse to obey the orders of a person in authority.

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