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Abstract
This article examines the applicability of the concept of ‘revolutions’ in warfare to the study of pre-First World War British naval history. It argues that by attaching an overt degree of importance to the role of technological change in affecting transformations in contemporary views of war-fighting, historians have overlooked many aspects of Admiralty policy that can be better understood in terms of continuity, rather than ‘revolution’.
Key Words:
Notes
1 A. Latham, ‘Warfare [Transformed]: A Braudelian Perspective on the ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’, European Journal of International Relations, 8/ 2 (2002), 231–66.
2 TNA: PRO, CAB 3/1/1A, Balfour, ‘Draft Report on the Possibility of Serious Invasion’, 11 Nov. 1903, p. 8.
3 H. Herwig, ‘The Battlefleet Revolution, 1880–1914’, in M. Knox and W. Murray (eds.), The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 (Cambridge: CUP 2001), 125–31.
4 T. Wilson and R. Prior, ‘Conflict, [Technology] and the Impact of Industrialization: the Great War, 1914–1918’, Journal of Strategic Studies. 24/ 3 (Sept. 2001), 131–8.
5 A. Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power (New York: Knopf 1940),. 3–10.
6 Marder, Anatomy, 368–71 and [F]rom the [D]readnought to [S]capa [F]low, The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904–1919, five volumes, (Oxford: OUP 1961–70), Vol. I, 369–73.
7 Marder, Anatomy, 515–46.
8 Marder, FDSF I, xiii and 28–45.
9 Ibid., V, 343.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., I, 23.
12 Ibid., I, 401 and V, 302–3 and 343.
13 P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Allen Lane 1976), 234.
14 W. McNeil, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since AD 1000 (Univ. of Chicago Press 1981), 294–9.
15 A. Roland, ‘Technology and War: The Historiographical Revolution of the 1980s’, Technology and Culture. 34/1 (Jan. 1993), 117–34.
16 J. Sumida, ‘[B]ritish [C]apital [S]hip [D]esign and Fire Control in the Dreadnought Era: Sir John Fisher, Arthur Hungerford Pollen, and the Battle Cruiser’, Journal of Modern History 51/ 2, (June 1979), 205–30.
17 J. Sumida, [I]n [D]efence of [N]aval [S]upremacy, Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy 1889–1914 (London: Routledge 1989).
18 N. Lambert, ‘Admiral Sir John Fisher and the Concept of [Flotilla] Defence, 1904–1909’, Journal of Military History 59/ 4 (Oct. 1995), 636–60 and J. Sumida, ‘[F]isher’s [N]aval [R]evolution’, Naval History (July/Aug. 1996), 20–7.
19 Lambert, ‘Flotilla’ and Sir John Fisher’s Naval [Revolution] (Columbia: Univ. of S. Carolina 1999).
20 Sumida, IDNS, ‘Sir John Fisher and the Dreadnought: The Sources of Naval [Mythology]’, Journal of Military History 59/ 4 (Oct. 1995), 619–37, ‘FNR’ and ‘Geography, Technology and British Naval Strategy in the readnought Era’, Naval War College Review 59/ 3 (Summer 2006),89–100 and Lambert, ‘Flotilla’, 642–6, Revolution and ‘[Transformation] and Technology in the Fisher Era: the Impact of the Communications Revolution’, Journal of Strategic Studies 27/ 2 (2004), 277–8.
21 Lambert, ‘Transformation’, 273–4 and 281–5 and ‘[S]trategic [C]ommand and Control for Maneuver Warfare: Creation of the Royal Navy’s “War Room” System, 1905–1915’, Journal of Military History 69/ 2 (2005), 361–410.
22 Lambert, Planning [Armageddon], British Economic Warfare and the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 2012).
23 Lambert, ‘Transformation’, 273 and ‘SC’, 375.
24 Lambert, Transformation’, 291–3.
25 See N.A. Lambert, ‘The Strategy of Economic Warfare: A Historical Case Study and Possible Analogy to Contemporary [Cyber] Warfare’, in E. Goldman and J. Arquilla, Cyber Analogies, Naval Postgraduate School Paper, Feb. 2004, 76–89, accessed at: <http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/40037/NPS-DA-14-001.pdf?sequence=1>.
26 J. Beeler, British Naval Policy in the Gladstone-Disraeli Era, 1866–1880, (StanfordUP1997) and C. Hamilton, The Making of the Modern Admiralty, (CUP 2011).
27 A. Lambert, ‘The Naval War Course, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy and the Origins of “The British Way in Warfare”’, in K. Neilson and G. Kennedy (eds.), The British Way in Warfare: Power and the International System, 1856–1956 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate 2010), 219–51 and S. Grimes, Strategy and War [Planning] in the British Navy, 1887–1918 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer 2012).
28 N. Lambert, ‘False Prophet? The Maritime Theory of Julian Corbett and Professional Military Education’, Journal of Military History 77 (July 2013), 1055–78.
29 A. Lambert, ‘The German North Sea Islands, the Kiel Canal and the Danish Narrows in Royal Navy Thinking and Planning, 1905–1918’, in M. Epkenhans and G. Gross (eds.), The Danish Straits and German Naval Power, 1905–1918 (Potsdam: Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt 2010), 35–62; Grimes, Planning, Ch. 3; and R. Dunley, ‘Sir John Fisher and the Policy of Strategic Deterrence, 1904–1908’, War in History, April, 2015.
30 Marder, Anatomy, 107–13 and FDSF I, 369–71.
31 Lambert, ‘Flotilla’, 646.
32 Ibid., 655.
33 Marder, Anatomy, 491–514 and FDSF I, 40–3 and 111–19.
34 Sumida, Mythology.
35 Fisher to Tweedmouth, 26 Sept. 1906 in Marder (ed.), Fear God and Dread Nought: The Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, 3volumes,(London: Jonathan Cape 1952–59), II, 92.
36 Marder, Anatomy, 320–30; T. Ropp, The [D]evelopment of a [M]odern [N]avy, French Naval Policy, 1871–1904 S. Roberts (ed.), (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press 1987), 345–6\; and M. Seligmann, ‘A [Prelude] to the Reforms of Admiral Sir John Fisher: the Creation of the Home Fleet, 1902–3’, Historical Research, 83/ 221 (2010), 506–19.
37 [T]he [N]ational [A]rchives, ADM 1/7379B, ‘Battle Fleets’, 28 Oct.1898.
38 Richards to Goschen, 27 Oct. 1898 quoted in Marder, Anatomy, 322.
39 Ropp, DMN, 345–6.
40 Lambert, ‘Flotilla’, p. 649.
41 TNA, ADM 1/7379B, ‘As to the distribution of the Torpedo Boat Destroyers on the South Coast of England in case of War with France’, 5 Oct. 1898.
42 D. Morgan-Owen, “History is a Record of Exploded Ideas’: Sir John Fisher and Home Defence, 1904–10’, International History Review 36/ 3 (2014), 550–72.
43 Fisher to Arnold White, 21 March 1909 in Marder, FGDN II, 234.
44 Fisher to Corbett, 28 July 1905 in Marder, FGDN II, 63.
45 [N]ational [M]useum of the [R]oyal [N]avy, MS 253/59, Admiralty, ‘The Home Fleet’, Dec. 1906, 9. Emphasis added.
46 NMRN, MSS 253/84/3, Admiralty, ‘War’, 3 in ‘War Plan GU War Orders for The Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet’, 1909. Emphasis added.
47 Churchill [C]ollege [A]rchives [C]entre, FISR 8/30, ‘Destroyers, Torpedo Boats, and Submarines’, May 1908. Emphasis added.
48 NMRN, MSS 253/84/1, Crease to Fisher, 10 March 1909, 3.
49 [N]ational [M]aritime [M]useum, CBT/13/2/40, Slade to Corbett, 30 May 1909, 2–3.
50 Sumida, IDNS, 55.
51 Lambert, ‘Flotilla’, 644–5.
52 Lambert, ‘Transformation’, 277–8.
53 K. Lautenschlager, ‘Technology and the Evolution of Naval Warfare’, International Security, 8/2(1983), 15.
54 Brass Foundry, Woolwich, ADM 138/88, W. White, ‘Design of Armoured Cruisers’, 10 June 1897,. 4–7.
55 [Bod]leian Library, MS 28, Unofficial Report on the 1901 Manoeuvres, Aug. 1901, 2.
56 NMM, BRI/15, May to Bridge, 8 Jan. 1902.
57 Bod, MS 158, Selborne to Kerr, 28 May 1902, fo. 60.
58 Also see R.H. Bacon, The Life of Lord Fisher of Kilverstone (London: Hazell, Watson and Viney Ltd. 1929), I, 256.
59 Bod, MS 44, Battenberg to Selborne, 6 April and 4 Aug.h 1904, fos. 15–6 and 39–40.
60 Quoted in Sumida, ‘BCSD’, 208.
61 [B]ritish [L]ibrary, Admiralty, ‘Remarks on Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge’s Criticisms of Recent Naval Reforms’, 1905, p. 6, Add. MS. 47911, fo. 16.
62 [N]aval [H]istorical [B]ranch, Minutes for Meeting on Saturday, 2 Dec. 1905, Naval Necessities IV, Paper B.
63 BL, Admiralty, ‘Memorandum of First Meeting of Committee on Navy Estimates, 1906–7’, Add MS. 49711, fo. 49.
64 M. Seligmann, The [R]oyal [N]avy and the [G]erman [T]hreat, 1901–1914 (Oxford: OUP 2012), 84.
65 NMRN, MSS 253/84/3, ‘War Plan GU’: ‘War: Main Fleet’.
66 Grimes, Planning.
67 Lambert, ‘Transformation’, 285.
68 Lambert, ‘SC’.
69 J. Sumida, ‘The Royal Navy and Technical Change, 1815–1945’, in R. Haycock and K. Neilson (eds.), Men, Machines & War (Kingston, ONT: Wilfrid Laurier UP 1988), 86.
70 Seligmann, RNGT, 116–18.
71 NMM, MRF/39/3, Slade Diary, Entry for 13 Nov. 1908.
72 Fisher to McKenna, 20 June 1909 in Marder, FGDN II, 253.
73 NMRN, MSS 253/84/3, ‘War Plan GU’: ‘General Instructions’ and ‘War: Main Fleet’.
74 Lambert, ‘SC’, 388–9.
75 Lambert, ‘Cyber’.
76 Wilson and Prior, ‘Technology’.
77 H. Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective(Cambridge: CUP 2013), 166.
78 Lambert, ‘Transformation’, 293.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
David Morgan-Owen
David Morgan-Owen has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the National Museum of the Royal Navy and is now Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College London. His publications include ‘“History is a Record of Exploded Ideas”: Sir John Fisher and Home Defence, 1904-1910ʹ, International History Review (2014), ‘An “Intermediate” Blockade? British North Sea Strategy, 1912–1914ʹ, War in History (November, 2015) and ‘Cooked up in the dinner hour? Sir Arthur Wilson’s War Plan, Reconsidered, English Historical Review (August, 2015). He is currently preparing a forthcoming monograph, The Invasion Question: 1888–1918.