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Abstract
This essay offers a reappraisal of the Royal Navy's decisive role in the making of the Anglo‐German Naval Agreement. It argues that the Admiralty's response to Hitler's offer of a fixed naval tonnage ratio was more rational and more complex than previous accounts would suggest. The premise here is that the only way to grasp Admiralty policy is to reconstruct the coherent set of financial, industrial, technical, diplomatic and strategic imperatives that shaped it. This approach reveals that the agreement represented the shrewd use of naval armaments diplomacy to achieve a long‐term strategic goal. Far from being a blunder, concluding the agreement was a prudent measure consistent with an elaborate Admiralty programme that aimed to adjust the international naval order to advance Britain's prospects as the world's leading seapower.