Terminology&Timeline

Before beginning an exploration of the navalist era, twoimportant guidelines must be established. First,what is navalism?Itwas not aterm often used during the period; opponents of the movement generallycalled navalactivistsscare- mongers or Jingoes, while pro-navalactivists considered themselvesconcerned patriots. The wordappears in propagandistic mass-market literatureofthe First World War, and in anegative context.Naval historian Julian Corbett wroteinhis 1915 pamphlet “The SpectreofNavalism” that Britain was not and had never been anavalist nation—but he wasusing the term as acontrast to “Prussian militarism.” Britain had not used naval power to invade other na- tions, and so was not anavalist power.³ The term was utilizedsimilarlyby navaljournalist Archibald Hurd in 1918;heaccused Germanyofbeing the onlynavalist power,asthe nation had begun anaval arms race.⁴ The first references to ‘navalism’ in the British context,inamore neutral or even positive sense, began appearinginthe 1930s—first with William Langer’s TheDiplomacy of Imperialism, 1890 –1902⁵ and then with the colossus of Edwar- dian and First World Warnaval history,Arthur Marder.Inone of his earliest his- torical works he observed that “by the turn of the century the country was na- vally-minded. All classeshad, or thoughtthey had, something to gain from the growth of the Navy,whether security,empire, trade, employment,ordivi- dends.”⁶ Thisdefinition was simplified even further in his pioneering studyof the prewar navy TheAnatomyofBritishSea Power: “The term ‘navalist’ as used in this volume refers to those people, civilians and officers,who actively supported abig-navy policy. ‘Navalism’ is the big-navy movement.”⁷ That vaguecharacterization remained the standard for decades, whether due to are-

 Julian Corbett, “The SpectreofNavalism,” CairdLibrary,National Maritime Museum, Green- wich, UK, Sir Julian Corbett Papers (hereafter NMM CBT), 7/7.  Archibald Hurd, TheBritishFleet in the Great War (: Constable and CompanyLtd., 1918), xxii-xxiii.  Dirk Bönker, Militarism in aGlobal Age: Naval Ambitions in Germany and the United States be- fore WorldWar I (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 2011), 4.  Arthur J. Marder, “The Origin of Popular Interest in the ,” Journal of the Royal Unit- ed Service Institution 82 (Feb 1937): 769 – 770.  Arthur J. Marder, The AnatomyofBritishSea Power: AHistoryofBritishNaval Policy in the Pre- Era, 1880–1905 (Hamden,CT: Archon Books, 1964 [1940]), ix. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671810-002 X Terminology &Timeline luctancetore-approach the field-defining work of Marder or simplybecause it was adequate enough for his successors.⁸ Thankfully, more nuanced and useful definitions of navalism have begun to appear.Rolf Hobson calls the concept “apolicyofnaval rearmament that was designed to serveasameans of national aggrandizement and that interpreted national defense requirementswithin the context of an alleged need to ex- pand.”⁹ He additionally notes that “it is essentialtothis term that the objectives of navalism could not be defined—because the expansion promotedwas limit- less,withoutobject.”¹⁰ Matthew Johnsonwritesthat navalism “cannot be under- stood in terms of strategic calculation alone. It was apolitical,indeedanideo- logical,movement,based on aconception of naval power not simply as a legitimate armofnationaldefence, but as the basis of national might and pres- tige.”¹¹ Allofthese aspects—the lack of defined objectives, the ideological frame- work, the idea of navalism as essential to British prestige—are relevant to the concept of navalism as it is used throughout this book. The second central framework of the navalist movement is its timeline. Un- derstandably,historians have tendedtoidentify different points at which the movement begun based on their ownmethodologies and historiographical ap- proaches—and yetmanyoftheir starting points have coalesced around the same general dates. Victorian navalism has been variouslyidentifiedashaving begun in 1878 with the Near East crisis,¹² duringthe 1880s with the rise of the ‘New Journalism’ in the Britishpress,¹³ in 1887with the Spithead naval review as the first purposeful Admiralty publicrelations initiative,¹⁴ in 1887with the for-

 Recentlyhistorians have begun re-examiningMarder’sworks themselves, particularlythe standards of his archival research: see Matthew Seligmann, ‘AGreat American Scholar of the RoyalNavy? The Disputed LegacyofArthur Marder Revisited,’ TheInternational HistoryReview 38:5 (2016), 1040 –1054;Andreas Rose, Between Empireand Continent: BritishForeign Policy be- fore the FirstWorld War (New York: Berghahn Books,2017), 131;Barry Gough, Historical Dread- noughts: Arthur Marder,Stephen Roskill and Battles for Naval History (Barnsley,UK: Seaforth Publishing, 2010).  Rolf Hobson, Imperialism at Sea:Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875–1914 (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers,2002),296.  Hobson, Imperialism at Sea,163 – 164.Emphasis in original.  Matthew Johnson, Militarism and the BritishLeft, 1902–1914 (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2013), 69.Emphasis in original.  Parkinson, Late Victorian Navy,viii.  Mark Hampton, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 36–37.  JanRüger, “Nation, Empireand Navy:Identity Politics in the 1887–1914,” Past &Present 185(November 2004), 164. Terminology&Timeline XI mationofthe NavalIntelligence Department,¹⁵ in 1889 with the Naval Defence Act,¹⁶ or with the publicationofAlfred ThayerMahan’sworks on naval history in the early1890s.¹⁷ Some of the most recent researchinthis direction has push- ed the timeline even further forward into the 1870s.¹⁸ This project remains on fa- miliar ground by taking 1884 as its starting point,bothbecause the Third Reform Actofthatyear had increased the number of voters who could be swayedbyna- valist arguments and because 1884 sawthe publication of W.T. Stead’s “Truth About the Navy” campaign in the Pall Mall Gazette,long recognizedasthe first substantive example of successful collaboration between serving navaloffi- cers and the periodicalpress of the New Journalism.¹⁹ Often histories of navalism and the British press begin with 1884 and then return to the story with Jacky Fisher’stime at the Admiralty after 1904—but such an approach presumes a timeline whereFisher is the only important professional figure. To provide a full and completeaccounting of directed navalism, the entire period between 1884 and the First World Warmustbeconsidered.

 Shawn T. Grimes, Strategy and WarPlanning in the BritishNavy,1887–1918 (Rochester,NY: Boydell Press,2012), 1.  JonTetsuro Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy:Finance, Technologyand BritishNaval Policy,1889–1914 (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 3.  William E. Livezey, Mahan on Sea Power (Norman:University of Oklahoma Press,1981 [1947]), 63.  Duncan Redford, “Indifferencetothe Navy?Security,Identity and Naval Power 1870 – 84,” Historical Research 92:256 (May2019), 386–409.See also Norman Friedman, BritishBattleships of the Victorian Era (Annapolis,MD: Naval InstitutePress, 2018).  Forthe context of the Third Reform Act, see Carlos AlfaroZaforteza, ‘The ageofempire, 1870 – 1914,’ in Alan James,Carlos Alfaro Zaforteza,and Malcolm Murfett,eds., European Navies and the Conduct of War (New York: Routledge,2019), 135.For W.T. Stead’s “Truth About the Navy” campaign, the best accountremains Harvey Blumenthal, “W.T. Stead’sRole in Shaping Official Policy: The Navy Campaign of 1884” (Ph.D.dissertation, George WashingtonUniversity, 1984). Recent works on Stead’scomplete career include W. Sydney Robinson, Muckraker: The ScandalousLife and Times of W.T. Stead, Britain’sFirstInvestigativeJournalist (London: The Rob- son Press, 2013), and LaurelBrake et al., W.T. Stead: Newspaper Revolutionary (London: The Brit- ish Library,2012).