Durham E-Theses Battleships and Dividends: The Rise of Private Armaments Firms in Great Britain and Italy, c. 1860-1914 MARCHISIO, GIULIO How to cite: MARCHISIO, GIULIO (2012) Battleships and Dividends: The Rise of Private Armaments Firms in Great Britain and Italy, c. 1860-1914, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7323/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Battleships and Dividends: The Rise of Private Armaments Firms in Great Britain and Italy, c. 1860-1914 Giulio Marchisio This thesis analyses the rise of private armaments firms in Great Britain and in Italy from mid-19th century to the outbreak of the First World War, with a focus on naval armaments and military shipbuilding. During this period, the armaments industry underwent a radical transformation, moving from being based on public-owned arsenals and yards to being based on private firms – the system of military procurement prevalent today. The key reason behind this transformation was the increasingly rapid evolution of military technology which started in the late 1850s and which was especially marked in naval ordnance and warship design. Guns and vessels, which previously could have been used for decades, were now outdated in a few years. Rapid technological change forced governments to constantly re-equip their armed forces, thus creating the opportunity for private firms both to supply goods which government arsenals did not make, and to supplement their production when this was not sufficient. It also favoured the expansion of the international armaments trade because advanced technologies were difficult to replicate. By 1914, private armaments firms had become the leading suppliers of crucial military hardware and the driving force behind technical innovations. Moreover, armaments firms now ranked among the largest private companies in many economies. This research casts fresh light on this development through a comparative analysis of the Italian and British cases. Both countries experienced a similar trend, despite very different economic, strategic and political conditions. Analysing the evolution of their armaments industries thus highlights both the common long-term changes and the differences, notably in the relationship between private companies and governments, and the level of competition inside the industry. Battleships and Dividends: The Rise of Private Armaments Firms in Great Britain and Italy, c. 1860-1914 Giulio Marchisio Doctoral Thesis Department of History University of Durham 2012 Quis fuit, horrendos primus qui protulit enses? Quam ferus et vere ferreus ille fuit! Tum caedes hominum generi, tum proelia nata, Tum brevior dirae mortis aperta via est. An nihil ille miser meruit, nos ad mala nostra Vertimus, in saevas quod dedit ille feras? (Tibullus, Elegies, I, 10, vv. 1 – 6) 2 Contents List of Abbreviations 4 Acknowledgement 6 Copyright 5 Introduction 7 Chapter I The Beginning of the British Armaments Industry, c. 1850s–1880 29 Chapter II Armaments for a New Country: Italy, 1861-1880 68 Chapter III A Growing Trade: the British Armaments Industry, 1880-1897 95 Chapter IV The Development of the Armaments Industry in Italy, 1880-1900 132 Chapter V The Creation of an Armaments Plant in Italy: Pozzuoli, 1884-1900 163 Chapter VI Acquisitions and Dreadnoughts: the British Armaments Industry, 1897-1914 195 Chapter VII In Search of Vertical Integration: The Italian Armaments Industry, 1900-1914 234 Chapter VIII Conclusions 270 Bibliography 277 3 List of Abbreviations ACS Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Roma ADM Admiralty AFA Archivio Fondazione Ansaldo, Genova AST Archivio di Stato di Terni BL Breech loading col. Column DBI Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani f. File FP Fondo Perrone [Perrone's records] FT Fondo Terni [Terni's records] HCPP House of Common, Parliamentary Papers ML Muzzle loading MS(S). Manuscript(S) NA National Archives, London NDB Neue Deutsche Biographie ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) p(p). Page(s) Pcm Presidenza consiglio dei ministri [Office of the president of the council of ministers] q(s). Question(s) QF Quick-firing rev. Revised SSB Serie scatole blu [Blue boxes series] SSMbis Serie scatole marroni bis [Brown boxes series bis] SSMter Serie scatole marroni ter [Brown boxes series ter] SSN Serie scatole nere [Black boxes series] SSR Serie scatole rosse [Red boxes series] T&W Tyne & Wear Archive, Newcastle-upon-Tyne VA Vickers Archive, Cambridge University Library vol. Volume WAS Wirral Archives Service, Birkenhead WO War Office 4 Copyright The copyright of this thesis rest with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the prior written consent and information and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 5 Acknowledgement There are numerous individuals I wish to thank for their support during the past four years. I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Ranald C. Michie and Doctor Andrzej Olechnowicz, of the History Department of the University of Durham, for their guidance, patience and precious advice. Doctor Andrea Ruggeri of the University of Amsterdam and Professor Maria Stella Rollandi of the University of Genoa offered insightful comments on various aspects of my work. I also want to thank my viva examiners, Professor Philip Williamson (University of Durham) and the late Doctor Francesca Carnevali (Birmingham University), for the time and efforts they put in analysing my work. The archivists of the Fondazione Ansaldo in Genoa and of the Tyne and Wear Archives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne greatly facilitated my research. Archival research in Rome would not have been possible without the help of Giovanna Zunino and Fabrizio Dacrema. Finally, I owe a special debt of gratitude to my parents, Ornella Pianezzola and Guglielmo Marchisio. 6 Introduction This thesis analyses the growth and evolution of the private armaments industry in Great Britain and Italy from the middle of the 19th century to the First World War. In these decades, the armaments business underwent a radical transformation: it moved from being predominantly based on publicly-owned arsenals and shipyards, to being dominated by a handful of large private firms. From the 16th century until the mid-19th century, European governments steadily increased their role in the armaments sector: after asserting their legal monopoly of violence, governments became the dominant purchasers of heavy military hardware, and, at the same time, thanks to the network of plants and yards they owned, also the major producers of armaments. Until the 1850s artillery technology progressed at a slow pace. Technical obsolescence was a negligible problem: as William McNeill states: “[the] gun design developed … between 1465 and 1477 lasted until the 1840s with only marginal improvements.”1 Technological stagnation meant that warships and guns were kept in service for decades. In case of protracted warfare, private firms were sometimes integrated into the military procurement system to meet short-term peaks of demand. However, as soon as the need for additional military hardware ended, governments stopped buying from private suppliers and reverted exclusively on their arsenals and yard, whose output was sufficient to meet the demand of peacetime. Starting in the 1860s, the armaments industry moved in a different direction, towards a situation in which private firms acquired a much larger role than before. What caused this transformation was the increasingly rapid evolution of military technology which, after centuries of slow, incremental, cumulative progress, entered into a phase of radical change. This evolution was especially evident in naval ordnance and warship design: guns and vessels which previously had been used for decades, if not centuries, now became obsolete in just a few years. Rapid technical change disrupted traditional procurement patterns in three ways. First, it created the opportunity for private firms, not just during military crises, but also in peacetime, to supply goods which government plants did not make. Governments had to constantly re-equip their armed forces with up-to-date hardware to keep pace with the evolution of military technology. Second, it favoured the expansion of the international armaments trade because many governments, especially the ones 1 W. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago, 1982), 88. 7 which did not own modern arsenals and plants, were eager to purchase the most sophisticated military hardware, given the high cost of not modernising their armed forces. This meant that firms capable of producing competitive military technology had now access to a much larger potential market than before. Third, by highlighting the growing role that technology and technical innovation played in modern warfare, it made governments more willing to interact with private firms able to develop and produce cutting-edge military goods. As a result, by 1914, in near all the advanced countries private armaments firms had grown into being leading suppliers of crucial military hardware (in some areas completely displacing government arsenals' production), and they had also become the driving force behind many new technical innovations. The focus of the thesis is on the production of naval artillery and warships because it was exactly the demand for naval armaments which mainly stimulated the growth of private armaments firms before 1914.