The Admiralty, Popular Navalism, and the Journalist As
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Texas A&M Repository THE ADMIRALTY, POPULAR NAVALISM, AND THE JOURNALIST AS MIDDLEMAN, 1884-1914 A Dissertation by BRADLEY M. CESARIO Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, R.J.Q. Adams Committee Members, Adam Seipp Joseph G. Dawson James Hannah Head of Department, David Vaught May 2016 Major Subject: History Copyright 2016 Bradley M. Cesario ABSTRACT The three decades before the First World War were a period of intense militarism, and in the United Kingdom this meant navalism. By the late Edwardian period the navalist movement had captured Britain’s attention – a movement that paradoxically claimed the Royal Navy was weaker than at any point in its history while presiding over a total revolution in British naval technology and a concurrent unprecedented rise in naval budgets. This dissertation explores the creation, propagation, success and failure of directed navalism between 1884 and 1914. Directed navalism, for the purposes of this project, refers to the cooperation between and support of navalism among three elite national groups: serving naval officers at the level of captain and above (professionals), naval correspondents and editors working for large- circulation national newspapers and periodicals (press), and members of Parliament in both houses, from backbenchers to high Cabinet-level officials, who dealt with navalist issues during the course of their public service careers (politicians). Directed navalism was the bedrock upon which the more popular and ultimately more successful ‘soft’ navalism – penny dreadfuls, the Navy League, fundraising drives, fleet reviews – was built. The three groups of professionals, press and (to a lesser extent, particularly before 1900) politicians purposefully created and fostered the navalist movement. Navalism meant different things to each of the three, obtainable via different methods, but from 1884 onward they were able to put aside their differences in service to a broader movement. This unofficial partnership remained effective through the ii majority of the Edwardian period, but after the twin upheavals of Liberal electoral victory and First Sea Lord Sir John (Jacky) Fisher’s naval reforms in 1906 it began to be overtaken by partisanship, factionalism, and a general radicalization of both public and parliamentary navalism. The rise and fall of directed navalism – the backroom deals, surreptitious leaks and midnight meetings that laid the foundation for a national movement – is the story of this dissertation. Though directed navalism collapsed before the First World War, it was extraordinarily successful in its time, and it was a necessary precursor for the creation of a national discourse in which ‘soft’ navalism could thrive. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee chair, R.J.Q. Adams, and my committee members, Adam Seipp, Joseph Dawson, and James Hannah, for their guidance, support, and advice throughout the writing process and my graduate school experience in general. I would also like to thank the entire history faculty at Texas A&M for their commitment to creating a strong and vibrant community of scholars, and the departmental staff for solving innumerable problems large and small. Thanks go also to those historians at other institutions who have been kind enough to discuss methods, sources, and broad questions at conferences, particularly John Mitcham and Justin Olmstead, and to the curators and staff of the various archives visited during the research and writing process. This project would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support of the graduate students within the history department, who provided everything from guidance to commiseration. Special thanks to the War, Violence and Society working group, which read and commented on the third chapter, and Jessica Herzogenrath, who read and commented on them all. Finally, thank you to my parents Robert and Susan for their unflagging moral support and ready capital. iv NOMENCLATURE BL British Library, London CCA Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge CHI West Sussex Records Office, Chichester CID Committee of Imperial Defence C-in-C Commander in Chief DORA Defence of the Realm Act HRC Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin IML Imperial Maritime League KEW (British) National Archives, Kew MP Member of Parliament NL Navy League NMM National Maritime Museum, Greenwich RN Royal Navy v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... iv NOMENCLATURE .................................................................................................. v TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................... vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1 Terminology and Timeline .................................................................................. 3 Historiography ..................................................................................................... 6 Organization ........................................................................................................ 15 Preface: Proto-Navalism to 1884 ........................................................................ 19 CHAPTER II GETTING AT ‘THE TRUTH:’ THE RISE OF NAVALIST AGITATION, 1884-1894 ................................................................ 23 CHAPTER III LEAGUES AND LIARS, 1894-1902 ............................................. 66 CHAPTER IV THE SUCCESS OF THE FISHER SYSTEM, 1902-1907 ............. 123 CHAPTER V PARTISANS AND PRESSURE GROUPS, 1907-1908 ................. 186 CHAPTER VI DEFEATS AND VICTORIES, 1908-1914 .................................... 252 CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION ............................................................................... 314 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 342 vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The three decades before the First World War were a period of intense militarism, and in the United Kingdom – with all due apologies to the National Service League – this meant navalism. That one single word has been used to explain a vast social, political, journalistic, and professional movement that had been sweeping both the nation and the navy for years. In 1884 First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Northbrook – the political head of the Royal Navy – confidently declared in Parliament that if the navy’s budget were increased he would not know how to spend it.1 Twenty-five years later the novelist James Blyth, in his mass-market cautionary tale about the German menace The Swoop of the Vulture, offered the following advice to the nation: “Ward off war by overwhelming power. Give up all, education (a useless incubus to 50% of the children), poor rates, old age pensions, what you will, give up all to the preservation of a navy which can terrorise the world.”2 What had changed? How had such fears of naval disaster overtaken a nation that prided itself on its hearts of oak? The navalist movement had captured Britain’s attention – a movement that paradoxically claimed the Royal Navy was weaker than at any point in its history while presiding over a total revolution in British naval technology 1 Roger Parkinson, The Late Victorian Navy: The Pre-Dreadnought Era and the Origins of the First World War (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2008), 92. 2 Johan A Höglund, Mobilising the Novel: The Literature of Imperialism and The First World War (Uppsala, Sweden: Reklam & Katalogtryck AB, 1997), 148. 1 and a concurrent unprecedented rise in naval budgets. This dissertation explores the creation, propagation, success and failure of directed navalism between 1884 and 1914. Directed navalism, for the purposes of this project, refers to the cooperation between and support of navalism among three elite national groups: serving naval officers at the level of captain and above (professionals), naval correspondents and editors working for large-circulation national newspapers and periodicals (press), and members of Parliament in both houses, from backbenchers to high Cabinet-level officials, who dealt with navalist issues during the course of their public service careers (politicians). Directed navalism was the bedrock upon which the more popular and ultimately more successful ‘soft’ navalism – penny dreadfuls, the Navy League, fundraising drives, fleet reviews – was built. The three groups of professionals, press and (to a lesser extent, particularly before 1900) politicians purposefully created and fostered the navalist movement. Navalism meant different things to each of the three, obtainable via different methods, but from 1884 onward they were able to put aside their differences in service to a broader movement. This unofficial partnership remained effective through the majority of the Edwardian period, but after the twin upheavals of Liberal electoral victory and First Sea Lord Sir John (Jacky) Fisher’s naval reforms in 1906 it began to be overtaken by partisanship, factionalism, and a general radicalization of both public and parliamentary navalism. The rise