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The Transformation of British and American Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era

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The Transformation of British and American Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era The Transformation of British and American Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era Robert E. Mullins Edited by John Beeler The Transformation of British and American Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era Ideas, Culture and Strategy Robert E. Mullins Chevy Chase , Maryland , USA Editor John Beeler University of Alabama Tuscaloosa , Alabama , USA ISBN 978-3-319-32036-6 ISBN 978-3-319-32037-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-32037-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952626 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover image: HMS Royal Sovereign, courtesy US Naval History and Heritage Command, NC55491-1 Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland EDITOR’S IN TRODUCTION To appreciate the signifi cance of Dr. Robert Mullins’ comparative study of British and American naval policy in the late 1880s contained in this vol- ume, it is fi rst necessary to survey previous historiography on both navies. For decades Arthur Jacob Marder’s work on the Royal Navy from 1880 to the end of World War I was regarded as defi nitive. No less a fi gure than Sir John Keegan once opined that Marder’s research and analysis “defi ed bet- terment,” and similar praise emanated from other prominent historians. 1 On the other side of the Atlantic, accounts of the US Navy’s transforma- tion from a commerce-raiding and coastal defense posture to a battleship- oriented force designed to fi ght fl eet actions have been dominated by the theories, publications, and infl uence of Alfred Thayer Mahan, with little attention paid to the curious chronological fact that that transformation began in the 1880s, well prior to Mahan’s infl uence within the service, much less his celebrity outside of it. Recent scholarship, however, has contested much of the established his- toriography. The past two-and-a-half decades have witnessed a sustained assault on parts of Marder’s scholarly oeuvre. While Ruddock McKay’s biography of Admiral Sir John Fisher (1973) fi rst raised questions about the thoroughness of Marder’s research and the soundness of his conclu- sions, wholesale revision began with Jon Sumida’s In Defence of Naval Supremacy (1989), which argues that Marder’s account of the motives for Fisher’s reforms during his initial tenure as First Sea Lord (1904–10) was misleading. Rather than being driven principally by external factors— foreign naval threats, in particular the rise of the German Navy—Sumida maintains that they stemmed in large part from domestic pressures, in v vi EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION particular the political need to get more bang from the Royal Navy’s exist- ing budget. Extending Sumida’s critique, Nicholas Lambert’s Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution (1999) takes direct aim at Marder’s “Dreadnought - centric ” interpretation, arguing that Fisher preferred battlecruisers and submarines to battleships, and an imperial defense scheme centered on fl otilla defense for the home islands and commerce-raiding interdiction for the empire to a massive fl eet of capital ships. While neither Sumida’s nor Lambert’s interpretation has gone unchallenged, nor is Marder’s extolled in the ringing terms it was a generation ago. But neither Sumida nor Lambert pay close attention to the 1880s and 1890s, the years covered by Marder’s fi rst, and in many respects best, monograph, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era, 1880–1905 (1940). Sumida begins with the Naval Defence Act of 1889, but devotes fewer than thirty pages of In Defence of Naval Supremacy to the years prior to 1904. Lambert’s study, as sug- gested by its title, focuses on Fisher’s initial tenure as First Sea Lord. The circumstances surrounding the Naval Defence Act’s passage are therefore offstage in both accounts. Nor has any other scholar given sustained scrutiny to Marder’s take on British naval policy leading up to the Naval Defence Act in the three- quarters of a century since its appearance. Roger Parkinson’s The Late Victorian Navy (2008) differs with Marder on whether that legislation constituted a proportional response to foreign naval threats, but does not question the reality of those threats, thereby adopting, whether deliber- ately or not, his interpretational framework. Shawn Grimes’ Strategy and War Planning, 1887–1918 (2012) challenges Marder’s assertion that the Royal Navy’s strategic planning in the late 1880s and afterward was ama- teurish, but does not interrogate his narrative of the “navy scare” of 1888, which resulted in the Naval Defence Act’s introduction and passage. In short, Marder’s account of British naval policy in the 1880s remains the default treatment despite its age. For that reason alone, Dr. Mullins’ study constitutes a major addition to the historical literature. It systematically explores the circumstances surrounding the Naval Defence Act’s genesis in a manner that Marder did not, drawing on reams of Foreign Intelligence Committee (FIC) and Naval Intelligence Department (NID) reports that he either did not or was not allowed to consult. On the basis of those reports, and on public and political discourse in Britain during 1888, Dr. Mullins concludes that EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION vii the threat of a Franco-Russian naval alliance, on which Marder’s interpre- tation hinged, was not so much exaggerated as non-existent. Moreover, he pays far closer attention than did Marder to the public relations blitz initiated by Captain Lord Charles Beresford, MP, in the spring of 1888, especially to its central role in pressuring Lord Salisbury’s Conservative government into acquiescing to the appointment of a Select Committee to examine the Navy Estimates, a Royal Commission on the relation of the Military and Naval departments to the Treasury, and, ulti- mately, to introducing the Naval Defence Bill itself. In doing so, he reveals that Marder’s narrative of the 1888 navy scare to be as wide of the mark as his analysis of French and Russian naval capabilities and ambitions, and that his attributing to Lord Salisbury the impetus for the Naval Defence Act was equally off-target. Beresford and his allies—one is tempted to label them “co-conspirators”—were the driving force behind the bill’s introduction and passage, and their unprecedented intervention in the public debate on British naval policy had portentous implications for its future direction. As a consequence of Dr. Mullins’ research and analysis, we now have a reliable account of the navy scare of 1888 and its political and legisla- tive fallout. Its importance can hardly be overstated. The Naval Defence Act, its formal enunciation of the “Two-Power Standard” as the yardstick for determining battle fl eet strength, and its unprecedented peacetime shipbuilding program—seventy vessels total, including ten battleships and more than forty cruisers—was a transformational event in the history of modern British naval policy, one with profound political, foreign pol- icy, and even constitutional implications, yet one whose signifi cance has been largely overshadowed by the Anglo-German naval race and Fisher’s exploits, colorful language, and penchant for self-promotion. Prior to 1888–89, assessments of the Royal Navy’s force requirements were typically made in private by political and professional insiders on the basis of up-to-date and accurate knowledge of rivals’ existing forces and building programs, coupled with appreciation of the fi scal constraints under which the government labored. Professional opinion—not infre- quently prone to alarmism—was therefore tempered by political prudence and fi nancial considerations. Beresford’s agitation upended this method of conducting business, replacing it with one in which strength assessments and the Navy’s needs were increasingly calculated and determined by (often disgruntled and usually alarmist) professionals through the expedient of enlisting public viii EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION and press support to coerce reluctant governments, both Conservative and Liberal, into doing their bidding. Civilian control over the course of naval policy, previously a constitutional sine qua non, was thus contested. To be sure, this transformation owed much to larger social, cultural, and political developments, in particular the spread of literacy, the growth of the popular newspaper press, and the expansion of the electorate. Nor can the infl uence of growing foreign economic competition, Social Darwinist pseudo-scientifi c theories, nationalism, and the late nineteenth- century imperialist frenzy be discounted when examining the reasons for Beresford’s success. Yet whether that success owed chiefl y to the “spirit of the age” (to which Marder rightly called attention), or to Beresford’s own fl are for publicity and self-aggrandizement, his campaign set the mold for British naval policy through World War I, as suggested by the predictably fre- quent navy scares over the following quarter century: 1893–94, 1896, 1898, 1902–03; 1907, and 1909.
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