Seapower in an Age of Rivalry

A bold and wide-ranging reassessment of British seapower on the cusp of the First World War. In the decade and a half before the First World War, Britain was at the height of its global dominance and British seapower played an increasingly important role in national life. The sea enriched the country in peacetime and the sea was expected to play a pivotal role in any future global conflict. Focusing on all the elements of seapower--military, political, commercial and economic--leading naval historian Matthew Seligmann offers a thoroughgoing reassessment of Britain's relationship with the sea in this crucial, but much misunderstood, period. Utilizing previously unused and underused archival sources, he shows that most existing interpretations of the period have fallen for the erroneous and self-serving narrative spun by Admiral Sir John 'Jacky' Fisher: that a conservative establishment needed to be shocked by his efforts into radical change and that it was only due to his foresight and labours that Britain was first made ready for war and then saved from disaster in 1914. In reality, there were many figures driving necessary change and Fisher, in particular, did as much to hinder this progress as to push it forward. Thus, Britain's readiness for maritime conflict in 1914, such as it was, was often in spite of rather than because of his efforts. In so doing, the book contests the popular idea of a 'Fisher Revolution', decentres figures like Fisher and Churchill from the explanatory framework, and offers instead an original and provocative interpretation of British naval and maritime developments on the eve of world war.