which appeared in 1890, is widely regarded as the first important study of the relationship betwe... more which appeared in 1890, is widely regarded as the first important study of the relationship between naval affairs and international politics. Mahan subsequently published twenty-odd additional volumes that extended and elaborated the views presented in this book. On the present occasion, an article based upon the traditional summary of Mahan's main ideas could be justified as an obligatory nod to the U.S. Navy's intellectual heritage, or as an act of faith in the capacity of patristic writing to inspire strategic insight. Recent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that Mahan's thinking about sea power has been fundamentally misunderstood. This article will thus examine three areas where the new interpretation of Mahan affects consideration of problems that are of interest today. The first is naval and military cooperation when fighting in inland or coastal waters; the second is the nature and role of naval supremacy with respect to a complex world system of trade; and the third arises from the requirements of higher naval education in a period of rapid technological change. In other words, Mahan's work will be related to jointness and power projection from the sea, the expansion of the global economy, and the "revolution in naval affairs." There are three main arguments. First, Mahan believed that when one side in a conflict possessed
health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehe... more health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehensive analysis on the events that have shaped Canada, CHR publishes articles that examine Canadian history from both a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective.
ABSTRACT The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1304-1305 At the outbreak of the First World... more ABSTRACT The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1304-1305 At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Germany possessed a large and well-equipped battle fleet that rivaled that of Great Britain, the world's premier naval power. This circumstance was the product of little more than fifteen years of rapid German naval expansion directed by Alfred von Tirpitz, the State Secretary for the Naval Office from 1897 to 1916. Historians and political scientists have studied the phenomenon of German naval growth with respect to the growth of Anglo-German antagonism, as an archetypical "modern" strategic arms competition, and as a manifestation of social and political pathology that were important underlying causes of the Second as well as the First World War. In addition, scholars have investigated the naval activities of other powers during the same period. According to the author, the purpose of the present monograph is to compare the thinking of Germany's naval and political leadership about naval power with that of their foreign counterparts in order to address certain broad questions that have been raised by the existing scholarly literature but not in his view satisfactorily engaged or answered. To achieve his objective, Hobson has examined the books and articles of prominent and not so prominent contemporary theorists and policy-makers on naval affairs, and used his findings to consider recent scholarly discussions. His inquiry is based mainly on published writing augmented by "some new archival material" (p. 7). Hobson's three main arguments may be summarized as follows. First, German navalism did not pose a hegemonic threat to Europe. Second, Germany's naval strategy did not serve her actual naval strategic interests or, in Hobson's words, "whether Germany pursued an offensive or defensive policy, from the point of view of national security the Tirpitz Plan was a waste of money" (p. 330). And third, German navalism did not differ significantly from that of other countries, and cannot, therefore, be viewed as "a peculiarly aggressive form of expansionism" (p. 331). Hobson's assessments are plausible, but were reached by a process of reasoning that is by no means as comprehensive or rigorous as might appear to be the case. Hobson asserts that the Tirpitz plan "can only be understood in the context of the ideology of sea power" (p. 247). His consideration of the intellectual origins and character of Tirpitzian navalism, however, is based upon an examination of the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan (Chapter 4) that is imprecise and incomplete. Hobson presents Tirpitz's advocacy of the major strategic utility of a defensive fleet as inconsistent with the thinking of Mahan, when in fact the concept of a "risk fleet" was not only articulated by the American as early as in 1890, but repeatedly presented as an important justification for American naval expansion in subsequent years [see Jon Sumida, Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command, p. 132]. The central feature of Tirpitz's strategic thought may thus have been derived from Mahan and was arguably sound in principle, policy failure arising from flaws in diplomatic execution and unfortunate circumstances rather than theoretical shortcomings. The preceding raises the question of whether something as complex and difficult as naval policy can be reduced to a matter of ideas about reality generated in the past by national leaders and in the present by academics, and engaged with the tools of intellectual history. Hobson's approach begs too many questions about the nature of navies as institutions, whose capabilities relative to each other and a challenging physical environment (the sea) were changing rapidly in the industrial era. Sound comparisons of national approaches to sea power in the twentieth century will have to be based upon detailed knowledge about naval technology, economics, finance, administration, manning, operational practice, strategic perspective, and the connections of these subjects to domestic politics and foreign policy, in several countries. We are not there yet.
ABSTRACT The author of this monograph selects what he regards as the salient strategic principles... more ABSTRACT The author of this monograph selects what he regards as the salient strategic principles of the American naval strategic theorist and historian Alfred Thayer Mahan, and then uses these principles to assess the rightness or wrongness of American and Japanese strategic and operational behavior in the Second World War. Adams divides Mahan’s thought into two grand postulates and five subordinate propositions. The two grand postulates are “No nation can become a great world power without a great navy. Overseas colonies are required to support naval bases on which to project a globe-girdling navy” and naval warfare is characterized by a rapid stream of events presenting incomplete and conflicting information about the true state of affairs. The sine qua non of the naval officer is to employ his judgment to separate the critical from the peripheral and to make rapid decisions that shape and dominate the action before conditions change yet again” (pp. 3–4). Adams’s five subordinate propositions are: “The objective of your fleet is to destroy the enemy fleet. . . . Never divide the fleet. . . . the nation that would rule the sea must always attack. . . . Well-trained crews and officers who understand war are decisive fleet attributes. Over time, the better leadership will prevail. . . . To interfere thus with the commander in the field . . . is generally disaster” (pp. 4–7). Adams’s justification for his methodology is based on his personal success in business, which he attributes to the application of sound principles of action. Space limitations preclude a comprehensive assessment of Adams’s findings. Prospective readers of this book should, however, consider the following. In the first place, Adams’s representation of Mahan’s thought is based upon his reading of one book, The Influence of Seapower upon History, 1660–1783. He did not take into consideration Mahan’s eighteen subsequent books. Adams also does not seem to have read either the standard critical biographies of Mahan (by W. D. Puleston and Robert Seager II), or the three volumes of Mahan correspondence. Other major works that might have broadened the author’s knowledge of Mahan are either not cited or if cited seem to have had little if any effect. In light of the foregoing, readers cannot (and indeed should not) have confidence in the author’s command of either Mahan’s thought or manner of thinking. In the second place, important secondary literature on the Pacific theater in the Second World War has been overlooked, including the books of Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully on Midway, H. P. Willmott on the early and late stages of the fighting at sea, and Mark Parillo on the Japanese merchant marine. Such lapses must raise serious doubt about Adams’s knowledge of state of the art historical writing on his main subject. These fundamental defects indicate the author has not developed a viable approach to the productive study of a broad, difficult, and complex subject. The central reality of the Pacific War, on which any realistic analysis of its conduct must rest, is that it was not possible for Japan to defeat the United States unaided. There was nothing the Imperial Japanese Navy could have done—nothing it could have seized or sunk—to alter the overwhelming imbalance of power and resources that, left undisturbed, would insure Japan’s defeat. As H.P. Willmott calculated long ago, if on December 7, 1941, the Japanese had contrived to sink not just the entirety of the Pacific Fleet, carriers and all, but in addition every other vessel in the United States Navy on that day, the American navy would still have been larger than Japan’s at the start of 1944; which is in fact when the “Biblical retribution” phase of the Pacific War began. Whence, then, did hope arise for the Japanese? Chiefly from the expectation that Germany would either win its war in Europe, or fight so long and hard that the eventual victors, including the United States, would lack the stomach to prosecute a major conflict in the Pacific. This expectation was not insane, merely mistaken, though it was a desperate gamble by any standard. Japan’s willingness to take it was reinforced, however, by the notion that the...
ABSTRACT This book’s subtitle requires explanation. By “economics,” Brauer and van Tuyll mean the... more ABSTRACT This book’s subtitle requires explanation. By “economics,” Brauer and van Tuyll mean the basic analytical principles of the field of economics, not the influence of economic factors on historical events. There is thus, as the authors admit, little about state finance (that is, taxation, borrowing, and expenditure), or the character of national security as a public good (p. 288), although the problem of economic mobilization for the purpose of war in a particular case is addressed in a chapter on strategic bombing. Instead, Brauer and van Tuyll contend that the entire history of armed conflict and preparation for armed conflict can be productively illuminated by viewing military decision-making in terms of six economic concepts. These are: opportunity cost; expected marginal costs and benefits; substitution; diminishing marginal returns; asymmetric information and hidden characteristics; and hidden actions and incentive alignments. Brauer and van Tuyll take a case study approach— that is, they attempt to show that the dynamics of six historical events and certain matters in the present can be understood in terms of the operation of economic principles. The subjects covered are the medieval castle and opportunity cost; mercenaries and the labor market in the Renaissance; decision to offer battle from 1618 to 1815 as a problem of cost/benefit assessment; the economics of information asymmetry in the American Civil War; diminishing marginal returns and the problem of the strategic bombing of Germany; capital-labor substitution and France’s decision to build an independent nuclear deterrent; and in the present the economic dimensions of terrorism, military manpower, and private military companies. Brauer and van Tuyll do not, as their subtitle seems to say, believe that their chosen set of economic principles “explain” the dynamics of military decision, but rather adopt the more moderate and to a degree more tenable position that the application of economic analysis can offer useful points of departure for productive historical reflection. In general, the chosen sample of historical subjects is open to the criticisms, as the authors concede, of being both small and capricious (pp. xvii, 39–42). Some chapters work better than others— for example the examination of mercenary contracts in the Renaissance, a subject whose basic nature is economic, struck this reader as useful, while the consideration of commanddecision with respect to the problem of offering battle, a subject fraught with psychological complexity and difficulty and not only a matter of strategic logic, seems highly reductionist, and thus unpersuasive. In the opening to their final chapter, Brauer and van Tuyll state that their analysis had imposed “a framework of thought on ages in which the principles we discuss were not yet articulated, at least in a formal sense,” and that “such is the role of science and scholarship” (p. 287). Military historians who believe that the past ought to be understood in terms of the actual and particular especially when it comes to the matter of decision-making motive, with due appreciation of the enormous play of chance and personality, will find such an approach to history and characterization of the nature of all critical inquiry, problematical, if not fundamentally misguided. Ceteris paribus (“all other things being equal”), the economist’s dodge, is the historian’s bane.
ISBN 0-714-65702-6. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 321. £60.00. ... more ISBN 0-714-65702-6. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 321. £60.00. T HE main subject of this book is the development of British naval fire control in the early twentieth century. The story is told in the form of a comparative technical history of the two principal competing systems of sight-setting for capital ship heavy artillery, the Dreyer Table invented by Captain Frederic Dreyer and the Argo system invented by
... INVENTING GRAND STRATEGY AND TEACHING COMMAND The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of ... Criti... more ... INVENTING GRAND STRATEGY AND TEACHING COMMAND The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of ... Critique of Engineering and Administrative Mindsets 61 Principles of Strategy and Their ... Changes of Opinion 80 Anglo-American Naval Consortium 82 Uncertain Prophet 92 ...
The International Journal of Maritime History, Dec 1, 2011
members of the government share his ideas, but also that Tirpitz himself, throughout his lifetime... more members of the government share his ideas, but also that Tirpitz himself, throughout his lifetime, was deeply convinced that he had indeed put forward a grand design both to make Germany a world power and to help stabilize the domestic situation. Nevertheless, Kelly's book is a great achievement Well written and based on new sources, his biography of Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz allows the reader deep insights into the life of a man who played a very important role at the tum of the last century and who, like almost nobody else, shaped German policy.
gued that the effective deployment of naval force had determined the outcomes of the great Europe... more gued that the effective deployment of naval force had determined the outcomes of the great European wars of the eighteenth century. Many, if not most, readers believed that this historical survey was the basis of related major arguments that were applicable to the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first was that naval supremacy was the prerequisite to economic prosperity and international political preeminence. The second was that naval supremacy could be achieved only through the possession of large numbers of battleships, which were always to be kept together in order to be able to contain or destroy enemy battleship fleets. The notion of the naval supremacy of a single country based upon battleships united in accordance with the principle of concentration of force thus became identified as the essence of Mahanian strategic theory. In effect, geopolitical and naval operational strategic lines of argument were conflated into a recipe for policy that was supposed to be universally valid. Such an understanding of what were widely believed to be the two main components of Mahan's thinking, however, was seriously flawed. In the first place, Mahan actually believed that naval supremacy in his own time and in the future would be wielded by a transnational consortium of naval powers acting in defense of a global system of free trade to the mutual benefit of participating parties. Secondly, Mahan's treatment of the principle of concentration of force in his most popular book was heavily conditioned by the Dr.
which appeared in 1890, is widely regarded as the first important study of the relationship betwe... more which appeared in 1890, is widely regarded as the first important study of the relationship between naval affairs and international politics. Mahan subsequently published twenty-odd additional volumes that extended and elaborated the views presented in this book. On the present occasion, an article based upon the traditional summary of Mahan's main ideas could be justified as an obligatory nod to the U.S. Navy's intellectual heritage, or as an act of faith in the capacity of patristic writing to inspire strategic insight. Recent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that Mahan's thinking about sea power has been fundamentally misunderstood. This article will thus examine three areas where the new interpretation of Mahan affects consideration of problems that are of interest today. The first is naval and military cooperation when fighting in inland or coastal waters; the second is the nature and role of naval supremacy with respect to a complex world system of trade; and the third arises from the requirements of higher naval education in a period of rapid technological change. In other words, Mahan's work will be related to jointness and power projection from the sea, the expansion of the global economy, and the "revolution in naval affairs." There are three main arguments. First, Mahan believed that when one side in a conflict possessed
health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehe... more health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehensive analysis on the events that have shaped Canada, CHR publishes articles that examine Canadian history from both a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective.
ABSTRACT The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1304-1305 At the outbreak of the First World... more ABSTRACT The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1304-1305 At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Germany possessed a large and well-equipped battle fleet that rivaled that of Great Britain, the world's premier naval power. This circumstance was the product of little more than fifteen years of rapid German naval expansion directed by Alfred von Tirpitz, the State Secretary for the Naval Office from 1897 to 1916. Historians and political scientists have studied the phenomenon of German naval growth with respect to the growth of Anglo-German antagonism, as an archetypical "modern" strategic arms competition, and as a manifestation of social and political pathology that were important underlying causes of the Second as well as the First World War. In addition, scholars have investigated the naval activities of other powers during the same period. According to the author, the purpose of the present monograph is to compare the thinking of Germany's naval and political leadership about naval power with that of their foreign counterparts in order to address certain broad questions that have been raised by the existing scholarly literature but not in his view satisfactorily engaged or answered. To achieve his objective, Hobson has examined the books and articles of prominent and not so prominent contemporary theorists and policy-makers on naval affairs, and used his findings to consider recent scholarly discussions. His inquiry is based mainly on published writing augmented by "some new archival material" (p. 7). Hobson's three main arguments may be summarized as follows. First, German navalism did not pose a hegemonic threat to Europe. Second, Germany's naval strategy did not serve her actual naval strategic interests or, in Hobson's words, "whether Germany pursued an offensive or defensive policy, from the point of view of national security the Tirpitz Plan was a waste of money" (p. 330). And third, German navalism did not differ significantly from that of other countries, and cannot, therefore, be viewed as "a peculiarly aggressive form of expansionism" (p. 331). Hobson's assessments are plausible, but were reached by a process of reasoning that is by no means as comprehensive or rigorous as might appear to be the case. Hobson asserts that the Tirpitz plan "can only be understood in the context of the ideology of sea power" (p. 247). His consideration of the intellectual origins and character of Tirpitzian navalism, however, is based upon an examination of the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan (Chapter 4) that is imprecise and incomplete. Hobson presents Tirpitz's advocacy of the major strategic utility of a defensive fleet as inconsistent with the thinking of Mahan, when in fact the concept of a "risk fleet" was not only articulated by the American as early as in 1890, but repeatedly presented as an important justification for American naval expansion in subsequent years [see Jon Sumida, Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command, p. 132]. The central feature of Tirpitz's strategic thought may thus have been derived from Mahan and was arguably sound in principle, policy failure arising from flaws in diplomatic execution and unfortunate circumstances rather than theoretical shortcomings. The preceding raises the question of whether something as complex and difficult as naval policy can be reduced to a matter of ideas about reality generated in the past by national leaders and in the present by academics, and engaged with the tools of intellectual history. Hobson's approach begs too many questions about the nature of navies as institutions, whose capabilities relative to each other and a challenging physical environment (the sea) were changing rapidly in the industrial era. Sound comparisons of national approaches to sea power in the twentieth century will have to be based upon detailed knowledge about naval technology, economics, finance, administration, manning, operational practice, strategic perspective, and the connections of these subjects to domestic politics and foreign policy, in several countries. We are not there yet.
ABSTRACT The author of this monograph selects what he regards as the salient strategic principles... more ABSTRACT The author of this monograph selects what he regards as the salient strategic principles of the American naval strategic theorist and historian Alfred Thayer Mahan, and then uses these principles to assess the rightness or wrongness of American and Japanese strategic and operational behavior in the Second World War. Adams divides Mahan’s thought into two grand postulates and five subordinate propositions. The two grand postulates are “No nation can become a great world power without a great navy. Overseas colonies are required to support naval bases on which to project a globe-girdling navy” and naval warfare is characterized by a rapid stream of events presenting incomplete and conflicting information about the true state of affairs. The sine qua non of the naval officer is to employ his judgment to separate the critical from the peripheral and to make rapid decisions that shape and dominate the action before conditions change yet again” (pp. 3–4). Adams’s five subordinate propositions are: “The objective of your fleet is to destroy the enemy fleet. . . . Never divide the fleet. . . . the nation that would rule the sea must always attack. . . . Well-trained crews and officers who understand war are decisive fleet attributes. Over time, the better leadership will prevail. . . . To interfere thus with the commander in the field . . . is generally disaster” (pp. 4–7). Adams’s justification for his methodology is based on his personal success in business, which he attributes to the application of sound principles of action. Space limitations preclude a comprehensive assessment of Adams’s findings. Prospective readers of this book should, however, consider the following. In the first place, Adams’s representation of Mahan’s thought is based upon his reading of one book, The Influence of Seapower upon History, 1660–1783. He did not take into consideration Mahan’s eighteen subsequent books. Adams also does not seem to have read either the standard critical biographies of Mahan (by W. D. Puleston and Robert Seager II), or the three volumes of Mahan correspondence. Other major works that might have broadened the author’s knowledge of Mahan are either not cited or if cited seem to have had little if any effect. In light of the foregoing, readers cannot (and indeed should not) have confidence in the author’s command of either Mahan’s thought or manner of thinking. In the second place, important secondary literature on the Pacific theater in the Second World War has been overlooked, including the books of Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully on Midway, H. P. Willmott on the early and late stages of the fighting at sea, and Mark Parillo on the Japanese merchant marine. Such lapses must raise serious doubt about Adams’s knowledge of state of the art historical writing on his main subject. These fundamental defects indicate the author has not developed a viable approach to the productive study of a broad, difficult, and complex subject. The central reality of the Pacific War, on which any realistic analysis of its conduct must rest, is that it was not possible for Japan to defeat the United States unaided. There was nothing the Imperial Japanese Navy could have done—nothing it could have seized or sunk—to alter the overwhelming imbalance of power and resources that, left undisturbed, would insure Japan’s defeat. As H.P. Willmott calculated long ago, if on December 7, 1941, the Japanese had contrived to sink not just the entirety of the Pacific Fleet, carriers and all, but in addition every other vessel in the United States Navy on that day, the American navy would still have been larger than Japan’s at the start of 1944; which is in fact when the “Biblical retribution” phase of the Pacific War began. Whence, then, did hope arise for the Japanese? Chiefly from the expectation that Germany would either win its war in Europe, or fight so long and hard that the eventual victors, including the United States, would lack the stomach to prosecute a major conflict in the Pacific. This expectation was not insane, merely mistaken, though it was a desperate gamble by any standard. Japan’s willingness to take it was reinforced, however, by the notion that the...
ABSTRACT This book’s subtitle requires explanation. By “economics,” Brauer and van Tuyll mean the... more ABSTRACT This book’s subtitle requires explanation. By “economics,” Brauer and van Tuyll mean the basic analytical principles of the field of economics, not the influence of economic factors on historical events. There is thus, as the authors admit, little about state finance (that is, taxation, borrowing, and expenditure), or the character of national security as a public good (p. 288), although the problem of economic mobilization for the purpose of war in a particular case is addressed in a chapter on strategic bombing. Instead, Brauer and van Tuyll contend that the entire history of armed conflict and preparation for armed conflict can be productively illuminated by viewing military decision-making in terms of six economic concepts. These are: opportunity cost; expected marginal costs and benefits; substitution; diminishing marginal returns; asymmetric information and hidden characteristics; and hidden actions and incentive alignments. Brauer and van Tuyll take a case study approach— that is, they attempt to show that the dynamics of six historical events and certain matters in the present can be understood in terms of the operation of economic principles. The subjects covered are the medieval castle and opportunity cost; mercenaries and the labor market in the Renaissance; decision to offer battle from 1618 to 1815 as a problem of cost/benefit assessment; the economics of information asymmetry in the American Civil War; diminishing marginal returns and the problem of the strategic bombing of Germany; capital-labor substitution and France’s decision to build an independent nuclear deterrent; and in the present the economic dimensions of terrorism, military manpower, and private military companies. Brauer and van Tuyll do not, as their subtitle seems to say, believe that their chosen set of economic principles “explain” the dynamics of military decision, but rather adopt the more moderate and to a degree more tenable position that the application of economic analysis can offer useful points of departure for productive historical reflection. In general, the chosen sample of historical subjects is open to the criticisms, as the authors concede, of being both small and capricious (pp. xvii, 39–42). Some chapters work better than others— for example the examination of mercenary contracts in the Renaissance, a subject whose basic nature is economic, struck this reader as useful, while the consideration of commanddecision with respect to the problem of offering battle, a subject fraught with psychological complexity and difficulty and not only a matter of strategic logic, seems highly reductionist, and thus unpersuasive. In the opening to their final chapter, Brauer and van Tuyll state that their analysis had imposed “a framework of thought on ages in which the principles we discuss were not yet articulated, at least in a formal sense,” and that “such is the role of science and scholarship” (p. 287). Military historians who believe that the past ought to be understood in terms of the actual and particular especially when it comes to the matter of decision-making motive, with due appreciation of the enormous play of chance and personality, will find such an approach to history and characterization of the nature of all critical inquiry, problematical, if not fundamentally misguided. Ceteris paribus (“all other things being equal”), the economist’s dodge, is the historian’s bane.
ISBN 0-714-65702-6. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 321. £60.00. ... more ISBN 0-714-65702-6. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 321. £60.00. T HE main subject of this book is the development of British naval fire control in the early twentieth century. The story is told in the form of a comparative technical history of the two principal competing systems of sight-setting for capital ship heavy artillery, the Dreyer Table invented by Captain Frederic Dreyer and the Argo system invented by
... INVENTING GRAND STRATEGY AND TEACHING COMMAND The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of ... Criti... more ... INVENTING GRAND STRATEGY AND TEACHING COMMAND The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of ... Critique of Engineering and Administrative Mindsets 61 Principles of Strategy and Their ... Changes of Opinion 80 Anglo-American Naval Consortium 82 Uncertain Prophet 92 ...
The International Journal of Maritime History, Dec 1, 2011
members of the government share his ideas, but also that Tirpitz himself, throughout his lifetime... more members of the government share his ideas, but also that Tirpitz himself, throughout his lifetime, was deeply convinced that he had indeed put forward a grand design both to make Germany a world power and to help stabilize the domestic situation. Nevertheless, Kelly's book is a great achievement Well written and based on new sources, his biography of Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz allows the reader deep insights into the life of a man who played a very important role at the tum of the last century and who, like almost nobody else, shaped German policy.
gued that the effective deployment of naval force had determined the outcomes of the great Europe... more gued that the effective deployment of naval force had determined the outcomes of the great European wars of the eighteenth century. Many, if not most, readers believed that this historical survey was the basis of related major arguments that were applicable to the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first was that naval supremacy was the prerequisite to economic prosperity and international political preeminence. The second was that naval supremacy could be achieved only through the possession of large numbers of battleships, which were always to be kept together in order to be able to contain or destroy enemy battleship fleets. The notion of the naval supremacy of a single country based upon battleships united in accordance with the principle of concentration of force thus became identified as the essence of Mahanian strategic theory. In effect, geopolitical and naval operational strategic lines of argument were conflated into a recipe for policy that was supposed to be universally valid. Such an understanding of what were widely believed to be the two main components of Mahan's thinking, however, was seriously flawed. In the first place, Mahan actually believed that naval supremacy in his own time and in the future would be wielded by a transnational consortium of naval powers acting in defense of a global system of free trade to the mutual benefit of participating parties. Secondly, Mahan's treatment of the principle of concentration of force in his most popular book was heavily conditioned by the Dr.
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