Strategy and War Planning in the British Navy, 1887-1918 - 9781843836988

This book argues that, contrary to the view of existing scholarship, the Royal Navy did have a definitive war strategy from late Victorian times, that this was formulated in a professional manner, and was well thought-through. Based on extensive original research, the book shows that, faced by a perceived Franco-Russian naval threat, the Admiralty adopted an offensive strategy based on observational blockade/combined operations between 1888 to 1905, and that this strategy was modified after 1905 for war with Wilhelmine Germany. It shows how specific war plans aimed at Germany's naval and economic assets in the Baltic were formulated between 1906 and 1908 and that the strategy of primary distant blockade, formulated between 1897 and 1907, became a reality in late 1912 and not July 1914 as previously thought. The book also reveals that the Naval Intelligence Department, which took a lead in formulating these plans, was the Navy's de facto staff before 1910. Overall, the book demonstrates that there was a continuity underpinning British thinking about how to wage a naval war from the late nineteenth century through to the First World War, thereby overturning the widely accepted view that British naval war planning in this period was amateur and driven by personal political agendas. SHAWN T. GRIMES received his PhD in history from the University of London and has been a Lecturer in European History at the University of Saskatchewan.