[.ca] Classic History Rise And Fall Of British Naval Mastery (ISBN 0141390476)

Single Causitive Theory in Action:
Paul Kennedy glosses over British naval ascendancy from pre-1600 to 1976. This is essentially an analysis in political economy, not military history. As usual, Kennedy maintains that the British fleet ruled the waves when their trade economy was on the rise (chiefly due to the headstart they got on industrialization) and declined with their relative decline in industrial productivity during 1890-1920. Issues like technological change, leadership or operational mistakes do not figure prominently in this account. The greatest British naval defeat in this period - the temporary loss of naval mastery off Yorktown in 1781, which led to American victory - had nothing to do with economics. Kennedy ignores the US fleet for the most part, such as the technological impact of the Civil War (e.g. the Monitor) and the US triumph in the Spanish-American War. There is a very blatant British bias here. Kennedy glosses over the various wars between 1600 and 1945 with no new insights or useful analysis. Mahan is trashed, while Mackinder's "heartland" geopolitics are praised. Kennedy's tone almost implies that British naval and industrial decline was inevitable, yet he offers no opinions about what they might have done otherwise. The key challenge for Britain was to match commitments with resources and sustainable forces (the "two war" strategy for dealing with crises in Pacific and Mediterranean in 1930s is similar to current US "2MRC" strategic dilemma). Maps are crude.

Repetition - shame really:
Kennedy, unfortunately, has extracted from his excelent 'Rise and Fall of the Great Powers' all of the 'bits' relating to the British Empire and expanded it somewhat in relation to the Royal Navy - but not much in the way of 'specialised' input. I was very disappointed with this.

First Major Work by An Eminent Historian:
This book was published in 1976, twelve years before the same author's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. In this, his first major work, Kennedy picks up the threads of an area of historical enquiry which had begun with Alfred Thayer Mahan's Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783. Kennedy traces the rise, apotheosis, and decline of the command of the seas which upon which rested the power of Britain and her Empire. Kennedy approaches the questions around British sea power from a geopolitical perspective, emphasizing the economic underpinnings of British sea power. As Kennedy admits in his introduction, he devotes relatively little attention to the individual battles and admirals who stand out in the story of the Royal Navy. No attention is paid to life on the lower decks. That, however, was never Kennedy's purpose. Some of the analysis now seems rather dated, based as it is on sources which have been partly superseded by historiographical advances. Nevertheless, it stands as a fascinating work, taking in the sweep of international developments from an Olympian perspective.