The Late Victorian Navy: The Pre-Dreadnought Era and the Origins of the First World War Review

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(More customer reviews)There have been many books written about the Victorian Royal Navy in the past couple of generations, both scholarly and popular. So why should one pay a great deal of money for yet another? The reasons are as follows:
1.)Probably the best stated and most coherent non-technical explanation of the relationship between technology and warship design in this era.
2.)A realization that the naval race between nations in this time was about more than just battleships but just as seriously involved the smaller armored ships that became cruisers.
3.)A strong focus on British preoccupation on defense of trade in time of war and how perceptions of what was do-able had a strong influence on naval thought, policy, and procurement.
4.)A forthrightly skeptical view of the necessity and utility of the major buildup of the RN starting in 1889 with the Naval Defence Act.
5.)The effect of "current events" of the Victorian period on the thoughts and actions of policy makers and influencers.Why doesn't this book get five stars despite it's many merits? First, it based on a PhD thesis and sometimes reads like one. At 247 pages it is somewhat short for all the subject matter to be covered. None of the characters jump off the page and become alive as they do in some more technical studies that quote extensively from letters. Second, there is a lack of sufficient attention made to the international relations of Great Britain in this time frame and how the not so splendid sense of isolation developed. Lastly, there is a lack of any long term perpective on how Great Britain and her navy coped with a multipolar world in the 16th and 17th centuries, a bipolar world in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the re-emergence of a multipolar world int he late 19th and early 20th
centuries.
However, the author is working a second volume and I look forward to purchasing and reading it! Skip a good dinner for two one month and buy this book.

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