Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652-1862 (Classics of Naval Literature) Review

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(More customer reviews)I read this study for a military history course at the University of Michigan in 1979. My professor, John Shy, considered it then to be the most outstanding single work on the economics of wooden navies in the sailing era. I bought the book used years ago and am now very glad I did. I note with amazement that Amazon offers a used copy for $242. I would desire that this work be returned to publication, especially in eformat for Kindles and Nooks.

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First published in 1926 as part of the Harvard EconomicStudies series, this work was awarded the David A. Wells Prize and hasbeen considered the standard reference on the subject ever since. Itestablished for the first time the indivisible relationship betweentimber supply and sea power, and how this union influenced navalarchitecture and international law, as well as foreign, colonial,commercial, and forest policies. The result of an exhaustive,international research effort, the book also has been acknowledged bynaval historians to be one of the very early attempts to broaden navalhistory into a serious study of logistics and supply and of technologyand operations.In a delightfully absorbing prose rare for such studies, Robert Albionrelates these pivotal issues throughout the two-hundred-year periodthat saw most of the greatest naval wars of the Age of Sail, from theFirst Dutch War of 1652 to the introduction of the ironclad early inthe American Civil War. The author explores how the timber supplyproblem affected other European maritime powers and their far-flungcolonies, explains how it was driven by the conservatism andcorruption of official bureaus and rapacious landowners conducting thebusiness, and offers a fascinating portrait of the contemporarylogging and timber transport industries.An introductory essay has been written for this new Classics editionby Timothy Bean, a lecturer at the department of war studies at theRoyal Military Academy Sandhurst and a specialist in earlyeighteenth-century naval history. His essay examines Albion's uniquecontributions to the understanding of the relationship between themilitary and commerce and applies Navy timber supply issues totwentieth-century problems with oil supplies.