Doing naval history : essays toward improvement

176 Pages·1995·10.4 MB·English

by  Hattendorf, John B.

DOING NAVAL HISTORY
low&rcl Improvement
JtLssays
Edited by
John B. Hattendorf
ErnestJ. King Professor ofMaritime History
Naval War College

DOING NAVAL HISTORY
Naval War College
Historical Monograph Series
No. 13
The Historical Monograph series are book-length studies of the history of naval
warfare, edited historical documents, conference proceedings, andbibliographies. They
are the products ofthe Naval War College's historical studies and are based, wholly or
in part, on source materials in the College's Naval Historical Collection. Financial
support for research projects, conference support and printing is provided by the Naval
War College Foundation.
Other volumes in the series are:
No. 1. The Writings ofStephen B. Luce, edited byJohn D. Hayes andJohn B. Hattendorf
(1975).
No. 2. Charleston Blockade: TheJournals ofJohn B. Marchand, U.S. Navy, 1861-1862,
edited by Craig L. Symonds (1976).
No. 3. Professors ofWar: The Naval War Collegeandthe Developmentofthe Naval Profession,
by Ronald Spector (1977).
No. 4. The Blue Sword: The Naval War College and theAmerican Mission, 1919-1941, by
Michael Vlahos (1980).
No. 5. On His Majesty's Service: Observations of the British Home Fleetfrom the Diary,
Reports, and Letters ofJoseph H. Wellings, Assistant Naval Attache", London, 1940-41,
edited byJohn B. Hattendorf(1983).
No. 6. Angelon the Yardarm: TheBeginningsofFleetRadarDefenseandtheKamikaze Threat,
byJohn Monsarrat (1985).
A
No. 7. Bibliography of the Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, compiled by John B.
Hattendorfand Lynn C. Hattendorf(1986).
No. 8. The FraternityoftheBlue Uniform:AdmiralRichard G. Colbert, U.S.Navy, andAllied
Naval Cooperation, byJoel Sokolsky (1991).
J.
No. 9. The Influence ofHistory on Mahan: The Proceedings ofa Conference Marking the
Centenary ofAlfred Thayer Mohan's "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,
1660-1783," edited byJohn B. Hattendorf(1991).
No. 10. Mahan Is Not Enough: The Proceedings ofa Conference on the Works ofSirJulian
Corbett and Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, edited by James Goldrick and John B.
Hattendorf(1993).
No. 11. UbiSumus?: The StateofNavalandMaritimeHistory, editedbyJohnB. Hattendorf
(1994).
No. 12. The Queenstoum Patrol, 1911: TheJournal ofCommanderJoseph Knefler Taussig,
U.S. Navy, edited by William N. Still,Jr. (1995).
NAVAL
DOING HISTORY
Improvement
itlfssays 1 ©ware.
Edited by
John B. Hattendorf
Ernest King Professor ofMaritime History
J.
Naval War College
NAVAL WAR COLLEGE PRESS
Newport, Rhode Island
1995
——
The cover illustration is from the
collections ofthe Naval War College Museum,
Newport, Rhode Island, and
taken from O. Davidson's "The President's
— J.
Vacation Manoeuvres ofthe North Atlantic Squadron,"
Hayer's Weekly, vol. XXVIII, no. 1446 (6 September 1884),
pp. 582-83, illustrating a report that President Chester A. Arthur
visited the Naval Torpedo Station and observed fleet exercises at
Newport, RJiode Island, on 28 August 1884.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doing naval history: essays toward improvement/edited byJohn B.
Hattendorf.
—
p. cm. (Naval War College historical monograph series; no. 13)
"This volume had its origins in the papers presented at the Second
Yale-Naval War College Conference held at the Paul Mellon
British Art Center in New Haven, Connecticut, 2—4June 1994"
Acknowledgments.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-884733-06-9
— — —
1. Naval history, Modern 19th century Historiography Con-
—
gresses. 2. Naval history, Modern 20th
— —
century Historiography Congresses. 3. Naval art and science
— —
Histo—ry Historiography Congresses. I. Hattendorf, John B. II.
Yale Naval War College Conference (2nd: 1994 New Haven,
:
Conn.) III. Series: U.S. Naval War College historical monograph
series; no. 13.
V51.D65 1995 95-21546
359'.009—dc20 CIP
Contents
About the Contributors vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
John B. Hattendorf
PART Bureaucracy and Technology
I:
1. The Problems ofModern Naval History 11
James Goldrick
2. Machines, Men, Manufacturing, Management and Money:
The Study ofNavies as Complex Organizations and the
Transformation ofTwentieth Century Naval History 25
John Tetsuro Sumida and David Alan Rosenberg
3. Navies, Politics, and Political Science 41
RobertJervis
PART
II: Domestic Politics
4. Navies and Domestic Factors 53
Volker Berghahn
5. Domestic Factors, Regime Characteristics, and Naval Forces ... 67
Wood
Robert S.
PART
III: Comparative History
6. Comparative Naval History 75
Paul G. Halpern
7. Some Mild and Radical Observations on Desiderata in
Comparative Naval History 93
William R. Thompson
PART
IV: General Naval History
8. Considerations on Writing a General Naval History 117
N.A.M. Rodger
Contents
vi
9. Toward a New Naval History 129
Dennis E. Showalter
PART
V: Reflections
10. Context and Approach in Naval History: Admiral Tirpitz
and the Origin ofFascism 143
Paul M. Kennedy
11. Hitting the Target: Perspectives on Doing Naval History 151
Mark R. Shulman
About the Contributors
Volker Berghahn is the J.P. Birkelund Professor of European History at
Brown University. While he has also written on business history, his works in
the field ofmilitary history include DerStahlhelm (1966); Der Tirpitz Plan (1971);
Militarism (1981) and, with Wilhelm Deist, an edition ofdocuments on Wilhel-
mian armaments policy (1988).
James Goldrick was born in 1958 andjoined the Royal Australian Navy in
1974. A Commander, he is currently Executive Officer ofHMAS Perth. Other
sea postings have included command ofHMAS Cessnock and exchange service
with the Royal Navy. His publications include The King's Ships Were at Sea: The
Warin theNorth Sea, August 1914-February 1915 (1984) and co-editingReflections
on the Royal Australian Navy (1991) and Mahan is Not Enough (1993).
Paul G. Halpern is Professor ofHistory at Florida State University. He is
the author of The Mediterranean Naval Situation, 1908-1914 (1971), The Naval
A
War in the Mediterranean, 1914-1918 (1987) and Naval History of World War I
(1994). He has edited four volumes for the Navy Records Society and has
recently completed a biography of the Austrian naval commander, Admiral
Anton Haus.
John B. Hattendorfis the ErnestJ. King Professor ofMaritime History and
Director ofthe AdvancedResearch Department at the U.S. NavalWar College,
Newport, Rhode Island. Among his most recentpublications, he has edited Ubi
Sumus? The State ofNaval and Maritime History (1994) and Maritime History in the
AgeofDiscovery:An Introduction (1995). He co-editedMahan is NotEnough (1993)
and British Naval Documents, 1204-1960 (1993).
Robert Jervis is Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Relations at
Columbia University. Among his recentpublications are TheMeaning ofthe Nuclear
Revolution (1989), which won the GrawemeyerAward for Ideas ImprovingWorld
Order, and The LogicofImages in InternationalRelations (1989). His Systems: Dynamics
and Effects will be published by Princeton University Press in 1997.
Paul M. Kennedy is Dilworth Professor ofHistory and Director ofInter-
national Security Studies atYale University. He is the authoror editorofthirteen
works, including The Rise and Fall ofBritish Naval Mastery (1976), Strategy and
Diplomacy (1983), The War Plans ofthe Great Powers (1979), The Rise and Fall of
the Great Powers (1987), Grand Strategies in War and Peace (1991), and Preparing
for the Twenty-First Century (1993).
N.A.M. Rodger is a former Assistant Keeper in the Public Record Office,
and now Anderson Research Fellow ofthe National Maritime Museum, where
he is working on a new naval history ofBritain. He has already published The
Wooden World, An Anatomy ofthe Georgian Navy (1986) and The Insatiable Earl:
A
Life ofJohn Montagu, Fourth Earl ofSandwich, 1118-1192 (1993.)
David A. Rosenberg is an associate professor of modern military and
diplomatic history at Temple University, Philadelphia. He received his B.A.
from American University (1970) and his M.A. (1971) and Ph.D. with Honors
(1983) from the University ofChicago. The author ofdozens ofessays, articles
and short monographs on post-World War II naval and military history and the
history ofnuclear strategy, he was awarded a five-yearJohn D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur fellowship in 1988. He is an intelligence officerin the U.S. Naval
Reserve who served on active duty with the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in
Operation Desert Storm.
Dennis E. Showalter is Professor ofHistory at The Colorado College. He
has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy,
and is author of numerous books and articles in the field of military history,
including Tannenberg: Clash ofEmpires (1991) and The Wars ofFrederick the Great
(1995).
Mark R. Shulman is author ofNavalism and the Emergence ofAmerican Sea
Power, 1882-1893 (1995), editorofAnAdmirals Yam: TheAutobiography ofHarris
Laning and co-editor of The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western
World (1994). Educated at Yale (B.A.), Oxford (M.St.) and the University of
California at Berkeley (Ph.D), he taught at Yale University and worked at the
National Strategy Information Center, beforejoining the faculty ofthe AirWar
College as Associate Professor ofMilitary and Diplomatic History.
Jon Tetsuro Sumida received his B.A. (1971) from the University of
California, Santa Cruz, and his M.A. (1974) and Ph.D., (1982) from the
University ofChicago. His books are The Pollen Papers: The Privately Circulated
Printed Works ofArthur Hungerford Pollen, 1901-1916 (1984) and In Defence of
Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914 (1989;
paperback edition, 1993). Dr. Sumida is an associate professor ofhistory at the
University ofMaryland, College Park.
William R. Thompson is Professor ofPolitical Science and Director ofthe
Centerforthe Study ofInternational Relations at Indiana University. In addition
to serving currently as an editor of International Studies Quarterly, he is also the
coauthor of The Great Powers and Global Struggle, 1490-1990 (1994) and Leading
Sectors and World Powers: The Coevolution ofGlobal Politics and Economics (1995).
Robert S. Wood is the Chester W. Nimitz Professor ofNational Security
Affairs and Dean ofthe Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the U.S. Naval War
College. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate ofStanford University and received
his master's degree and his doctorate from Harvard University. He has previously
served on the faculties of Harvard and the University of Virginia. He has
published widely and has authored, coauthored, edited and contributed to many
books, ofwhich his most recent is America the Vincible: U.S. Foreign Policyfor the
Twenty-First Century (1994).