The Marine Corps Search for a Mission, 1880-1898 (Modern War Studies) [Hardcover]

Jack Shulimson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0700606084 | ISBN-13: 978-0700606085 | Publication Date: November 1, 1993

Heirs to a storied past and glamorized as modern-day knights, the Marine Corps-the elite fighting force in America's military-in fact has not always been so highly regarded. As Jack Shulimson shows, only a century ago the Corps' identity and existence were much in question. Although the Marines were formally established by Congress in 1798 and subsequently distinguished themselves fighting on the Barbary Coast, their essential mission and identity remained unclear throughout most of the nineteenth century. But amid the crosscurrents of industrialization, technological change, professionalization, and reform that emerged I Gilded Age America, the Corps underwent a gradual transformation that ultimately secured its significant and enduring military role. In this enlightening study, Shulimson argues that the Marine Corps officers' inextricable ties to the Navy both hampered and aided their attempt to define their own special jurisdiction and professional identity. Often treated like a poor relation, the Marine officers frequently found themselves in direct competition with their counterparts in the Navy and at times the object of the latter's scorn. Shulimson reveals the processes, politics, and personalities that converged to create these tense and sometimes embattled relations, but he goes on to show how Marine officers (with the Navy's blessing) eventually transcended their second-class role.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"The definitive study of the Gilded Age Marine Corps."--Allan R. Millett, author of Semper Fidelis: The History of the U.S. Marine Corps

"A lively recounting of the formative years of the modern Marine Corps. This book will be of interest and value to all historians of the United States Navy and Marine Corps and can be read with profit as well by anyone concerned with the process of modernization in late nineteenth-century America."--Graham A. Cosmas, coauthor of The U.S. Marines in Vietnam: Vietnamization and Redeployment, 1970-1971

"No other book is as detailed or enlightening on the question of the evolution of Marine Corps professionalism. . . .Includes some fascinating descriptions of Marine Corps life."--Carol Reardon, author of Soldiers and Scholars: The U.S. Army and the Uses of Military History, 1865-1920

About the Author

Jack Shulimson is head of the histories section at the Marine Corps Historical Center in Washington, D.C., and author of An Expanding War: 1966 and The Landing and the Buildup: 1965 in the Center's series on the U.S. Marines in Vietnam.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 292 pages
• Publisher: University Press Of Kansas (November 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700606084
• ISBN-13: 978-0700606085
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,368,212 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The "Old" Corps, July 1, 2000

By 

Capt Keith Kopets, USMC - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Marine Corps Search for a Mission, 1880-1898 (Modern War Studies) (Hardcover)

Today's Marine Corps bears little resemblance to its ancestor of the nineteenth century. The latter could not even claim a single organized company; today's Marine Corps maintains a three-division, three-wing force structure protected by law. How did the Marine Corps come so far? Dr. Jack Shulimson seeks to answer at least part of this question by chronicling two of the most tumultuous decades in the history of the Corps.

Two general themes dominate Search for a Mission: The professional development of the Marine officer corps and the Marine Corps' search for a clear definition of its mission within the Navy Department. Shulimson focuses on three key events of the period to address these themes: (1) The Naval Appropriations Act of 1882, (2) The Greer Board of 1889, and (3) The Spanish-American War of 1898.

The Naval Appropriations Act of 1882 initiated the replacement of the fleet's old wooden sail-powered cruisers with the latest steam-driven steel hull warships and ushered in the new Navy. This legislation also changed the face of the Marine officer corps by requiring the Marines to commission all of their lieutenants from the graduating classes of the Naval Academy. From 1883 until the outbreak of war with Spain, all fifty-two new Marine lieutenants came from Annapolis. Shulimson asserts that these graduates "made a leavening of the Marine Corps whose `commissions have heretofore been the rewards of political and official favorites'" (p. 53).

Although the act of 1882 discerned no new mission for the Navy, revolutionary changes in strategic thought shortly followed the advancements in technology. Shulimson discusses how the doctrine espoused by the two most prominent naval strategists of the time--Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce and Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan--affected reform in the Marine Corps. Luce established the Naval War College in 1884 and called for a more aggressive, outward-looking Navy. Mahan, Luce's successor as president of the war college, became the Navy's top theorist with his 1890 publication of The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. Both Luce and Mahan shared the same vision of a more aggressive role for the Navy; both also identified a requirement for embarked expeditionary troops (i.e., marines) to provide landing parties for duty ashore.

In 1889, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Franklin Tracy appointed a "Board of Organization, Tactics and Drill" under Admiral James A. Greer to study specific improvements to the Navy. The new Navy wanted a fleet of battleships capable of projecting power overseas instead of a flotilla of cruisers relegated to the defense of America's coastal waterways. The findings of the Greer Board were in concert with these ambitions and provided the impetus for doctrinal and organizational reform in the Navy and the Marine Corps.

The Greer Board recommended the removal of Marine guard detachments from Navy warships. Instead, board members advocated keeping all Marines ashore. Doing so would theoretically "increase the strength of the corps considerably" while also making available to the Navy "a compact, thoroughly drilled, and organized force to be used where landing parties were needed" (p. 95). Reacting to this threat to banish the Marines from the fleet, Commandant Colonel Charles Heywood proposed the formation of a Marine "School of Application." Under the capable hand of Captain Daniel P. Mannix, Heywood's protégé, Marines would undergo a curriculum at the school designed to keep pace with the growing fleet of battleships and accompanying advancements in technology. Additionally, Mannix organized the school's Marines into a contingency battalion. This offered the Navy Department a tactical unit available for deployment and increased the attractiveness of the school to Secretary of the Navy Tracy. After hearing the recommendations of Heywood and the Greer Board, Tracy approved the School of Application and ignored the proposal to remove Marine guard detachments from service afloat.

War with Spain arrived in 1898. At the direction of Colonel Heywood, Lieutenant Colonel Robert T. Huntington joined more than 600 Marines from the East Coast navy yards, forming the 1st Marine Battalion in less than a week. Huntington embarked his battalion aboard Admiral William T. Sampson's North Atlantic Squadron and landed at Guantanamo Bay while the Army's V Corps remained in Tampa awaiting a mission.

Search for a Mission is well researched and richly annotated. The notes alone span forty-three pages while the bibliography lists more than five hundred primary and secondary sources. A veteran writer of Marine Corps history, Shulimson also serves as one of the section heads at the Marine Corps Historical Center in Washington.

So, what can we conclude from this book? The Marine Corps began the period under study with no discernable tactical organization and some very loosely defined roles in the Navy Department. After the war with Spain, the Marine Corps claimed the School of Application (with its ready reserve battalion) as well as the mission of seizing advance naval bases. Whether the Marine Corps orchestrated these advancements or stumbled upon them by circumstance is debatable. Shulimson believes it was a combination of both. I agree. Internal Marine reformers such as Daniel Pratt Mannix, Henry Clay Cochrane, and James Forney; along with the coming of the new Navy and the inter service disputes during the Santiago campaign all served to bring about change in the Corps.

I have only one problem with Shulimson's book: It is a difficult read. His use of jurisdictional links to analyze the professionalism of the Marine officer corps is very tedious and difficult to follow. However, verbosity aside, Search for a Mission is an excellent survey of a very important period in Marine Corps history heretofore lacking comprehensive treatment. Shulimson has remedied the problem and, in the main, produced an excellent piece of scholarship.