Customer Reviews

The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery

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First, a couple of notes on earlier reviews. Kennedy wrote this book ten years before Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, not as a compilation afterwards. Second, he doesn't talk about the US Navy because it is not the subject of his book. He is not biased by writing a history of the Royal Navy and sticking to the Royal Navy--the reviewer who imagines the US Navy as so important as to need discussion in a book about the RN is. Third, US monitors were, compared to the broadside ironclads like HMS Warrior being built across the sea, a joke.

The book's strength is in ascribing the interplay of finance, trade, and strategic necessity their rightful place at the center of both British history and the history of the Royal Navy. Britian had the best navy for much of the period 1588-1942 because it needed it, could afford it, and could lavish money on it because it didn't have to simultaneously maintain a large army. What killed the Royal Navy was not just industrial decline, but also the need to create a first-class air force because the navy could no longer defend the metropole on its own. By 1938, the RAF supplanted the RN as the biggest beneficiary of defense spending. That was the point of no return.

Very well written and interesting. Not nearly as dry as I thought it'd be and it explained quite a bit as to the forces which led to the rise of Western Civ. Also possibly prophetic although some of Kennedy's statements here seem to contradict his very popular "Rise & Fall of the Great Powers". Read both & actually I prefer this book. A must read for anyone interested in rounding out their knowledge of Naval history or even general Western History, 1500 to present.
Kennedy does a superb job in documenting his information.

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.

For anyone concerned about America's declining manufacturing base this book will confirm your fears. This book is not really a book about the British Navy as it is a book about rise and decline of Britain. The book starts out describing how naval warfare gave Europe an advantage in world affairs and how Britain came to dominate the seas. After the defeat of Napoleon Britain was able to become the "workshop of the world" and it dominated world trade for about 50 years. Once the rest of Europe and the US began to industrialize English industries gradually began to disappear because of the increase competition.

Then in the 1890's Mahan wrote the Influence of Sea Power upon History and Britain was suddenly thrust into an arms race with German, the US, and Japan. Once the arms race started Britain slowly reduced the number of ship stationed overseas (Britain used to have ships in Canada, the Caribbean, and Asia) and it began to form alliances with France and Japan to protect its empire. Britain no longer had the worlds largest economy and it had difficulty maintaining its naval supremacy.

WWI accelerated Britons decline and WWII regulated the country to a second rate status when compared with the US and the USSR. Reading this book you learn that the strength and the size of a nation's economy determines its power and only a nation with a strong industrial base can support a large military and social services.

Its a repeat of his earlier theories instead here he links British economics to its naval history. It makes sense as much more then land powers, a naval force depends on technology and economics.

Overall this book is a fair study of the British navy from the period of 1600 to modern times.

The book I bought was in excellent shape. The content was interesting enogh. It was required reading for graduate school, so I did not actually choose it as a book to read. Still, not a bad read though.

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.

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.