10th
10th Cruiser Squadrons
10th CS
A01=Stephen Cobb
Absolute Contraband
Admiralty List
Admiralty War Staff
AMCs
Anglo-Persian Oil Company
armed merchant cruisers
Author_Stephen Cobb
Auxiliary Cruisers
Battle Fleets
Blue Fleet
BP
British naval planning
Category=JPWS
Category=N
Category=NHD
Category=NHW
Coal Endurance
cruiser
cruisers
culture
Cyprian Bridge
De Chair
East Indies
ecole
economic blockade history
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Firemen
Grand Fleet
Green Pamphlet
James Thursfield
jeune
Jeune Ecole
Magnetic Iron Ores
mail
Mail Steamers
maritime strategy
merchant
Merchant Steamers
naval intelligence
Repayable Loan
Royal Navy trade interdiction strategies
seapower theory
steamers
strategic
TNA
Product details
- ISBN 9781409434191
- Weight: 861g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 22 Mar 2013
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Today, the First World War is remembered chiefly for the carnage of the Western Front, but at the time the Royal Navy's blockade of Germany was a more frequent source of debate. For, even at a time of war, there were influential voices in Britain who baulked at a concept of economic warfare that hindered the free passage of goods on the high seas, and brought German society to the brink of famine. To further our understanding of these issues, this book looks at the background to the blockade, and the effects of its implementation in 1914. It argues that there was a widely shared, but largely unwritten, strategic culture within British naval circles which accepted that in a war with a major maritime power the British response would be to attack enemy trade. This is demonstrated by the fact that from at least the late 1880s the Royal Navy planned for the use of armed merchantmen to enforce an economic blockade of an enemy. This it did by entering into detailed arrangements with major British shipping companies for the design and subsidy of liners with the potential for use as merchant cruisers, and stockpiling their prospective armament. In line with the contemporary, Corbettian, view that seapower depends upon free communications, the book concludes by asserting that the primary role of the Grand Fleet in the First World War was to guarantee the ability of the merchant cruisers on the Northern Patrol to interdict German seaborne trade, rather than to engage in large set-piece battles.
Stephen Cobb
