The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914

ISBN-13: 9780198805199 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 256 str.

David G. Morgan-Owen

Opis

The Fear of Invasion presents a new interpretation of British preparation for War before 1914. It argues that protecting the British Isles from invasion was the foundation upon which all other plans for the defence of the Empire were built up. Home defence determined the amount of resources available for other tasks and the relative focus of the Army and Navy, as both played an important role in preventing an invasion. As politicians were reluctant to prepare for offensive British participation in a future war, home defence became the means by which the government contributed to an ill-defined British 'grand' strategy.
The Royal Navy formed the backbone of British defensive preparations. However, after 1905 the Navy came to view the threat of a German invasion of the British Isles as a far more credible threat than is commonly realised. As the Army became more closely associated with operations in France, the Navy thus devoted an ever-greater amount of time and effort to safeguarding the vulnerable east coast. In this manner preventing an invasion came to exert a 'very insidious' effect on the Navy by the outbreak of War in 1914. This book explains how and why this came to pass, and what it can tell us about the role of government in forming strategy.

Recenzje

This is a fundamentally new way of looking at the position of Britain in 1914. Most historians have assumed that what happened to the BEF had to happen. Morgan-Owen suggests otherwise, and his arguments will be required reading for anyone dealing with British policy on the outbreak of war. Was there an alternative to the Western Front? Did the incapacity of the navy condemn Britain to the killing fields of France and Flanders? Raising questions such as these will have a profound effect on the intellectual approach to the entire field. Few books manage such a feat. David Morgan-Owen has achieved a great deal with this first book. I look forward to his subsequent work, which might help settle some of the uncertainties he has now raised.

O autorze

David G. Morgan-Owen is a lecturer in Defence Studies at King's College London. He was previously a Visiting Research Fellow at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth, and an Associate of the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies at the University of Exeter, where he gained his PhD in 2013. Dr. Morgan-Owen has published on British strategy before and during the First World War in the English Historical Review, War in History, Journal of Strategic Studies, and the International History Review.