This new collection of scholarly, readable, and up-to-date essays covers the most significant naval blockades of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Here the reader can find Napoleon's Continental Blockade of England, the Anglo-American War of 1812, the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the first Sino-Japanese War 1894-95, the Spanish-American War, the First World War, the second Sino-Japanese War 1937-45, the Second World War in Europe and Asia, the Nationalist attempt to blockade the PRC, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the British blockade of...

The technical transformation of the Royal Navy during the Victorian era posed many design, tactical and operational problems for administrators from the 1830s onwards. The switch from sail to steam required the creation of a system of defended coaling stations and a greater infrastructure.

This work examines British thinking about nuclear weapons in the period up to about 1970, looking at the subject through the eyes of the Royal Navy, in the belief that this can offer new insights in this field. The author argues that the Navy was always sceptical about nuclear weapons, both on practical grounds and because of wartime and pre-war experiences. He suggests that this scepticism can teach us a good deal about military technological innovation in general.

Cunningham was the best-known and most celebrated British admiral of the Second World War. He held one of the two major fleet commands between 1939 and 1942, and in 1942-43, he was Allied naval commander for the great amphibious operations in the Mediterranean. From 1943 to 1946, he was the First Sea Lord and a participant in the wartime conferences with Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt and the US Chiefs of Staff, deliberating the global strategy for Allied victory.

He also led a very active public life for almost twenty years after his retirement in 1946. Cunningham's papers are abundant for...

This challenging new book argues that the People's Republic of China is pursuing a long-term strategy to extend its national power by sea.

At the end of World War I, France and Great Britain established a Cordon Sanitaire in eastern Europe to further their own security interests. With this backdrop, Donald Stoker's book examines British and French involvement from 1919 to 1939 in the creation and development of the naval forces of Poland, Finland and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Focusing upon the manner in which the French and British competed for sales of warships, naval aircraft and other naval materials, and their efforts to place naval advisers and military missions in these states, the book...

Following the stranding of a Soviet Whiskey-class submarine in 1981 on the Swedish archipelago, a series of massive submarine intrusions took place within Swedish waters.
However, the evidence for these appears to have been manipulated or simply invented. Classified documents and interviews point to covert Western, rather than Soviet activity. This is backed up by former US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who stated that Western "testing" operations were carried out regularly in Swedish waters. Royal Navy submarine captains have also admitted to top-secret operations.
Ola...

Great Britain's economic blockade of Germany in World War I was one of the key elements to the victory of the Entente. Though Britain had been the leading exponent of blockades for two centuries, the World War I blockade was not effective at the outbreak of hostilities. Pre-war changes had led to the Admiralty supplanting the Royal Navy's leadership role in favour of direction from the civilian branch of government on the basis of international law.

The struggle between the primacy of international law and military expediency lasted for nearly two years, as the British tried to reconcile...

This book, based on extensive work in Russian archives, investigates how strategy, organisational rivalry and cultural factors came to shape naval developments in the Soviet Union, up to the invasion of 1941. Focussing on the Baltic Fleet, the author shows how the perceived balance of power in northern Europe came to have a major influence on Soviet naval policy during the 1920s and 1930s. The operational environment of a narrow inland-sea like the Baltic would have required a joint approach to military planning, but the Soviet navy's weak position among the armed services made such an...