Financing the First World War


Book Description

The First World War was costly in treasure as well as lives. Before its outbreak many commentators reckoned that the great powers could not afford to fight or that economic dislocation would bring war to a rapid close. They were wrong. This is the first full history of how the war was financed. It resulted in hyper-inflation in the 1920s and, in due course, in New York's displacement of London as the world's money market. Its effects are still with us today.




Naval Blockades and Seapower


Book Description

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 Rhodesia, the Falklands War, the Persian Gulf interdiction program, the PRC "missile" blockade of Taiwan in 1996, and finally Australia's recent "reverse" blockade to keep illegal aliens out of the country. The authors of each chapter address the causes of the blockade in question, its long and short-term repercussions, and the course of the blockade itself. More generally, they address the state of the literature, taking advantage of new research and new methodologies to provide something of value to both the specialist and non-specialist reader. Taken as a whole, this volume presents fresh insights into issues such as what a blockade is, why countries might choose them, which navies can and cannot make use of them, what responses lead to satisfactory or unsatisfactory conclusions, and how far-reaching their consequences tend to be. This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of strategic studies, military history and maritime studies in particular.




Sea Power and the Control of Trade


Book Description

The ability to influence world events through control of seaborne trade was profoundly affected by 19th-century developments in economic theory, commercial organization and naval technology, and by the growing power of the United States. In consequence the international law of belligerent rights at sea was repeatedly amended. Naval strategy in four wars reflected these changes in technology, power and law, and the ongoing process continues to influence international use of economic sanctions.




Naval History of World War I


Book Description

There have been a number of studies published on the activities of British and German navies during World War I, but little on naval action in other arenas. This book offers for the first time a balanced history of the naval war as a whole, viewed from the perspective of all participants in all major theaters. The author's earlier examination The Naval War in the Mediterranean, 1914-1918, centered on submarine activities and allied efforts to counteract this new menace. With this welcome sequel he again takes the reader beyond those World War I operations staged on the North Sea. Halpern's clear and authoritative voice lends a cohesiveness to this encompassing view of the Italians and Austrians in the Adriatic; the Russians, Germans, and Turks in the Baltic and Black Seas; and French and British in the Mediterranean. Important riverine engagements--notably on the Danube--also are included, along with major colonial campaigns such as Mesopotamia and the Dardanelles. The role of neutral sea powers, such as the Swedes in the Baltic and the Dutch in the East Indies, is examined from the perspective of how their neutrality affected naval activity. Also discussed is the part played by the U.S. Navy and the often overlooked, but far from negligible, role of the Japanese navy. The latter is viewed in the context of the opening months of the war and in the Mediterranean during the height of the submarine crisis of 1917.




Lord Robert Cecil


Book Description

Lawyer, politician, diplomat and leading architect of the League of Nations; Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, was one of Britain's most significant statesmen of the twentieth century. His views on international diplomacy cover the most important aspects of British, European and American foreign policy concerns of the century, including the origins and consequences of the two world wars, the disarmament movement, the origins and early course of the Cold War and the first steps towards European integration. His experience of the First World War and the huge loss of life it entailed provoked Cecil to spend his life championing the ethos behind and work of the League of Nations: a role for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937. Yet despite his prominence in the international peace movement, Cecil has never been the focus of an academic biography. Cecil has perhaps been judged unfairly due to his association with the League of Nations, which has since been generally regarded as a failure. However, recent academic research has highlighted the contribution of the League to the creation of many of the institutions and precepts that have, since the Second World War, become accepted parts of the international system, not least the United Nations. In particular, Cecil and his work on arms control lay the basis for understanding this new area of international activity, which would bear fruit during the Cold War and after. Through an evaluation of Cecil's political career, the book also assesses his reputation as an idealist and the extent to which he had a coherent philosophy of international relations. This book suggests that in reality Cecil was a Realpolitiker pragmatist whose attitudes evolved during two key periods: the interwar period and the Cold War. It also proposes that where a coherent philosophy was in evidence, it owed as much to the moral and political code of the Cecil family as to his own experiences in politics. Cecil's social and familial world is therefore considered alongside his more public life.




Striking Power


Book Description

Threats to international peace and security include the proliferation of weapons of mass destructions, rogue nations, and international terrorism. The United States must respond to these challenges to its national security and to world stability by embracing new military technologies such as drones, autonomous robots, and cyber weapons. These weapons can provide more precise, less destructive means to coerce opponents to stop WMD proliferation, clamp down on terrorism, or end humanitarian disasters. Efforts to constrain new military technologies are not only doomed, but dangerous. Most weapons in themselves are not good or evil; their morality turns on the motives and purposes for the war itself. These new weapons can send a strong message without cause death or severe personal injury, and as a result can make war less, rather than more, destructive.




Home Fires Burning


Book Description

Challenging assumptions about the separation of high politics and everyday life, Belinda Davis uncovers the important influence of the broad civilian populace--particularly poorer women--on German domestic and even military policy during World War I. As Britain's wartime blockade of goods to Central Europe increasingly squeezed the German food supply, public protests led by "women of little means" broke out in the streets of Berlin and other German cities. These "street scenes" riveted public attention and drew urban populations together across class lines to make formidable, apparently unified demands on the German state. Imperial authorities responded in unprecedented fashion in the interests of beleaguered consumers, interceding actively in food distribution and production. But officials' actions were far more effective in legitimating popular demands than in defending the state's right to rule. In the end, says Davis, this dynamic fundamentally reformulated relations between state and society and contributed to the state's downfall in 1918. Shedding new light on the Wilhelmine government, German subjects' role as political actors, and the influence of the war on the home front on the Weimar state and society, Home Fires Burning helps rewrite the political history of World War I Germany.




Britain and Italy in the Era of the First World War


Book Description

Reassesses British and Italian grand strategies from 1914 to 1920: including the war, the peace conference and the Fiume crisis.




Harfleur to Hamburg


Book Description

Britain has historically been seen as an upholder of international norms, at least in its relations with western powers. This has often been contrasted with the violence perpetrated in colonial contexts on other continents. What is often missed, however, is the extent to which the state with its capital in London—first England, then Great Britain—inflicted extreme violence on its European neighbours, even when still using the rhetoric of neighbourliness and friendship. This book comprises eleven case-studies of Anglo-British strategic violence, from the siege of Harfleur in 1415 to the fire-bombing of Hamburg in 1943. Chapters examine actions that were top-down and directed, and perpetrated for specific geopolitical reasons—many of them at, or well beyond, the bounds of what was sanctioned by prevailing international norms at the time. The contributors look at how these actions were conceived, executed and perceived by the English/British public, by the international legal community of the time, and by the victims. This history of English violence in Europe complicates not only easy notions of England/Britain as a champion of the ‘standards of civilisation’ or of the ‘liberal international order’, but also of the supposed distinction between ‘European’ and ‘extra-European’ warfare.