The U.S. Navy and the Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex, 1847-1883 (review)

The U.S. Navy and the Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex, 1847-1883. By Kurt Hackemer. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2001. Pp. x+181. $45.

In 1861 a board of naval officers appointed to evaluate proposals from contractors for the United States Navy's first operational ironclad warships declared: "We are of the opinion that every people or nation who can maintain a navy should be capable of constructing it themselves." The United States has always done just that, but during the period covered by this study warship building involved new technology, steam engines and iron armor, thus creating unprecedented difficulties. The navy resolved these difficulties, in part, through the relationships it forged with private industry.

Kurt Hackemer approaches his subject by examining navy contract language and procedures. The antebellum navy relied on private contractors for most of its steam power plants because the service lacked the shops to manufacture more than a few of its own. The spectacular failures of the Allegheny, Princeton, and San Jacinto in the 1840s and early 1850s demonstrated the navy's incompetence in contract and trial procedures and led to inclusion of performance guarantees in subsequent contracts. Although the engines of the Merrimack (authorized in 1854) proved problem-ridden, such provisions adequately addressed some of the earlier shortcomings. The navy further refined and improved these procedures for the power plants installed in steam sloops authorized in 1857 and 1858.

When the Civil War began in 1861, the navy applied these engine contract provisions to the construction of entire warships. The sheer magnitude of wartime construction demanded a more formal contract mechanism, so the navy introduced preprinted contract forms for entire classes of ships and large numbers of similar power plants. The process worked better for ships built with conventional wooden hulls and steam engines than it did for ironclads, whose experimental nature and unorthodox construction methods created numerous problems.

During the war the navy's contract system evolved toward the language and procedures needed to build modern warships. These contracts had the right combination of incentives, penalties, and conditions for getting the best products from a wide variety of companies. Although the navy tried and rejected numerous contractors, it developed close ties with several companies on the Atlantic coast. In so doing, it forged relationships with a select group of contractors who conducted a sizable portion of their business with the government and who became dependent, in part, on continuing those relationships. When the navy began building steel warships in the 1880s, it could comfortably fall back on proven contract procedures and a network of private contractors accustomed to navy requirements and restrictions.

Hackemer targets Benjamin Franklin Cooling's thesis in Gray Steel and Blue Water Navy: The Formative Years of America's Military-Industrial Complex, 1881-1917 (1979). As his title implies, Cooling argues that the origins of the military-industrial complex lay in the construction of the New Steel Navy during the 1880s. Hackemer's thesis is that "the Navy's relationship with private contractors during the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s . . . foreshadowed the military-industrial complex that began taking shape during the construction of the new steel navy in the 1880s and 1890s" (p. 137).

Hackemer is quite correct that roots of the military-industrial complex go back farther in time than the 1880s. His argument is convincing for the period and subject he covers. However, he does not explore the possibility that the roots go back even farther. Starting with the authorization of the first frigates in 1794, the United States Navy contracted with private firms for its guns. The navy lacked the facilities for manufacturing its own heavy ordnance until well after the Civil War. Casting and finishing big cannon numbered among the most technologically sophisticated operations of the day. Did the contracting processes used for guns inform those used for the ships? Hackemer...