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The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1304-1305



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Imperialism at Sea: Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914. By Rolf Hobson. Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2002. ISBN 0-391-04105-3. Notes. Sources. Index. Pp. x, 357. $90.00.

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Germany possessed a large and well-equipped battle fleet that rivaled that of Great Britain, the world's premier naval power. This circumstance was the product of little more than fifteen years of rapid German naval expansion directed by Alfred von Tirpitz, the State Secretary for the Naval Office from 1897 to 1916. Historians and political scientists have studied the phenomenon of German naval growth with respect to the growth of Anglo-German antagonism, as an archetypical "modern" strategic arms competition, and as a manifestation of social and political pathology that were important underlying causes of the Second as well as the First World War. In addition, scholars have investigated the naval activities of other powers during the same period. According to the author, the purpose of the present monograph is to compare the thinking of Germany's naval and political leadership about naval power with that of their foreign counterparts in order to address certain broad questions that have been raised by the existing scholarly literature but not in his view satisfactorily engaged or answered. To achieve his objective, Hobson has examined the books and articles of prominent and not so prominent contemporary theorists and policy-makers on naval affairs, and used his findings to consider recent scholarly discussions. His inquiry is based mainly on published writing augmented by "some new archival material" (p. 7). Hobson's three main arguments may be summarized as follows. First, German navalism did not pose a hegemonic threat to Europe. Second, Germany's naval strategy did not serve her actual naval strategic interests or, in Hobson's words, "whether Germany pursued an offensive or defensive policy, [End Page 1304] from the point of view of national security the Tirpitz Plan was a waste of money" (p. 330). And third, German navalism did not differ significantly from that of other countries, and cannot, therefore, be viewed as "a peculiarly aggressive form of expansionism" (p. 331).

Hobson's assessments are plausible, but were reached by a process of reasoning that is by no means as comprehensive or rigorous as might appear to be the case. Hobson asserts that the Tirpitz plan "can only be understood in the context of the ideology of sea power" (p. 247). His consideration of the intellectual origins and character of Tirpitzian navalism, however, is based upon an examination of the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan (Chapter 4) that is imprecise and incomplete. Hobson presents Tirpitz's advocacy of the major strategic utility of a defensive fleet as inconsistent with the thinking of Mahan, when in fact the concept of a "risk fleet" was not only articulated by the American as early as in 1890, but repeatedly presented as an important justification for American naval expansion in subsequent years [see Jon Sumida, Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command, p. 132]. The central feature of Tirpitz's strategic thought may thus have been derived from Mahan and was arguably sound in principle, policy failure arising from flaws in diplomatic execution and unfortunate circumstances rather than theoretical shortcomings. The preceding raises the question of whether something as complex and difficult as naval policy can be reduced to a matter of ideas about reality generated in the past by national leaders and in the present by academics, and engaged with the tools of intellectual history. Hobson's approach begs too many questions about the nature of navies as institutions, whose capabilities relative to each other and a challenging physical environment (the sea) were changing rapidly in the industrial era. Sound comparisons of national approaches to sea power in the twentieth century will have to be based upon detailed knowledge about naval technology, economics, finance, administration...

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