Naval Warfare, 1815-1914 (review)

Naval Warfare, 1815-1914. By Lawrence Sondhaus. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Pp. viii+263. $85/$25.95.

Lawrence Sondhaus has produced a useful and effective general history of the development and operations of the world's navies during the century prior to the First World War. While his primary focus is on the leading nineteenth-century sea powers (Britain, France, and Russia) Sondhaus clearly lays out the naval histories, relevant to war and the preparations for it, of Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, the United States, China, the Ottoman Empire, and leading South American states.

Sondhaus begins his history with chapters on the "Twilight of Sail," and the period of "Continuity and Change, 1830-50." In his treatment of the 1850s, he addresses the end of the sail-powered ship of the line, the shift from paddle wheels to screw propulsion, the clash of the three major naval powers in the Crimea and its "clear demonstration of the link between a country's industrial development and capacity to make war at sea" (p. 55), and also the first experimentation by France with armor plate. In his chapter on the "Ironclad Revolution," Sondhaus recounts the sixfold cost increase in same-size warships due to the addition of armor and how this ran minor European naval powers out of the international naval competition. As armor use increased during the 1870s, a modern truism was born: a "country's industrial base became even more important to its naval power." The breadth and depth of industrial bases became the delimiters between great and lesser naval powers (p. 108).

During the 1870s, naval forces bifurcated into armored "battleships" and unarmored cruisers. Major naval powers fielded two fleets: ironclads for home service and unarmored cruisers for overseas duties. In France, the armored battleship was pushed aside temporarily by Admiral Aube's Jeune E´cole. The Jeune E´cole espoused "modern unarmored cruisers and torpedo boats over armored battleships" (p. 139) and achieved its peak influence during Aube's tenure as navy minister in 1886-87. While innovative in its approach, the technologies the Jeune E´cole advocated fell victim to more powerful water-tube boilers that made battleships faster and quick-firing guns and smokeless powder that increased the vulnerability of torpedo boats, as well as new armor-piercing shells that rejuvenated the big gun in its competition with battleship armor. French pursuit of weapons outside the armored battleship paradigm led to the battery-powered submarine Gymnôte, a noteworthy craft that made two thousand successful dives during a twenty-year career.

Sondhaus chronicles the "rebirth" of the battleship and its evolution and use through the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), then treats the dreadnought competition and the origins of the First World War. He concludes his study with a brief, thoughtful account on the deterrent effect of naval power during the one hundred years prior to 1914. He cogently observes that "deterrence always has been largely psychological, and that the force which best deters is not necessarily the same as the force which, in actual warfare, would best attack or defend" (p. 225).

When he steps past 1914, Sondhaus errs in characterizing the Soviet Union's construction of aircraft carriers as status symbols. Soviet carriers did not mirror the U.S. Navy's carriers as power-projection platforms but rather served as integral parts of a technological hierarchy to protect the Soviet capital ship—the nuclear-missile submarine. This cold war quibble aside, Sondhaus has produced a solid, well-written history of naval warfare and naval power during the century preceding the First World War. Especially welcome is his account of all the major naval powers, not just the usual suspects. Those familiar with the evolution of modern navies will find nothing new in this book. But what readers will find is a concise, well-written, and comprehensive treatment of international naval history.