Commerce Raiding: Historical Case Studies, 1755-2009 (Newport Papers Series, Number 40) - Couverture souple

Naval War College Press

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1782665080 ISBN 13 : 9781782665083

Editeur : Military Bookshop, 2013

Synopsis

Excerpt from the introduction: "In the late nineteenth century, the French Jeune École, or "new school," of naval thinking promoted a commerce-raiding strategy for the weaker naval power to defeat the dominant naval power. France provided the vocabulary for the discussion-Jeune École and guerre de course (war of the chase)-and embodied the geopolitical predicament addressed: France had been a dominant land power, known for its large and proficient army and resentful of British imperial dominance and commercial preeminence. But its navy had rarely matched the Royal Navy in either quantity or quality, and its economy could not support both a preeminent army and navy. So its naval thinkers thought of an economical way out of its predicament. They argued that a guerre de course allowed weaker maritime power, such as France, to impose disproportionate costs on the stronger sea power in order to achieve its objectives. Sadly for France, the strategy did not work as anticipated, and British naval dominance and imperial primacy endured. The case studies in this book reveal why this was so, and they shed light on the dynamic of rivalries between maritime and continental powers. This issue is an important one in that from the heyday of the British Empire to the present, maritime powers have set the global order, and continental powers have contested it. So the dynamic is still with us, and it is of vital national import to all countries that benefit from the present international order of freedom of navigation, free trade, and the rule of international law".

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

From the foreword: "For centuries, attacks on maritime commerce have been consistent features of war at sea. At the same time, a fundamental raison d’être of navies has been the protection of maritime trade against such attacks. From ancient times, piracy has been an issue at sea, and a long tradition of private men-of-war lasted into the mid-nineteenth century.After 1690, the French navy put into practice a concept of guerre de course as an alterna-tive to fleet battle, or guerre d’escadre, as a means of dealing with the superior power of Britain’s Royal Navy. In the 1870s and 1880s a group of naval thinkers in France, labeled the Jeune École, promoted ideas of commerce raiding with high-speed torpedo boats. Other naval theorists—including Alfred Thayer Mahan in the United States, Sir Julian Corbett in Britain, and Raoul Castex in France—concluded from their analyses of his-tory that such commerce warfare was an indecisive method of waging war by relatively weak powers, an approach that was not as effective as one focusing primarily on the victory of one battle fleet over another. During the two world wars of the twentieth century submarine attacks on maritime trade were extremely effective, leading the great American naval thinker J. C. Wylie to define two different types of strategy: a sequential strategy that leads from one action to another, and a cumulative strategy, such as one involving attrition of merchant shipping in commerce warfare.Some commentators have argued that in the modern globalized economy, no state would find any advantage in attacking a global interconnected maritime trade that has benefit for all. Yet, as one prescient observer of this subject noted recently, “unlikely threats and outdated practices rear their ugly heads when the situation favors them” (Douglas C. Peifer, “Maritime Commerce Warfare: The Coercive Response of the Weak?,” Naval War College Review 66, no. 2 [Spring 2013], pp. 83–109, quote at p. 84).A consideration of the range of historical case studies in this volume provides an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which old and long-forgotten problems might reemerge to challenge future naval planners and strategists".

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Military Bookshop
• Date d'édition: 2013
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1782665080
• ISBN 13: 9781782665083
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 352
• Éditeur: Elleman Bruce A, Paine S C M
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Allemagne