Review Article: From Pre- to Post-Dreadnought: Recent Research on the Royal Navy, 1880—1945

Abstract

Naval historians have had a good fewyears recently, with a number of informative and readable scholarly works reaching publication that have taken a wide range of approaches to the subject: operational, technical, cultural, policy and social. The complexities of British naval policy, operations, administration, technology and finance defy the tidy grouping of research into discrete chronological boundaries; in many ways the Navy’s contemporary history can best be seen as the cumulative effect of previous successes and failures of naval and defence policy. After all, the Royal Navy’s behaviour at the start of the second world war and during the interwar period cannot be fully understood without a clear comprehension of the first world war and the legacy of Jutland and submarine warfare. Yet at the same time, any analysis of the first world war is rooted in the administrative, strategic and technological changes made by Admiral Sir John Fisher during his time as First Sea Lord between 1904 and 1910, and the Fisher period and its navalism, competition andDreadnoughts cannot be fully understood without reference to the problems and concerns of the pre-Dreadnought era.