The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880–1914, by David G. Morgan-Owen

Abstract

The history of British strategy and war planning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is hardly terra incognita. Its location at the intersection of multiple important historical discourses, including the ability of the modern British state to adapt to modernity, imperial decline and the origins of the First World War, would guarantee interest, even were there not irresistible parallels with the present-day struggles of the USA to avoid or manage what Paul Kennedy called ‘imperial overstretch’. While some fine scholars, such as David French, John Gooch and Matthew Seligmann, have mapped this landscape with impeccable care and a good feel for nuance, other louder adventurers have chosen to slash and burn their way through its thickets. David Morgan-Owen has done well: refusing to be intimidated by possible bullying from the latter group, he has produced an impressive debut monograph which finds a fresh approach, meets the high standards of the former and establishes him as a historian to watch.