Naval Leadership Research Articles

Popular Constitutionalism in the US Empire: The Legal History of US Citizenship in Guam

This article presents a legal history of US citizenship in Guam. I argue that members of Guam’s Congress mobilizing for US citizenship in the 1930s and in the immediate aftermath of World War II offer a powerful and instructive example of popular constitutionalism, or the interactive, extrajudicial process that generates constitutional meaning. Guamanians made constitutional claims to US naval leaders and lawmakers, arguing that colonized people living in the US empire should be US citizens despite ambiguous Supreme Court precedents in the Insular Cases, congressional inaction, and naval obstruction. Guamanians interpreted the Constitution in a way that pressured and influenced naval leaders to support and US lawmakers to ultimately enact legislation that extended citizenship to Guam. This legal history demonstrates the complexity of popular constitutionalism within the context of US empire. By claiming that they should be considered US citizens after the United States formally annexed Guam after the Spanish-American War, Guamanians drew on the Constitution to demand equality, dignity, and full inclusion in the US polity for colonized people. US naval leaders and lawmakers turned this egalitarian reading of the Constitution to their own strategic advantage, however, deploying it as a valuable piece of Cold War propaganda. This article thus provides a useful example of the ideological indeterminacy of popular constitutionalism. The Constitution can be interpreted by marginalized populations to demand equality and inclusion. But the Constitution can also be interpreted by the military and congressional leaders of a global empire to maintain systems of power, oppression, and subordination.

‘To Grab, When the Grabbing Begins’ German Foreign and Colonial Policy during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894/95 and the Triple Intervention of 1895

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894/95 is usually only briefly mentioned in studies on diplomatic history. Especially the war’s impact on Wilhelmine foreign and world policy (Weltpolitik) has been largely neglected. However, the events in East Asia had a profound influence on the political leadership in Berlin. The Wilhelmstraße’s attitude towards the conflict changed rapidly when the course of the war in Northeast Asia made a collapse of the Qing Empire increasingly likely. Afraid of the prospect of being left empty handed in an upcoming scramble for China, German diplomacy got active in early 1895. Driven by a hectic activism which soon should become a dominant feature of Weltpolitik, Berlin concluded an ad-hoc alliance with St. Petersburg and Paris. In April 1895, this unlikely coalition intervened against Tōkyō. While the Triple Intervention served primarily Russia’s interest to maintain the status quo on the Chinese mainland, Germany aimed at the acquisition of a military and commercial base in Northeast Asia. Driven by public opinion, the naval leadership and the Emperor Wilhelm II., the formerly neutral and reserved German diplomacy changed towards an aggressive and unstable imperialist policy, which ultimately resulted in the acquisition of Qingdao in November 1897.

Citizenship in Empire: The Legal History of U.S. Citizenship in American Samoa, 1899-1960

Abstract This article analyzes the legal history of U.S. citizenship for American Samoa and examines why American Samoa remains the only U.S. unincorporated territory that U.S. citizenship has not been extended to by Congress. The article examines legislation from the 1930s that would have extended U.S. citizenship to Samoans, but failed to pass in Congress due to opposition from the U.S. Navy, the effects of the Great Depression, and the racism of some U.S. lawmakers. The last parts of the article explore hearings that were held in the immediate years after World War II in which naval leaders and U.S. lawmakers expressed a willingness to extend citizenship to American Samoa for Cold War propaganda imperatives. These hearings ultimately did not lead to the extension of U.S. citizenship. By the early years of the Cold War some Samoan leaders had petitioned Congress against the extension of citizenship to American Samoa for fear that citizenship would lead to the destruction of Samoan cultural autonomy. The legal history of U.S. citizenship for American Samoa from 1899 to 1960 illuminates the various meanings citizenship can have and the disparate ways citizenship can be used by different people in the context of empire. In American Samoa, citizenship was a powerful concept that colonized people used to make claims for equal inclusion and full membership within a political community; it was a tool that the U.S. government used in strategic ways to legitimate imperialism; and it was a status with the power to destroy cultural autonomy.

‘The special service squadron of the Royal Marines’: The Royal Navy and organic amphibious warfare capability before 1914

ABSTRACT It is usually maintained that before 1914 the Royal Navy had abandoned interest in amphibious warfare. This article argues otherwise. It shows that prior to 1914 the Admiralty sought to reconfigure the Royal Marines as an organic maritime strike force. The idea was advanced by junior officers and taken up by the naval leadership, who appointed a high-level committee to elaborate the details. Significant steps had been taken before war broke out, thereby showing that modern British amphibious warfare doctrine pre-dates the ill-fated Gallipoli operation and needs to be understood in a broader context than is currently the case.

Preparing the South Pacific for U.S. Influence: The uss Narragansett in Samoa, 1872

This article explores the diplomatic negotiations that U.S. Navy Commander Richard W. Meade conducted in Samoa in 1872. The resulting agreement that came to be known as “the Meade Treaty” was the first the United States negotiated with Samoa, but scholars usually have not explored the details of it and the process that produced it because the U.S. Senate rejected the treaty. Meade’s motivations and actions in Samoa provide a case study in how the interactions of naval officers, business leaders, islanders, and diplomats converged to produce early U.S. diplomacy in the Pacific. The article sketches the situation in Samoa in 1872 when Commander Meade and his ship, the uss Narragansett, arrived. The role of the United States in the Pacific was changing in the last third of the 19th Century, and Commander Meade’s motivations, influences, and actions illustrate the new wave of U.S. Pacific expansion during the years after the American Civil War.

The build-up of submarine forces of the Russian Imperial Navy in the Black Sea in 1910-1914

The purpose of the article of the article is to analyze the process of increasing the submarine forces of the Imperial Black Sea Fleet in 1910 – 1914. The measures taken by the top state and naval leadership of the Russian Empire to increase the submarine forces of the Russian Imperial Navy in the Black Sea on the eve of World War I. The issues of organization of tactical and special training of submariners, testing the interaction of submarines with surface forces are considered. The methodology of the research is based on the universal research principles of historicism, scientific objectivity, systematics, which allowed to analyze the main milestones of the process of increasing the submarine forces of the Black Sea Fleet in this period. The scientific novelty of the work is to determine that the newly created submarine forces of the Black Sea in the process of its expansion have become, in fact, a forge of submarine personnel for the Imperial Navy. It is highlighted that mastering the construction of submarines for the Black Sea Fleet contributed to the development of military shipbuilding in the south of Ukraine and the experience of Mykolayiv shipbuilders in their further construction. The peculiarities of life and way of life and training of crews and working off of tasks of combat training by boats in the sea, development of their base system are reflected. Historical parallels have been drawn in the process of increasing the combat capabilities of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at present. Conclusions. Proper understanding and consideration by the state and military leadership of the Russian Empire of the lessons and conclusions of the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905 on the role and place of naval forces in the war allowed to use all possible ways to strengthen the state's naval defense on the eve of World War I. In particular, the involvement of public and private enterprises in the design and construction of the fleet, including such high-tech and new types of forces as submarines, and also the acquisition of licenses for the construction of boats on foreign projects. Creation and increase of submarine forces on the Black Sea promoted development of military shipbuilding on shipyards of the south of Ukraine, in particular, in Mykolayiv. This experience is extremely instructive and useful to take into account in the revival of submarine forces in the process of increasing the combat capabilities of the Navy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in modern conditions.

A Study on the Effects of the Navy’s Collaborative Leadership on Organizational Effectiveness

본 연구는 해군조직에서 협력적 리더십이 조직유효성(직무만족, 조직몰입)에 미치는 영향을 살펴보고 조직유효성에 영향을 미치는 세부요인들을 실증적으로 분석하기 위한 목적으로 시도되었다. 협력적 리더십의 하위요인은 절차적 협력, 인지적 협력, 구조적 협력으로 도출하였으며 C시에 위치한 해군부대 간부를 대상으로 설문조사를 실시하였다. 설문조사를 통해 얻은 자료를 신뢰도, 타당도분석 및 단계적 다중회귀분석을 실시한 결과 협력적 리더십은 조직유효성에 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 확인되었다. 연구결과를 해군리더십의 연구와 교육에 반영하기를 제언하였고 그동안 개념정의에 그쳤던 협력적 리더십의 구성요소를 확인하고 해군실정에 적합한 협력적 리더십을 실증분석하였다는 점에서 의의가 있다.The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of collaborative leadership on organizational effectiveness(job satisfaction, organizational commitment) in naval organizations and to analyze empirically the factorsaffecting organizational effectiveness. The subordinate factors of collaborative leadership were identified as procedural cooperation, cognitive cooperation, and structural cooperation. The surveys were conducted among the naval officers in C City. As a result of the reliability analysis, validity analysis and stepwise multiple regression analysis of the data obtained through the questionnaire, it was confirmed that collaborative leadership had a positive effect on organizational effectiveness. This study suggests that the findings of this research should be reflected in further research and education on naval leadership. This study contributes to the literature by confirming not just a concept but also the components of the cooperative leadership and analyzing empirically the cooperative leadership suitable for naval applications in South Korea.

Lloyd George and the American Naval Challenge: “The Naval Battle of Paris”

ABSTRACTIn the immediate aftermath of the First World War, naval competition loomed between Great Britain and the United States. This American naval challenge frustrated Britain’s leaders, who were determined to hold onto their country’s hard-won standing as the world’s leading sea Power. Britain’s Prime Minister David Lloyd George chose the setting of the negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to force a showdown with American leaders in an attempt to curtail their naval shipbuilding. Much to Lloyd George’s chagrin, the Americans proved obdurate in negotiations. President Woodrow Wilson and his naval advisors refused to stop the American buildup of large and powerful capital ships that called into question Britain’s naval mastery. The deadlocked talks between American and British naval leaders threatened to wreck the peace negotiations and the establishment of the League of Nations. To prevent a breakdown in Anglo-American relations at Paris, Sir Robert Cecil and Colonel Edward House negotiated an agreement that pledged both countries to work towards a settlement of their naval competition. This analysis examines Lloyd George’s motivations and actions in provoking this confrontation to defeat America’s naval challenge in what would later become known as the naval battle of Paris.

A Service Ready for Total War? The State of the Royal Navy in July 1914

Abstract In early 1914 Britain’s naval leadership decided to call a conference of flag officers at which the most pressing issues then facing the Royal Navy could be aired and discussed. The conference was scheduled for the end of July 1914. Owing to the European crisis that erupted at just the very moment when it was supposed to take place, the conference was never held. However, the bulk of the paperwork still exists. This documentation provides a unique snapshot of the thinking of Britain’s key naval commanders on strategic, tactical and materiel considerations at the very moment when they were about to embark upon the most serious of examinations, the test of a major war. This article uses these files to evaluate the extent to which the Royal Navy was aware of the challenges that were about to confront it and the strengths and weaknesses that would aid or hinder them in this task. It thereby assesses the service’s readiness for total war, concluding that it was far from the conservative body of popular caricature.

El escenario naval tras la Primera Guerra Mundial

World War I stands out as one of the conflicts where the naval scenario, and the way to carry out the war in, faced bigger changes. The behaviour of the naval leaders of the great powers before 1914, provoked an extraordinary naval race and an increasing rivalry over the maritime environment. Over this cornerstone, the shape and outcome of WWI changed the scenario dramatically, defining a new setup for the inter-war period. The new post-war leadership forced a total change in the main naval actors that would set the pace for the coming years, creating new and unstable regional equilibriums. At the same time, the technological development and the war-time experiences shaped the predominant naval thinking into a global view of the war at sea, with the addition of submarine, air and electromagnetic dimensions to the traditional, mainly surface-driven means of conducting a war.

China’s Naval Leadership Reshuffle, Evolving Maritime Strategy and Professionalisation

Appointing a naval officer to command the Southern Theatre indicates the relative importance of the South China Sea to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), mainly in terms of its strategic location and its deep depth, immense space and unfettered transit to the Western Pacific for operating PLA Navy’s strategic nuclear submarines and major surface ships. For the reshuffling of naval leadership, functional and technical expertise-based, or professional criteria may play a primary role.

ABOUT SOME PARALLELS IN HISTORY IN GENERAL A. STOSCH AND GRAND ADMIRAL A. TIRPITZ'S ACTIVITIES

The given article characterizes briefly the activities of two outstanding personalities in the history of Kaiser Naval Forces - General A. Shtosch and Grand Admiral A. Tirpitz. In spite of the time gap (about a quarter of the century) between their reforms, there are some parallels in history and the identity of their approaches to the answers to time calls can be observed. The significance of these factors is important for deeper understanding of the sources and the impressive results of the reformatory practice of Father of the German Navy A. Tirpitz. On the basis of the carried analysis of the available archival materials and some research literature the authors have come to certain conclusions. The scales and depth of the naval reorganization, carried out by A. Shtosch and A. Tirpitz, were defined by those foreign policy tasks which stood before the united German state in 1870s - the beginning of 1880s and at the end of 1890s - the first decade of the XX century. At the same time all the modernistic efforts of two naval heads of Germany were directed to the same spheres of naval construction, and in the solutions of the available problems we can note the unity of the principles. Summarizing the analysis of the activities of the two German naval leaders (A. Shtosh and A. Tirpitz), can be traced to certain historical parallels in their work. Both converters were the German Navy. It is clear that the scale of the reforms undertaken by them was determined by the foreign policy challenges that faced the country, but their character was a turning quite obvious, and that was considered in this article.

An ‘Intermediate Blockade’? British North Sea Strategy, 1912–1914

Historians have argued that, between 1912 and 1914, Britain’s naval leadership projected a so-called ‘intermediate blockade’, a line of vessels strung across the mid-North Sea. This strategy has been widely criticized as impractical and unrealistic. However, this article demonstrates that the Admiralty never projected such an approach. Rather, the naval leadership intended to adopt a system of mid-North Sea patrols during this period. By misunderstanding Admiralty policy before 1914, historians have been unable to ascertain that these patrols were resurrected in late 1914 and played an important part in the Royal Navy’s wartime strategy.

The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy (review)

Reviewed by: The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy Albert H. Tillson Jr. (bio) Keywords American Revolution, King George III, Lord George Germain, British diplomacy The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire. By Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013. Pp. 480. Cloth, $37.50.) In this work Andrew O’Shaughnessy attempts to answer an old question—why Great Britain lost the American Revolutionary War—by separate examinations of ten British political, military, and naval leaders who oversaw the conduct of the conflict. Because these men were subjected to satire and ridicule on both sides of the Atlantic, scholars as well [End Page 666] as popular culture have unjustly come to see them as incompetent and hidebound. To understand the roots of Britain’s defeat, O’Shaughnessy argues, requires a more nuanced and complex understanding of these men and the political and material constraints within which they operated. As a group, they were far from ignorant: Most were well educated and conversant with the British Enlightenment; a number were actively involved in literary and cultural life. Although part of an oligarchy, they and other British leaders competed for positions of power and prominence through merit and hard work. Essentially, they were confronted by a war that became for many reasons unwinnable. Yet its futility was not always clear as the war progressed; the British were in fact close to victory at several points and seemed to be so at others. Beyond simply providing a more three-dimensional portrayal of these complicated men, this book’s greatest virtue is its illumination of the strong elements of division and ambivalence regarding the war, not only within the British public but also among those who led the military effort. Perhaps inevitably, O’Shaughnessy begins with George III. Although far from a tyrant and relatively uninvolved in the early stages of the imperial crisis, the king was an energetic, informed, and articulate architect of policy from the time of the Boston Tea Party through the war years. More than other leaders, he recognized that American resistance and revolt threatened both the foundations of government within Britain and the survival of British international power. He actively pressed his prime minister, Lord North, toward a more uncompromising and aggressive pursuit of victory. Opponents of the war recognized his leading role and pursued measures in Parliament and in public discourse to reduce the king’s influence upon his ministers and government policy. Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for America, shared the king’s viewpoint. He pushed for a decisive military victory, in part to forestall French entry into the war; recognized that secure control of substantial American territory was essential; and urged close coordination between the army and navy. His ability to influence policy, however, was severely limited by an earlier court martial’s condemnation of his battlefield conduct and by his widespread reputation for homosexuality. The first Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich, espoused similar strategic views. Ironically, in the later years of his reign, George III came to be seen as a national icon: informal and personable, wisely resisting change in a revolutionary era, and living simply and virtuously in a [End Page 667] period of aristocratic decadence. Neither Germain nor Sandwich would experience a similar reassessment. Other political and military leaders diverged from this perspective. Lord North came to doubt the prospects for success through coercion and military force even before the outbreak of hostilities. These doubts, along with a personal aversion to confrontation and decisive action, led him to repeated efforts at peace through compromise with his American adversaries—sometimes in opposition to the wishes of the king and others—and this contributed to the persistence of disunity, indecision, and lack of clear military and diplomatic policy within his administration. On the other hand, without Lord North’s charm, intellect, and gift for compromise and persuasion, Parliamentary support for the war effort would have disappeared far more quickly. Similar assessments of the limited prospects for success through exclusively military means led the...

Naval Leadership and Management 1650–1950. Edited by HelenDoe and RichardHarding. Boydell. 2012. xiv + 206pp. £60.00.

Naval Leadership and Management 1650–1950. Edited by HelenDoe and RichardHarding. Boydell. 2012. xiv + 206pp. £60.00.

The Royal Navy and the German Threat 1901-1914: Admiralty Plans to Protect British Trade in a War against Germany, by Matthew S. Seligmann

The Royal Navy and the German Threat 1901-1914: Admiralty Plans to Protect British Trade in a War against Germany, by Matthew S. Seligmann. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012. x, 186 pp. $110.00 US (cloth). Historians of the Royal Navy in the pre-First World War period have long accepted that the two principal challenges facing naval planners at the turn of the twentieth century were those of safeguarding British seaborne trade and securing the United Kingdom from a hostile invasion. The widespread acknowledgement of this fact makes all the more extraordinary the consistent failure of scholars to adequately address how the Admiralty intended to prevent hostile operations against British shipping. This volume is a welcome, and highly successful, attempt to address this significant gap in the existing historiography. Matthew S. Seligmann argues that, by devoting their focus on the prospective danger of French or Russian cruiser warfare against British trade, previous writers have overlooked other important dangers to British commerce. Making an extensive use of German archival material, he demonstrates that, from 1898 onwards, the German admiralty staff planned to make an extensive use of armed merchant cruisers to deliver a paralyzing blow to British trade at the outset of an Anglo-German war. Due to Britain's reliance upon imported foodstuffs, the Germans hoped that such a blow could potentially produce an effect on the British public sufficient to induce the government to sue for an early peace. Aware that the Royal Navy would seal the North Sea at the outbreak of war, the Germans thus contemplated using merchant vessels already on the trade routes to instigate this campaign against British shipping. Their government therefore extensively subsidized the construction of large, fast oceanic liners in exchange for design features intended to allow for the rapid mounting of guns in wartime. After detailing these plans, the author goes on to demonstrate their effect upon Britain's naval leadership. A detailed exposition of Navy's awareness of German intentions and the palpable concerns of key figures at the Admiralty provides significant authority to the book's argument and builds on the author's previous work on British naval and military intelligence before the First World War. After illustrating the existence of the danger and the Admiralty's very real concerns with the prospect of German armed merchant cruisers attacking British trade routes, Seligmann goes on to chart the various means by which the Admiralty planned to meet this danger. In doing so, he enters the thorny debate regarding the conception of what were later to be known as Battle Cruisers by the Fisher Admiralty in 1904-5. There, he persuasively argues that an important factor in the design of these craft was the need to provide the Navy with a vessel capable of catching and destroying the large ocean-going liners which the German government subsidized for conversion into armed merchant cruisers in wartime. …

Commanding Lincoln’s Navy: Union Naval Leadership during the Civil War by Stephen R. Taaffe (review)

Commanding Lincoln’s Navy: Union Naval Leadership during the Civil War by Stephen R. Taaffe (review)

Book Review: Naval Leadership and Management, 1650–1950

Book Review: Naval Leadership and Management, 1650–1950

A German Preference for a Medium-Range Battle? British Assumptions about German Naval Gunnery, 1914–1915

In several recent studies of the Royal Navy a theory has emerged about the development of British battle-fleet tactics. It is suggested that, in the period leading up to the battle of Jutland, the Admiralty possessed intelligence which indicated that the German naval leadership, if it sought to fight at all, wanted to engage at medium range, where its superior secondary batteries and heavier torpedo armament could be used to maximum advantage. Rather than seeking to frustrate this desire by manoeuvring to keep the battle at long range, the British, it has been argued, decided to accommodate to the German preference, but only with a view to using their superior main armament to unleash a concentrated five-minute pulse of fire at the approaching German vessels, before turning away. This article looks at one of the underpinnings of this argument, namely British intelligence on German gunnery. It shows that from the start of the First World War, if not earlier, the Admiralty had information that contested the idea that the Germans wanted a medium-range engagement. Not only was it discovered that the Germans had been practising long-range firing for some years, but, in addition, early wartime encounters with German vessels, for example at the battle of the Falkland Islands, showed that they had developed considerable proficiency in it. This quickly led the Royal Navy’s top leadership to the conclusion that engagements at maximum range rather than medium range might better reflect both German capabilities and intentions and that British tactics would need to take this into account. In the light of this finding, Grand Fleet Battle Orders, which have defied obvious explanation when it was assumed that the British naval leadership expected the Germans to seek a medium-range engagement, can now be put into a more logical context.

Diagnosing Performance Management and Performance Budgeting Systems: A Case Study of the U.S. Navy

We present here a case study of an organization within the U.S. Navy that created a new organizational construct and performance management system. We explore the issues faced by naval leaders as they attempt to use their performance information to make resource allocation decisions at the sub-organization level, and drive budgets at the organization and service (navy) level. We diagnose the practical problems a government organization encounters when implementing a performance management system, to include their influence on budgets, and make recommendations for public sector performance budgeting organizations. This case confirms challenges noted in the literature associated with performance management and performance budgeting systems. We offer recommendations for public officials considering such endeavors.