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Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain
When President Eisenhower referred to the "military-industrial complex" in his 1961 Farewell Address, he summed up in a phrase the merger of government and industry that dominated the Cold War United States. In this bold reappraisal, Katherine Epstein uncovers the origins of the military-industrial complex in the decades preceding World War I, as the United States and Great Britain struggled to perfect a crucial new the self-propelled torpedo.
Torpedoes epitomized the intersection of geopolitics, globalization, and industrialization at the turn of the twentieth century. They threatened to revolutionize naval warfare by upending the delicate balance among the world's naval powers. They were bought and sold in a global marketplace, and they were cutting-edge industrial technologies. Building them, however, required substantial capital investments and close collaboration among scientists, engineers, businessmen, and naval officers. To address these formidable challenges, the U.S. and British navies created a new procurement instead of buying finished armaments from the private sector or developing them from scratch at public expense, they began to invest in private-sector research and development. The inventions emerging from torpedo R&D sparked legal battles over intellectual property rights that reshaped national security law.
Blending military, legal, and business history with the history of science and technology, Torpedo recasts the role of naval power in the run-up to World War I and exposes how national security can clash with property rights in the modern era.
Torpedoes epitomized the intersection of geopolitics, globalization, and industrialization at the turn of the twentieth century. They threatened to revolutionize naval warfare by upending the delicate balance among the world's naval powers. They were bought and sold in a global marketplace, and they were cutting-edge industrial technologies. Building them, however, required substantial capital investments and close collaboration among scientists, engineers, businessmen, and naval officers. To address these formidable challenges, the U.S. and British navies created a new procurement instead of buying finished armaments from the private sector or developing them from scratch at public expense, they began to invest in private-sector research and development. The inventions emerging from torpedo R&D sparked legal battles over intellectual property rights that reshaped national security law.
Blending military, legal, and business history with the history of science and technology, Torpedo recasts the role of naval power in the run-up to World War I and exposes how national security can clash with property rights in the modern era.
- GenresHistory
328 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
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About the author
Katherine C. Epstein
2 books4 followersKate Epstein is associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden, where she teaches courses in US history, military history, diplomatic history, and historical methods.
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December 22, 2021
I recognize that this is an academic book, and thus explores the minutia of torpedo development, but I feel that the bigger picture was lost. The introduction was by far my favorite section:
"Although the military-industrial complex is difficult to define, its meaning was clear enough for Eisenhower. It formed the vanguard of a broader political-economic transformation, one that involved "the very structure of our society." In an effort to defend against the external Soviet threat, Eisenhower feared the United States would destroy itself from within. Defense contractors and a "scientific-technological elite" could hijack public policy, while defense spending could throw off the proper "balance between the public and private economy" and make government contracts "virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity" in academia. As private interests corrupted public ones, and vice versa, core American liberties, like the free market and the free university, would give way. The United States would become a garrison state, its freedoms eroded in peace-time as previously they had been eroded only in wartime, and its people asked to make sacrifices once asked only of soldiers. In both time and space, therefore, the exigencies of preparing for modern war would collapse the distinctions between war and peace, between battlefront and home front, and between state and society.”"
DAMN! Would have loved more depth on some of those points, or some hinting as to when certain developments in the early 1900s would become problematic later in the century.
The rest of the book was a detailed recount of torpedo development, with some very interesting notes about legal disputes that had broader implications for intellectual property rights, along with sections at the end of each chapter about naval torpedo tactics and strategy which seemed less important (yes demand is related to development, but the evolving naval interest in torpedo's was repeatedly mentioned earlier in each chapter - it felt redundant).
Epstein very briefly mentioned the previously established origins of the Military-Industrial Complex, it would have been worthwhile to see how that technological development differed from that of torpedoes - it may have strengthened her argument.
I should note that I have immense respect for the amount of time and energy that went into writing this. Overall, a very cool concept, but a bit too in the weeds for a casual reader.
"Although the military-industrial complex is difficult to define, its meaning was clear enough for Eisenhower. It formed the vanguard of a broader political-economic transformation, one that involved "the very structure of our society." In an effort to defend against the external Soviet threat, Eisenhower feared the United States would destroy itself from within. Defense contractors and a "scientific-technological elite" could hijack public policy, while defense spending could throw off the proper "balance between the public and private economy" and make government contracts "virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity" in academia. As private interests corrupted public ones, and vice versa, core American liberties, like the free market and the free university, would give way. The United States would become a garrison state, its freedoms eroded in peace-time as previously they had been eroded only in wartime, and its people asked to make sacrifices once asked only of soldiers. In both time and space, therefore, the exigencies of preparing for modern war would collapse the distinctions between war and peace, between battlefront and home front, and between state and society.”"
DAMN! Would have loved more depth on some of those points, or some hinting as to when certain developments in the early 1900s would become problematic later in the century.
The rest of the book was a detailed recount of torpedo development, with some very interesting notes about legal disputes that had broader implications for intellectual property rights, along with sections at the end of each chapter about naval torpedo tactics and strategy which seemed less important (yes demand is related to development, but the evolving naval interest in torpedo's was repeatedly mentioned earlier in each chapter - it felt redundant).
Epstein very briefly mentioned the previously established origins of the Military-Industrial Complex, it would have been worthwhile to see how that technological development differed from that of torpedoes - it may have strengthened her argument.
I should note that I have immense respect for the amount of time and energy that went into writing this. Overall, a very cool concept, but a bit too in the weeds for a casual reader.
Displaying 1 of 1 review