Commerce Raiding: Historical Case Studies, 1755-2009

by Bruce A. Elleman (Editor), S.C.M. Paine (Editor)

Excerpt from the introduction: "In the late nineteenth century, the French Jeune Ecole, 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 Ecole 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."

352 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2013

About the author

Bruce Allen Elleman is William V. Pratt Professor of International History at the Naval War College. He received his B.A. in 1982 at UC Berkeley, completed his M.A. and received the Harriman Institute Certificate in 1984, his Master of Philosophy in 1987, the East Asian Certificate in 1988, and his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1993. In addition, he completed the Master of Sciences at the London School of Economics in 1985, and the Master of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies (with Distinction) at the U.S. Naval War College in 2004.

Reviews

[ADD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting discussion about the history of piracy. If the concluding chapter had more meat to it, I would have rated it 5 stars. As it is, the academics writing the conclusion refused to take a clear position on the future utility of government sanctioned commerce warfare and buried their thoughts in a series of tables that did nothing but summarize the earlier chapters. As a reader, I could aggregate the earlier readings well, yet it was nice they did it, too. However, I still wanted more at the very end.