British Seapower And Procurement Between The Wars: A Reappraisal of Rearmament

by Andrew Gordon

At the heart of this investigation lie the industrial roots of the Royal Navy, particularly the interdependence between the Admiralty and the heavy armament firms. This, and the Fleet's low wartime expansion factor, set the Navy apart from the other services in self-reliance and governed the Admiralty's attitude towards procurement unification. The Admiralty prized its traditional independence and deflected recurring attempts between 1919 and 1939 to create a central supply executive.

As a result of the Admiralty's stance, an advisory inter-service organization for the preparation of war-supply was evolved. This system greatly influenced Britain's idiosyncratic approach to rearmament in the 1930s. While this book concentrates on British and naval policy form the hitherto obscured underside, fresh light is also shed on the manner in which defense policy, rearmament, fiscal policy and appeasement were all merely interlocking parts in an overall pattern of imperatives.

Related to these considerations was a factor crucial to naval rearmament. The depression, disarmament and the drive for economy in the 1920s and early 1930s had decimated the Royal Navy's specialist suppliers, and this shrinkage in turn limited the speed at which the Navy could be re-expanded. The methods adopted by the Admiralty to channel funds to the preservation or expansion of vital capacities were variously inept, ingenious and downright deceitful. British Seapower and Procurement between the Wars offers a definitive and striking interpretation of this crucial period in the Royal Navy's history.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1988

About the author

Gilbert Andrew Hugh Gordon is a Reader in the Defence Studies Department at King's College London, where he is the Maritime Historian. His first degree was a BSc Econ (Hons) in International Politics at Aberystwyth College, University of Wales. His second was a PhD in War Studies at King's College, University of London.

Reviews

[William Shep · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent study of British naval planning prior to the Second World War. Gordon partially rehabilitates Chamberlain's reputation while, at the same time, not being as anti Churchill as many other revisionist, and mostly British, historians.