The Development of a Modern Navy: French Naval Policy, 1871-1904

by Theodore Ropp, Stephens S. Roberts

An impressive study on technological change, strategic theory, the balance of power, and the "strategy of the weak."

439 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1987

About the author

A specialist in military and naval policy, Theodore Ropp was a professor at Duke University, where he taught from 1938 until his assumption of emeritus status in 1980.

Reviews

[Mark]

This is a history book with a history of its own, one that is detailed in its preface. Its origins are as a dissertation that Theodore Ropp wrote in 1937 in order to earn his doctorate at Harvard University. While Ropp went on to a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher, he never revised his work for publication, proving content to let it sit in raw form on a shelf in Harvard’s library. It was not long, however, before a growing number of scholars pulled it off that shelf to consult for their own work, a tribute to the innovativeness and quality of Ropp’s scholarship. With the demand for access to its contents such that the dissertation had to be rebound, it was perhaps inevitable that the work would eventually be published in some form. That it was a half-century after it was originally written was thanks to the labors of Stephen S. Roberts, who brought his own expertise in 19th century French naval policy to the task of preparing Ropp’s work for publication.

Part of what made Ropp’s work so innovative was its focus and scope. Eschewing naval history’s traditional concentration on battles and commanders, Ropp examined the evolution French naval policy during the first three decades of the Third Republic. While French warships participated in a number of small colonial wars during this period, it was for the most part an era of peace, albeit one coping with the shadow of the Franco-Prussian War. As Ropp explains, it was this shadow that constrained the growth of the French Navy. In the aftermath of their defeat at the hands of the Germans, France moved away from their centuries-long naval competition with the English. The national priority now was to retake Alsace and Lorraine from Imperial Germany, and it was one that required the France to direct their martial resources towards their army rather than their navy.

Perhaps surprisingly, France’s naval leadership accepted this change, and focused instead on making the most of the reduced funding they now received. This fostered a spirit of innovation, though not one with which every admiral agreed. Ropp chronicles these debates by setting them within the overall context of Western naval development during the second half of the 19th century. This makes perfect sense, not just because of the reactive nature of many of France’s decisions, but because of the role larger technological developments played in reshaping naval warfare during this period. With budgetary constraints rendering an expensive battleship-centric fleet an impossibility, France experimented widely with developing technologies and incorporating new concepts and weapons into their warship designs. These innovations also fueled the emergence of the Jeune Ecole, a school of thinking that reinvigorated the traditional French concept of guerre de course by arguing for the use of new weapons such as self-propelled torpedoes and high-speed torpedo boats in aggressive campaigns against an enemy’s commerce.

What stands out most from Ropp’s text, though, is the sheer dynamism of naval policy during the era. Policymakers had to factor in not just the accelerating pace of naval change – which sometimes made ships obsolete even before they were launched from their slips – but the ever-shifting balance of power in Europe. The differing geographies and goals of their prospective opponents made it impossible to anticipate which types of warship France would need most when war broke out. Often the positions officers advocated in these debates were influenced as much by personality clashes and political considerations as they were by strategic assessments or budgetary limitations, which only added to the volatility of the arguments and made forging consensus difficult. This makes the unity that emerged in the aftermath of the Fashoda crisis all the more surprising, as the prospect of fighting a war against a far superior naval foe led moderates in the debate over the composition of the navy to unite against the extremists among both the Jeune Ecole and the traditionalists came and push instead for a balanced navy that embodied elements advocated by both groups.

Ropp recounts this period in a text rich with detail. Virtually no aspect of French naval policy is neglected, as he addresses everything from political arguments to questions of personnel and the changing social dynamics in the fleet. His text is no less readable for its comprehensiveness, however, as it flows smoothly from the distinct focus adopted in each chapter, while the pictures and line drawings provided by Roberts only add to Ropp’s arguments. Because of this, not only is it easy to see why Ropp’s work was published so many decades after it was originally written, but why it remains even today a valuable resource for anyone seeking to understand not just French naval policy in the Third Republic, but naval warfare in the 19th century more generally. While students of the subject should follow it up with some of the more recent literature on it (such as Arne Røksund’s The Jeune École: The Strategy of the Weak), Ropp’s book is still the place to begin.

[Casey]

A great book, providing a history of French naval development in the second half of the 19th century. The author, American historian Theodore Ropp, wrote this in 1937. It was edited by Stephen Roberts in 1987. Despite its age, it contains a healthy case study of a navy attempting to overcome the strategic bounds of geography through various technical and tactical innovations. At the heart of the story is a bitter feud between the acolytes of the Jeune Ecole, who preached a disruptively innovative approach using new naval technology and advanced tactics, and the traditionalists, attempting to massage sustaining innovation out of a well-worn system. Ropp, with his ironic asides and easy flow between narrative and analysis, makes this an enjoyable read. He explains how the French Navy attempted significant innovation in naval technology, requiring changes to culture, organizations, tactics, and even strategic foundations. The French Navy attempted this change under a legislative system with massive swings in funding priorities, the requirement to maintain capabilities against three strategic adversaries, and with the cacophony of an informed public providing significant commentary on naval minutiae. The U.S. Navy today can learn much from the French of 150 years ago.

[Jonathan]

This is one of the books that started the trend towards modern military history, in which, rather than focusing on battles, campaigns and leaders, the emphasis is on political, economic, diplomatic and technological factors. Ropp's classic is one of the first scholarly works on peacetime militaries, and on the French Navy, of all things. Figuring out what sort of navy you need in the midst of tremendous technological changes, political instability and the acquisition of a huge overseas empire wasn't easy for the French. Like all Ropp's works, very readable.