1st Edition

Navies in Multipolar Worlds From the Age of Sail to the Present

Edited By Paul Kennedy, Evan Wilson Copyright 2021
278 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

278 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

278 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Recent challenges to US maritime predominance suggests a return to great power competition at sea, and this new volume looks at how navies in previous eras of multipolarity grappled with similar challenges. The book follows the theme of multipolarity by analysing a wide range of historical and geographical case studies, thereby maintaining the focus of both its historical analysis and its... Read more

Foreword

Paul Kennedy

Introduction

Evan Wilson

1. French Sea Power in the Utrecht Era: "Balance of Power" and the Strategic Context of Louis XIV’s Navy

Alan James

2. "A Brilliant Second": French Hybridization as a Great Power

Brian C. Chao

3. British North Atlantic Convoys, 1812–14, and the Subsequent Rejection of the Convoy System

Roger Knight

4. The Limits of Naval Power: Britain after 1815

Evan Wilson

5. David Lloyd George and the Contest for Naval Mastery: The American Challenge

John H. Maurer

6. Japan’s Transition from a Maritime to a Continental Security Paradigm, 1928–1941

S.C.M. Paine

7. A Rising Power Facing Multipolarity: Italian Naval Policy and Strategy in the Age of Fascism

Fabio De Ninno

8. Managed Decline in an Age of Multipolarity: The Case of the Royal Navy in the Interwar Period

G.H. Bennett

9. The Shifts in Global Naval Power, 1936–1946

Paul Kennedy

10. Danish Naval Evolution in the Arctic: Developments through the Unipolar Moment

Timothy Choi

11. Multipolarity, Navies, and the Post-Cold War World

Geoffrey Till

12. China in a Multipolar World

Hu Bo

Afterword: Reflections on the Great War at Sea

John H. Maurer

Biography

Paul Kennedy is J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University, USA.

Evan Wilson is an Assistant Professor in the John B. Hattendorf Center for Maritime Historical Research at the US Naval War College.

“Multipolar Worlds is an important correction to the fallacy that either multipolarity or complexity are new elements in maritime strategy. At a time when the world’s navies are struggling to understand the strategic and technological challenges they face, these essays provide insights into the historical and contemporary role of seapower that will be of value to decision makers at many levels.”-- RADM (ret.) James Goldrick, RAN