The Royal Navy in the Age of Austerity, 1919-22: Naval and Foreign Policy under Lloyd George,

摘要

Royal Navy captain Stephen Roskill's 1968 study Naval Policy between the Wars (Naval Institute Press) has dominated the historiographical scene on this subject for half a century. G. H. Bennetts volume now successfully adds much depth and new understanding to the naval policies of Prime Minister David Lloyd George's government in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Bennetts volume follows, but with a much different focus, Erik Goldstein and John Maurer's The Washington Conference 1921-22 (Routledge, 1994) and Donald Lisio's British Naval Supremacy and Anglo-American Antagonisms, 1914-1930 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014). Rather than following the traditional approach to this period of concentrating on international diplomacy and external issues, Bennett demonstrates "a multifaceted approach rooted in political and naval history but opening up new and cutting-edge debates in other areas of historical study to transform traditional debates" (p. xiv). Laudably, Bennett seeks an approach to naval history that breaks down the artificial barriers that place the study of navies in a watertight compartment and isolate it from "total history" and the broader patterns of relevant linkages in political, military, economic, business, social, gender, and labor histoy.