Dan Snow's History Hit - British Seapower in the 1900s

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

During the changes and troubles of the 20th century, officials in Britain faced a huge question: how could they maintain imperial power? Dr Louis Halewood has been researching the troubles faced by British policymakers, and the efforts to maintain dominance with their dominions and allies as Pax Britannica came to a close. In this episode from our sibling podcast Warfare he speaks to James from the University of Plymouth about the development of British naval power, and explores the role of the United States in this emerging world.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got an episode from our sibling podcast, Warfare, from History Hit. It is an episode about British sea power, so you can see where I'm going here, you can see why I wanted to share this on the feed, on the Dan Snow History Hit feed, because I just love this subject, guys. Dr. Louis Halewood from the University of Plymouth, where else? Plymouth, Britain's ocean city, from where Drake and Howard set out to battle the Spanish Armada. He's coming on to talk to Dr James Rogers about British sea power, about British naval hegemony in the end of the 19th century and the arrival of other maritime nations, the USA, Japan, Germany, which threatened Britain's dominance of the

world's oceans. I love this one. It performed really well on the warfare feed. So it's getting a wider audience here. Thank you very much for listening to this one. If you do enjoy the warfare podcast, military history, early modern, right up to the present day, please go and check it out. It's warfare. It's available wherever you get your pods. After you've listened to this, if you want to watch some naval documentaries, let me tell you where they are. They're at historyhit.tv. That's where they are. You go over to historyhit.tv. You ignore the fact that Dr. Eleanor Janneger's medieval history series is clogging up the top of the charts on there. I'm totally cool with that, by the way. Very relaxed. Totally happy with that. Very happy that everyone's watching her programs rather than

mine. No problem at all. And you type in naval history and you get a whole load of documentaries there. It's like Netflix for history, folks. You're going to love it. In the meantime, though, here's Dr. Louis Hale. Enjoy. Hi, Louis. Thanks for coming on to Warfare. How are you doing today? Yes, not too bad. A pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me on, James. Not a problem at all. Where are you speaking to us from in the world? I'm speaking to you from Plymouth, southwest of the UK. And what is Plymouth famous for? It is famous for many things. Probably most famous for the Mayflower.

We, of course, were supposed to have our 400-year anniversary commemoration of that last year. But unfortunately, due to the pandemic, that's been pushed back. But we're now going to go for 401. Well, it is pretty prestigious in its history for naval and maritime power, isn't it? Absolutely. Yes, we've got, I believe it's Western Europe's largest naval base here at Devonport. Ah, is that true? I didn't realise it was that big. Yeah, serious numbers of frigates going in and out daily. If you walk on Plymouth Hove, there's no shortage of Royal Navy warships, or indeed the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.

Lots of vessels in the sound on a daily basis. Well, this sounds like the perfect place for you to be living and based, Louis, because you are sea power and naval power mad as we shared an office back in the states i mean we would spend an evening talking about these things over usually me with some cheap american beer and you with something much nicer yes those were wonderful times and greatly missed they do they feel like a million miles away and i say that like we were sitting there drinking of an evening talking about sea power history all the time.

Most of the time it was the Liverpool game over in the pub across the road, the brilliant Regal Beagle and probably drinking one or two too many pints. Yes, well, it certainly helped that Liverpool were playing well back then. Perhaps we wouldn't have enjoyed it so much if they were playing as they are now,

but maybe we're turning around soon. Well, yeah, that's very, very, very true. But we should stop talking about Liverpool and we should get into the topic we're discussing today, which is British sea power. And I know you've just released a new award-winning article. So tell us a little bit about it. What is it that you discuss in your work? So it's titled Peace for Aviceans and Seas of the World, which is a quote, British Maritime Strategic Thought and World Order 1892 to 1919. So what I'm looking at here is the development of ideas in British circles of strategic thinkers, of policymakers, of naval elites, and how they're trying to solve this huge question, which is that

of imperial defence. So Britain, obviously in the 19th century, the idea of a so-called Pax Britannica is of course really the preeminent great power in the world at this time. And the problem that British policymakers and strategic thinkers have is that they recognise that the way in which Britain got to this stage, the way it accumulated this power, was by two things that aren't going to be repeated. And one is, I think, what John Darwin might have called the Occidental Breakout. So the sort of focal point in world politics shifting to Europe with the development of oceanic shipping in the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries. And Britain, of course, takes advantage of that in a major way, in a very aggressive way. It cuts the Dutch out of world

carrying trade to a certain extent in the three Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th century. And it gets to this point where it dominates global shipping. And of course, at the same time, it gets to this point where it dominates global shipping. And of course, at the same time, the Royal Navy is also a vehicle of empire building, and Britain comes to dominate huge swathes of the globe, and it's the Royal Navy which is underpinning this. So this is the state of play by the 1890s, the period that this article is looking at, and it's based on that, which British policymakers know that they won't be able to repeat if they want to, but also, of course, the Industrial Revolution as well, with Britain leading the way there. And that's, of course, not just in terms of sea power and developing its warships, but we have the sinews of strength in terms of British world

power. And what they realise is that this position is highly artificial in terms of a windswept set of isles off the northwest coast of Europe dominating the world's oceans in this capacity and be able to hold a global empire, unrivaled in terms of size historically, and it has been genuinely global. They know that this can't be repeated. So the question is, how do you cement the status quo as it is now? And so how do they seek to cement the status quo? So the policymakers and strategic thinkers in this period are looking at a number of options to address this question, which they really start to term imperial defence, which might make it seem fairly straightforward in terms of how do you

defend the outer reaches of empire, but really it's a big question about how do you maintain the preeminence of Britain and its empire in terms of world order. Now, there is one major project which these individuals and the groups of thinkers and Edwardian elites, as we get into the 20th century, are really becoming very interested in. And that's this idea of building a Greater Britain. So you've got Great Britain, what you need to do is turn it into Greater Britain, and that's how you maintain British world power. Now, key to this is the development of the white dominions. Of course, as Duncan Bellis said, race is the basic ontological category of politics in this period. And so lots of these ideas are highly racialised. And what they're thinking

in this period is that the world is going to be moving in a direction whereby you're going to have perhaps a smaller number of great powers, but ones based perhaps on race. Now, in terms of Britain and its empire, what that means is that they're looking towards the idea of what Alfred Lord Milner calls an Anglo-Saxon confederation. Now, the core of this then is Britain and its white dominions. So we're talking about Newfoundland, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. And the idea is that you need to find a way to remake the structures of the empire to make it more efficient. And indeed, there's a group of thinkers who are interested in ideas of Greater Britain called the Coefficients. And our idea is to increase national efficiency, but also efficiency across the empire, too.

And our idea is to increase national efficiency, but also efficiency across the empire too. And so what they want to do is essentially create an empire which is still centred on London, but is perhaps more of a federal empire. It's this idea of imperial federation. And what you therefore want to be creating is an empire which has an imperial parliament in Westminster, that has MPs representing all parts of Britain and its dominions, from British Columbia, out in modern-day Canada, over to New South Wales in Australia. And they'll all be sitting together in London governing this greater Britain. So that's one important aspect of it. Perhaps the most famous aspect of it is the idea of tariff reform. But basically, in terms of trade,

you're going to move away from the free trade, which of course Britain is very famous for in the 19th century, repealing the Corn Laws and so on. You want to move away from that towards imperial preference to bring the empire closer together by making it more economically interdependent. So that's a really famous debate. Joseph Chamberlain, the father of Neville Chamberlain, is key to these debates. But it doesn't really quite get anywhere, certainly in the early 20th century. But there is another element of it which I'm perhaps more interested in, especially in terms of this article when we're talking about sea power. And that's the idea of developing separate centres of sea power across the dominions. So as things have

stood in the 19th century, you have the Royal Navy carrying out the global task of defending, safeguarding the empire. And what policymakers in this period are starting to think about is, how do we start to share the burden a bit more? And indeed, it's Joseph Chamberlain who perhaps offers the most famous quotes with regard to this, it's Joseph Chamberlain who perhaps offers the most famous quote with regard to this, where he talks about the weary titan staggers beneath a too vast orb of its fate. And this is often used as a sort of indicator that policymakers like Joseph Chamberlain think that Britain's on the way out, basically. It's a weary titan and it knows its day is done. But what Chamberlain's

really talking about here, and what other British strategic thinkers and policymakers are talking about, is how do you reorganise the empire to maintain British power? So what they want to do is to get the Dominions more involved in the development of sea power. So it's not just about paying into the central budget, which is they are making financial contributions to imperial defence and to the Royal Navy. But what needs to happen, according to these policymakers, is that the Dominions need to start developing their own navies. So you see, shortly prior to the First World War, eventually the establishment of the Royal Australian Navy, of the Royal Canadian Navy too. And what is happening here is that we're seeing the development of a genuinely

imperial navy. So you still have the sort of strategic brain of the Royal Navy in the Admiralty in London, but you do have a more sort of genuinely global sea power which is balanced among the dominions. So that's the first part of the solution. But there is a twist, which is that some thinkers who are interested in Greater Britain are becoming increasingly interested in cooperation beyond the empire. Now, the first thing to say is that although the Dominions are obviously very much elements of the empire, they don't have their own independent foreign policies, we do need to be careful because while we shouldn't sort of read back too much and say, oh, you know, the Dominion's already independent sovereign states, they're not in

this period. But policymakers, important people like Sir Arthur Balfour and Halford John Mackinder, who I'm going to come to shortly, they all realise that that is very much the direction of travel, but we will see a much more sort more independent Canada and Australia. And what you need to do is to set up the empire so that they can remain in it as the more independent states, but nevertheless retain the ties of the empire to support this broader British world power, hence Greater Britain. And so they're already starting to think in terms of the dominions as quasi-independent states. But what this leads to is thinking about how do we work with other states in the international and so they're already starting to think in terms of the dominions as quasi-independent states but what this leads to is thinking about how do we work with other states in the international

system so for instance japan becomes a very attractive potential ally for britain and indeed in 1902 ultimately an alliance the anglo-japanese alliance is negotiated and so this is sort of a first step on a path towards thinking about how do we maintain British world power, not just within the empire, but also by making friends in the international system, creating global strategic alignments which will support British world power. It's not just about Britain and the empire, but also about these other states. Japan is one of them. France, increasingly, is one too. We see in 1904, the Anglo-French Entente, of course, signed a Northern Alliance, but nevertheless a step towards an Anglo-French

approach more. But of course, the big question mark is over the United States of America. So I mentioned ideas of pan-Anglo-Saxonism before. Of course, the US is almost seen as a sort of lost dominion, lost in the revolution of the late 18th century. How do we bring the United States back into this sort of greater Britain? How are we going to harness American power, as well as developing Australia, as well as developing Canada? How do we harness this into a network of strategic alignments with Britain at the centre of it, but working with these other states, ultimately, to maintain peace? Because that's the name of the game here. I started by telling you about the long-term advantages that Britain has developed over

centuries, and how people like Mackinder recognise that Britain can't just simply try to do this again. It can't replicate those historic advantages. So it needs to find a way to essentially cement the system as it is. And so in order to cement it, what you need to do is find a way to safeguard the status quo internationally and ultimately avoid and prevent war. So I mentioned that the title of this piece is Peace for Out the Ocean and Caesar for World, because that's the name of the game. How do you maintain peace? Britain as a sated power is not looking for war. Britain is looking to maintain itself as the world's superpower at this point, really, as an arbiter of power in the world with all of those other nations and

dominions. Subservient to it? Is that probably the best way to look at this and to recognise Britain's rightful place at the top of the higher echelons of global power? I mean, certainly there is a very cynical element to this and a belief that Britain does need to be at the top of the pile. Whether it's subservient is perhaps more debated. I mean, obviously, large parts of the world are being subjugated by Britain in terms of the empire, so definitely must not be losing sight of that. But in terms of these more international partnerships, in terms of trying to find friends among other nation states, some of them are seen as being a junior partner. So if you look at relations with the Dominions, there's no question that Britain needs to remain

as the dominant force within the British Empire. But the question with the United States, for example, is slightly different because there's a recognition that American power is growing. So part of it is about trying to bring the US into a new political relationship before it gets too strong. And ultimately, Washington becomes the new sort of focal point of this Greater Britain, to use that term again. That is, of course, one of the real concerns of these British leaders. But there's also a recognition that you shouldn't expect the US to be subservient necessarily as a state. But what is interesting is that they recognise that the US Navy is vastly inferior to the Royal Navy in this period. And ultimately, what you want to do is bring the US in in terms of sea power as a junior partner. Now, what's interesting is that some American officers are actually perfectly happy with that sort of arrangement because they see it as a sort of an apprenticeship perhaps towards

world power. They recognise that what the US is trying to build in terms of its own empire is directly modelled on British world power. And so perhaps a sort of apprenticeship under the Royal Navy as a junior partner in this system would not necessarily be a bad thing. And indeed, some of them predict that it might well be around the 1940s, perhaps, that the US emerges as the dominant state in this system. So they're happy to go along that trajectory of a sort of rise of American world power. While for the British, it's very much about keeping Britain at the top of the pile as long as possible. But there is an acceptance that the US is becoming force. And just how do you find a sort of a balanced relationship with Washington?

So how far did this idea go? We're talking about an alliance, perhaps, or like you say, an alignment between different world navies, and the establishment of those navies in Canada and Australia, which is fascinating to think that the birth of the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Australian Navy comes from this idea of a Dominion Navy. But I know that a bit later on, Churchill toys with the idea of even creating a joint currency of the English speaking world. Is that the sort of plans we're talking about here? Or is it just navies and perhaps some members to join a kind of imperial parliament in London? So this phrase that Churchill likes to use later of, you know, the English-speaking peoples very much has its roots in these ideas of an earlier period. But there is this sort of,

you know, Anglo-Saxon kinship that, yes, the US obviously went its own way with the revolution, but nevertheless, we are still bonded together. And there are close ties between elements of the East Coast elite in the US and British elites across the Atlantic. And so there is an imagination in Britain, but the US is going to be quite happy to come into this arrangement. So in terms of how far it went, the project does initially start with a real emphasis on sea power, but it always has that broader aim of being about something more political in terms of reorganising the world and indeed fixing world order in such a state that will maintain British power. So if you think about the Dominion Navies that you mentioned a moment ago, Henry Spencer Wilkinson, who is an important Edwardian strategic thinker, he's the first Chichester Professor of Military History at All Souls College, Oxford. He says of the Dominion

Navies that they are, quote, the true schools of British nationalism, which require only time to realise all the unity that we have ever dreamed of. And so we can see that even though there's a sort a practical element here of cooperation at sea supporting the Royal Navy, perhaps even alleviating the burden on British taxpayers, nevertheless there is this idea of really reorganising both the empire and indeed the world around it. Now here's where it gets interesting because of course these are big changes that would need to happen and ultimately you sometimes need a major cataclysm to start driving these sorts of forces forwards. And it turns out that's the First World War.

Now, the First World War is not a war that Britain necessarily wants. And ultimately, British leaders in the summer of 1914 feel that they have little choice in terms of perhaps real politique, in terms of a threat posed by a continent unified under German hegemony, but also in terms of these sort of liberal ideas of international law or public right, as it's sometimes referred to as in this period. But ultimately, it is about cementing what I suppose we sometimes call today, and it's a controversial term, but the liberal international order. In many ways, what we're talking about here is the British origins of an idea of a liberal international order. And so in terms of how far it goes, the ideas we're talking about here in terms of

cooperation at sea, Dominion navies, but maybe cooperating with the Imperial Japanese navy, cooperating with the United States navy, cooperating with the French navy, there are agreements signed between the navies in 1912 and 1913. That actually gets tied in with the League of Nations project. Now, the League is very interesting because, of course, the caricature of it tends to be that this was Woodrow Wilson's League, that President Wilson was this epitome of the sort of liberal world order, hated closed diplomacy, wanted it to be open diplomacy, and had this sort of utopian vision of world peace. And that's where the League has ended up in terms of sort of popular memory, that this was a doomed project from the start, because really it was about an ideal that could never really be attained because it was just too utopian. It just relied too much on goodwill and

states behaving responsibly in the international order. And so Wilson was almost something of a dreamer, perhaps. Now, this is both unfair to Wilson, who is perhaps not remembered as being quite as cynical or very problematic in many other ways as he actually was, of course. So Wilson is perhaps not the individual that he's sometimes remembered as. But also, this kind of narrative about the League of Nations overlooks the role of Britain in this. Indeed, in some works on the League, or indeed works on British policy and strategy and diplomacy in this period, it kind of has this image of Britain being bullied into the League, that Britain was weakened by the war so severely that it had no choice but to go along with Woodrow

Wilson's dream. And so the weakened European powers of France as well, they're all dragged along by Woodrow Wilson kicking and screaming. But ultimately, the League of Nations really, in my view, has an important root in these debates over imperial defence and how to maintain British world power. If you're listening to Dan's Notes History, we're sharing an episode of Warfare, our sibling podcast. We're learning all about British naval supremacy in the 19th century and early 20th. More after this. land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed

not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. So let's talk about the First World War then. I would expect that these ideas of global peace and maintaining British order through the Navy to go by the wayside at this point and to focus on the more immediate issues. But by the sounds of it, that isn't the case. Do British strategic thinkers still try and push on with this idea through the First World War? Yes, absolutely. And you're right that, of course, the war does divert attentions. There's no doubt

about that. But it also does seem to open up a new opportunity in terms of remaking the international system and finding a way to maintain peace in the future. So one intellectual who talks about this idea of remaking the international order in the midst of a First World War, indeed in 1914, is H.G. Wells. And we often think about that idea of war to end all wars is what the first world war was supposed to be. But what Wells is really talking about in his book, which is titled The War That Will End War, is not that everyone's going to be so fed up or so exhausted by the war that there can never possibly be a war that's going to be too destructive, but really that you need to find a way to enforce peace after the war, that you need

to use this as an opportunity to remake the international system. So he has this idea of creating what he calls the confederated peace powers. So essentially international cooperation at sea, in which there'll be an internationalised sea power, which will prevent other states from essentially resorting to arms in the international system and it would do so by force itself so wells envisages the confederated peace powers using navies to neutralize the sea and it's therefore blockade which is so important and it's this idea of economic warfare and blockade which is seen as the great arbiter in the international system in this period i remember this is a period before the invention of the atomic bomb,

and navies therefore fill that role of being the great strategic weapon of the day. And so Wells had this idea that Germany is going to be beaten in 1915, so it will be a short war, and it'll be beaten by economic warfare at sea. And what then needs to happen is the development of an international system in which there's international cooperation at sea, and the great powers work together to enforce peace through sea power and he says those who know best the significance of the sea power will realize best for reduction in the danger of extensive wars on land this is no dream this is the plain common sense of a present opportunity so we can see we're moving away from these ideas of an international league being utopian you know recognises that some people might criticise him on that front, but he says, no, this is no dream. This is something we can tangibly create. And so Wells himself is building on these ideas of

Greater Britain and the use of sea power before the war, because Wells is talking to these people. Wells is a part of these Edwardian dining clubs, like the Coefficients. And so these ideas are circulating for a long time. And therefore, this is really an overlooked but important sort of route of the League of Nations project which develops during the war. Now, you asked the extent to which people think about this during the war. Well, Wells is thinking about it in 1914, but the British cabinet is thinking about it pretty soon thereafter when Richard Haldane, who'd also been in the Coefficient, but is now Lord Chancellor, so a senior cabinet minister, he brings to the cabinet in 1915 a memorandum in which he talks about the importance of thinking about the organisation of sea power after the war. And he says that the solution was to make,

quote, a definite agreement to which not only the allies, but the other great powers will have to be parties, to take such steps as it will make it perilous for any great power to develop unduly the means of aggressive action, unquote. And in order to do that, he's talking about the idea of economic pressure, economic warfare at sea, and starts being referred to around this time as sanctions. So this is also the origin of, you know, what we tend to talk about today in terms of sanctions and exerting economic pressure on other states in the international system, short of all-out war. Wow, that's absolutely fascinating, because I suppose it makes sense. You think about the importance of the blockade and then the emergence of this idea

of economic sanctions, and you can see how the Navy is just so incredibly important to that, integral in fact. So how does this end up meshing with the League of Nations? Does the League of Nations, even at the start of discussions, have this really kind of powerful enforcing element? forcing element? In terms of how these ideas of Greater Britain, international cooperation, and the importance of sea power for maintaining British world power merger for League, this is something which is occupying minds in Whitehall from an early stage. They recognise, as Wells spells out in his book, that there is an opportunity at the end of a war to remake the international system. It's understood that this is really the first unlimited war really since the Napoleonic Wars, and there are going to be huge changes as a result of this. And so British policymakers from an early stage are thinking, we need to play a major role in the creation of a post-war organisation. And there are different terms used. The idea of League of

Nations is ultimately settled on. But if you look for terms beyond just the League of Nations in the writings of these people, you can see that they are thinking already of what the League becomes. And ultimately, what starts to happen from 1915 onwards is that the British government gets particularly interested in this concept. And I mentioned Lord Haldane before, who is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now, he is bringing this to Cabinet in 1915, talking about sanctions, talking about how you enforce peace after the war. But really, he's certainly not the only one who is interested in this. And perhaps the two most important individuals in terms of a creation

of the League from a British perspective and a League that is really more akin to a sort of a NATO-style collective security organisation than a United Nations-style, for being cynical, more about discussion rather than having the teeth of the League, as it were. Those two individuals are Sir Arthur Balfour, who is former Prime Minister, who replaces Sir Winston Churchill as the first Lord of the Admiralty after the Dardanelles fiasco, and his cousin, Lord Robert Cecil, who becomes Minister of Blockade. So we can see the link to sea power there. Now from an early stage they are both thinking about what the war is going to do to the international system and what the role of British sea power is going to be in a post-war world. And they are confronted by this challenge that

Germany is putting forward this idea, and it's putting forward to the Americans, not least Woodrow Wilson's close lieutenant Colonel Edward Mandel House, this idea that after the war, there needs to be an agreement on restricting the use of sea power. And this is referred to as freedom of the seas. And it ends up as Woodrow Wilson's second point of his famous 14 points. And so there is this challenge coming both from Germany, but also seemingly from the US too, that the great reorganisation that might happen will be one that puts Britain at a huge disadvantage, because of course, Britain isn't a military power. That's why it's so interesting, the ideas of using sea power to enforce peace. It's because Britain is the great sea power.

It has the world's most powerful navy, but also it doesn't have, although it's building in the First World War, a powerful army. It's not a traditional military power, and very few in Britain are really entertaining the idea of maintaining a British army of a sort of continental size, but we're seeing Tate and Field and the Somme in 1916. So what is happening? In the midst of a war, though there are many other things to worry about, already people like Balfour, people like Cecil are thinking about how to create the League of Nations. So in 1916, Lord Robert Cecil is involved in an exchange with Sir Air Crow, who's one of the Foreign Office's senior diplomats, about whether it really is feasible to actually create this sort of league. So these exchanges are happening in Whitehall. But one issue which has been overlooked,

I feel, and is very important indeed, is that Arthur Balfour, who in late 1916, when David Lloyd George becomes prime minister, Balfour becomes foreign secretary. So he's head of the Foreign Office now. He is sent to Washington in the spring of 1917, once the United States enter the war. Now, this is seen usually as just being about how do you work effectively with the Americans during the war. There are serious questions to be answered in terms of harnessing American industry, particularly in terms of shipbuilding. Because, of course, at this time, there is the major panic over whether German U-boats might actually end the war in favour of the Central Powers due to the submarine campaign. Now, what Balfour does while in Washington is, in the midst of talking about the pressing issues of wartime exigencies which must be addressed, he also starts talking with Colonel House, who, as I say, is a close confidant of President Wilson, about how to develop a post-war strategic alignment between Britain and the US based on sea power, which will

ensure that there won't be another Great War that will enforce peace. And the way this comes about is that House and Balfour are talking, or certainly Balfour's delegation, talking about the question of how to bring the US Navy into the conflict. The British are not thrilled to find that the Americans are building large numbers of capital ships, which of course might one day threaten Britain's naval supremacy. And of course, what are really needed in this period are much smaller vessels, destroyers in particular, which can be used in terms of anti-submarine warfare and for convoying merchant ships. Now, the Americans are willing to listen to that. They understand the logic of what the British are saying. And they also understand the relative pointlessness of continuing to build capital ships when the Allies have vast numbers

of them compared to the central powers and they're blockading, or I should say bottling up, the High Seas Fleet in the North Sea and the Austro-Hungarian Fleet in the Adriatic Sea. So they recognise that there's a point here that the British have, but they are worried about what this will mean for the post-war world. So immediately, these discussions about wartime exigencies take us into discussions about the post-war world, because the Americans are building these battleships when they're in neutral states during the war, because they're worried about American security. So this takes us into the realm of how are the US and Britain going to work together to defend each other in the future? And so the British start talking about ideas of even lending the Americans battleships in the future in case

they find themselves in a war. But what Balfour starts to realise at an early stage, and this is all in the spring of 1917, so this is sometime before Woodrow Wilson's 14 points and so on, is that ultimately what you need to do here at this moment in time is to unlock the Americans into an agreement to create a maritime league to ensure the peace of the world. And that's essentially how Balfour puts it. He recognises that what we can do here is get the Americans on board for our conception of a league of nations, which is all about maintaining peace through the use of sea power. And of course, done so predominantly in the interest of Britain and its empire, and cementing the status quo after the war.

Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows

or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. So I've got to ask, Louis, where did it go so wrong? Why did this league of nations imagined by British policymakers and strategic thinkers fail to materialise? It's an excellent question and ultimately it goes wrong at a relatively late stage. We do get to the end of the war with only really one major question existing between Britain and

the US, and that is over the freedom of the seas. So I mentioned before that the Americans are quite happy to go along with this idea that you should restrict the use of sea power further, which is what Germany wants too, by the way. Now, this looks like it's poised to spoil everything. Now, this looks like it's poised to spoil everything. And in late 1918 and into 1919, it appears that what is going to happen is that the British and Americans will fall out over this, and this is what will scupper these ideas of a sea-powered league. As it happens, though, the argument that the British and thinkers like Sir Julian Corbett, who's a very important maritime theorist in Britain, the ideas they've been putting forward in terms of answering the question of freedom of the seas ultimately is accepted by the Americans too. And your former colleague Jan Martin Lemnitzer has written on

this and talked about how Woodrow Wilson's point two on freedom of the seas is often not read in full. And if you read it in full, you can see that what he does in that second point of 14 is to carve out a way for a League of Nations to use sea power to enforce peace. But basically, yes, the seas will be free for states to use to trade. However, in the event of a recalcitrant state causing problems, then what will happen is that the League will be able to use its sea power. And here we're talking about the navies of Britain or the US and France and so on. They will be able to act against any state which is upsetting the peace, basically. So in the end, this issue of freedom of the sea doesn't become a major point of contention between the British and Americans,

but there are some debates over it at the end of the war. But both sides quickly realised they actually have the same understanding here. So where it goes wrong then is really in and around the Paris Peace Conference itself. Now, there are ideas prior to the peace conference of creating a formal League of Nations Navy. In fact, it's a number of American naval officers who are particularly interested in this idea. Now, of course, all of this is being set up in such a way that it will massively favour Britain and the US. They'll be the dominant players in the League of Nations Navy. But nevertheless, it will be a sort of a form of internationalised sea power to enforce peace after the war. Now, this is the sort of Anglo-American conception. The French, on the other hand,

who have, of course, a very different problem in terms of peace on the European continent, are much more interested in the idea of a League of Nations army. Now, this is not something which British and Americans are quite so interested in, but what the inability to forge a consensus over the issues of essentially the teeth of the League, the mechanisms for enforcing peace, does is that it means that the mechanisms become very vague in the actual document setting out how the League is going to function. Now that's not necessarily a problem, but it does start to hint at a broader issue, which is the one which will ultimately spoil it. And it's a bit cliche, but at the end of the day, we can't get away from the fact that the Americans failing to join the League is what ultimately scuppers these ideas for using

sea power to enforce peace. Because ultimately, all of this is based on the hope that what will happen is that they'll be able to maintain a united front after the war. And together, Britain, France and US, along with associated powers, really those are the sort of big three here, they are going to be able to work together to head off and deter any potential threats to this new world order. Now, because of the importance of ideas of economic warfare or sanctions, when the US doesn't join the League of Nations, what of course it does is it creates a very powerful state, both in terms of its military and navy, but also in terms of economics, that now is neutral, as it were. It sits outside of the League. And given the importance of the League operating as a united bloc, having the US outside of it means that any realistic prospect of this sort of effective

sanction working becomes very difficult to imagine indeed. Now, there are, of course, myriad things that go wrong in the interwar years. We can already see in 1919 the seeds of why it goes wrong and goes wrong fairly quickly. And I've mentioned Alfred Mackinder a few times earlier. He has a say. He's one of the, if not the most important British strategic thinker in terms of fleshing out these ideas for cooperation both within the empire and outside of it. He talks about this in his famous lecture in 1904, The Geographical Pivot of History. He revisits this at the end of the war in 1919 in a book called Democratic Ideals and Reality. And ultimately, he recognises that this is a moment where it goes wrong when he looks back on it all during the Second World War. Indeed, in 1943, he writes another piece in Foreign Affairs,

which is titled The Round World and the Winning of the Peace. And in it, he says, you know, quote, what a pity the alliance negotiated after Versailles between the United States, the United Kingdom and France was not implemented. What trouble and sadness that act might have saved. Wow, well that sounds like a good point to finish on, Louis. What a tragic sadness it was as well, and of course we end up falling into that Second World War, and the Great War definitely did not bring it all to an end. I've got to ask as a final question, Louis, because today, a lot of people are talking about the idea that Britain could get in some sort of global alliance again with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, a kind of global Britain, a foray once again into our global power ambitions, perhaps. What do you think that we can learn from this history about a post-Brexit world? I think the thing that strikes me about some of these more modern ideas

of, I think sometimes known as Kanzuk, is that they are very similar to the sorts of things that people like Alfred Mackinder were talking about over 100 years ago. Now, Mackinder is very clear, and he talks about this, I think, in Britain and the British Seas, published in 1902, that Britain has got a major task on its hands in terms of implementing this sort of system, this Greater Britain. It's going to be really difficult to do. And it's essential that Britain does it, because otherwise it's going to see those long-standing advantages in terms of building the empire, in terms of developing its sea power, in terms of the Industrial Revolution. It's going to see those long-standing advantages in terms of building the empire, in terms of developing its sea power, in terms of the Industrial Revolution. It's going to see those

advantages slip away in the 20th century. And of course, that's absolutely what happens. So the thing that strikes me about these ideas about Kanzuk, if one was serious about this, is if it wasn't possible to affect this at that moment in time, when Mackinder talks about all of these advantages that Britain has, but it's still going to be difficult, and it still ultimately fails, if there are these ideas of Empire 2.0 and all these sort of bizarre terms that we've heard recently, it seems astonishing to think that if that is what one wants to achieve, that one could do better than was managed in the early 20th century when those sorts of advantages that

Mackinder talked about were in existence. If Mackinder's dream slipped away from him in the first half of the 20th century, if anyone wanted to try to pursue that dream again, quite why they would, I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem to me to be eminently sensible by any measure. Well, Louis, that's a pretty clear conclusion to that. Thank you so much for taking me through this fascinating history. Where can people read more about this? So the piece we've been talking about here is going to be published in Historical Research, which is IHR's journal, hopefully later this year.

So it should be available before too long. Wonderful. Louis, thank you so much. i look forward to getting you back again soon thank you very much james it's been a pleasure thank you for listening to this episode of Warfare Podcast from History Hit. There are plenty of episodes of Warfare and wonderful new material to come. If you head to wherever you get your pods and subscribe to Warfare. you