The Strategic Paradigm Shift of the 1880s

INTRODUCTION

Central to the formation of naval policy in the 1880s was the Foreign Intelligence Committee, established in December 1882 and developed into the Naval Intelligence Division in 1887. This marked a watershed in the consideration of strategy by both the Admiralty and the larger world of Whitehall opinion. Two of the early Foreign Intelligence Committee reports discussed Britain's options in a naval war with France or Russia, while a third concentrated on the protection of trade. All three reports show strong links back to the 1878 crisis, also to the Carnarvon Commission and its evidence.

These documents show that the evidence of the ship owners to the commission, particularly the view that convoy was no longer possible as the primary means of trade defence, had a profound effect on the development of strategy in the lead-up to the Naval Defence Act. Without convoy, naval strategy and the defence of trade were open to almost any interpretation. The chosen interpretation, the requirement for a much larger peacetime navy, capable of fast mobilisation and the concomitant ability to carry the war to the enemy from the outset, is central to any understanding of how strategy changed in the 1880s.

The Naval Defence Act might not have been secured, however, without one of the early press campaigns which helped produce a sea-change in public attitudes to the Navy and defence.