The ‘New Navalism’ and Perceived Naval Weakness after 1889

INTRODUCTION

In the years after the Naval Defence Act public perceptions of the Royal Navy changed. This was no accident; by the 1890s there was a well-organised propaganda machine in position, able to publicise the Navy and its place in society. Exactly why this propaganda machine was brought into existence and with what consequences needs careful examination. The influence of the Naval Defence Act on France and Russia, and, indeed, the other great powers also needs careful analysis, as does the extent to which the Act added fuel to what was becoming a world-wide naval arms race.

Other areas for discussion are perceptions of strategic weakness and strategic reality in the 1890s, with particular reference to the Mediterranean, and how ‘thinking in terms of battleships’ produced a requirement for more and more battleships. Battleships of the now identifiable pre-dreadnought type became the means used in Parliament and the popular press to assess naval strength; this produced a propagandist view that consistently and successfully campaigned for a larger Navy. A concomitant was the production of a literature that has distorted historical perspectives of the real balance and composition of the late Victorian Navy ever since.

As the big battle fleets of the late 19th century were developed in the decade after the Naval Defence Act, the Royal Navy may have given up on convoy as the primary means of trade protection, but this did not mean that it had given up on the defence of trade.