The Pax Britannica

THE STRATEGIC BACKDROP

When naval strategy in the Victorian age is discussed, the long-held standard view has been that the Victorian Royal Navy's ideas of strategy were not so much misguided as non-existent. In the period 1815–1914 the Royal Navy never formally wrote down its core strategic doctrine; this has prompted many historians to say that there was no core strategy. This is not correct; the Victorian Royal Navy did indeed have strategic doctrine.

There were various strategic perceptions of the role of the Royal Navy in national defence that date back to the 18th century. These form a backdrop to the strategic doctrine of the Victorian age. In the 18th century a large element of strategic thinking was defined by the development of the Western Squadron as the lynchpin of British naval strategy. This was a policy closely associated with admirals such as Hawke and Anson. Hawke's close blockade of Brest in the Seven Years War and St Vincent's in the French Revolutionary War amply illustrate the point. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars Britain emerged as the first world power. Its power-base was formed on a strategy of sea-power, with the immensely powerful Western Squadron, later known as the Channel Fleet, as its centrepiece.

In 1817 Lord Castlereagh replaced the Western Squadron with the idea of a two-power naval standard as the basis of British security. In 1818 he admitted that the two powers were France and Russia. The two-power standard became the basis for British security throughout the 19th century and lasted as a well-defined policy into the first decade of the 20th. This strategy was aimed at dealing with European threats from European nations, however, in the 1880s for the first time threats to Britain’s naval supremacy developed outside European waters. These came from other European powers, notably France and Russia, developing overseas bases, particularly in the Far East. Threats also developed from small nations beyond Europe, who acquired warships from Europe, usually Britain itself.