Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy: A Theory of War on the High Seas; Naval Warfare and the Command of Fleets (Adansonia Press, 2018) Original published in 1911.
Author: Sir Julian Corbett (1854-1922) is one of the two most influential theorists of sea power. He is widely published as an historian and novelist—he even wrote the official history of naval operations in The Great War for Britain. He died before vol. III was published, however.
Overview: Corbett places naval warfare within the larger framework of human conflict, proposing that the key to maritime dominance lies in effective use of sea lines for communications and in denying that use to the enemy. His concept — which regarded naval strategy not as an end in itself but as a means to an end, with that end defined by national strategy.
Central Thesis: “The object of naval warfare must always be directly or indirectly either to secure the command of the sea or to prevent the enemy from securing it.” (40) The object of naval warfare is to control maritime communications. “For it scarcely needs saying that it is almost impossible that a war can be decided by naval action alone.” (8)
Historiography: Heavily influenced by Mahan, Clausewitz and Jomini. He clearly links naval warfare to politics vis a vis Clausewitz, and absolutely sees naval warfare as part of national policies. However, he views it as merely a piece of the pie, as ultimately humans live on land, not water.
Scope of Book: Written in three parts, part one deals with land war: “Theory of War,” part two: “Theory of Naval War,” and part three is called “Conduct of Naval War.” The book closes with an appendix of the pamphlet he handed out in his war course.
- For Corbett, the conduct of war is highly complex, and a question of personality, character, common-sense, rapid decisions upon complex and ever-shifting factors. “Those factors are so varied, intangible, and dependent upon unstable moral and physical conditions that it seems incapable of being reduced to anything like true scientific analysis.” (iv)
- He argues that for the British Empire to go to war, equal consideration must be given to naval, military, and political aspects of war. He asserts that his theory of war brings out the intimate relation between “fleet and army as one weapon,” and that “for a maritime State to make successful war and to realise her special strength, army and navy must be used and thought of as instruments no less intimately connected than are the three arms ashore.” (vii)
- Maritime strategy is “the principles which govern a war in which the seas is a substantial factor. Naval strategy is bit that part of it which determines the movements of the fleet when maritime strategy has determined what part the fleet must play in relation to the action of the land forces.” (8)
- He stresses that “the normal position is not a commanded sea, but an uncommanded sea” (40) and assets that when people talk about commanding the sea in peacetime, they simply mean they are ready to seize that control of lines of communication immediately.
- While Mahan linked sea power with national power, Corbett illuminates this relationship yet understands the limits of sea power, and war more broadly, as an instrument of national policy.
- Corbett’s theory on the role of sea power in the geopolitical context of the European balance of power at the turn of the twentieth century is a clear reflection of Britain’s rapidly changing strategic environment and the equally rapid changes in military technology.
- Heavily influenced by Admiral Fisher, Corbett, building on the work of Mahan and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, defined maritime strategy, limited war, command of the sea, and, at the height of the British Empire, laid the groundwork for understanding a “British way of war.”
Commentary: Reads like it was published at the turn of the century. Although that isn’t necessarily terrible. Reads better/easier than Mahan to me. Offers a good summation of Clausewitz and Jomini, especially as that applies to naval warfare, or rather how Corbett’s naval warfare ideas correlate with these land power ideas.