The Royal Navy and the 1889 Naval Defence Act: History and Historiography

Abstract

This chapter first examines the dominant account of the genesis of the British Naval Defence Act, that of Arthur Marder, as well as the influences on Marder’s scholarship. It then provides a detailed rebuttal of that account, based on a much wider reading of the archival evidence, in particular the reports on foreign navies produced by naval attachés and analyzed by the Naval Intelligence Department. The chapter then puts forward an alternative account of the circumstances leading up to the Act’s passage, again focusing on naval intelligence reports. Comprehensively and accurately informed by those reports, neither the professional nor the civilian element at the Admiralty perceived Russian and French naval policy or material in the 1880s to be alarming, either individually or jointly.