Books in the Cass Series: Naval Policy and History series

This edited volume focuses on aspects of the understudied theme of African sea-power, including African navies and the engagement of non-African navies with the continent.

This book addresses the issues raised by Chinese and North Korean maritime 'gray zone' activities in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

This book examines British naval diplomacy from the end of the Crimean War to the American Civil War, showing how the mid-Victorian Royal Navy suffered serious challenges during the period. Many recent works have attempted to depict the mid-Victorian Royal Navy as all-powerful, innovative, and even self-assured. In contrast, this work argues that it suffered serious challenges in the form of expanding imperial commitments, national security concerns, precarious diplomatic relations with European Powers and the United States, and technological advancements associated with the armoured warship at the height of the so-called 'Pax Britannica'. Utilising a wealth of international archival sources, this volume explores the introduction of the monitor form of ironclad during the American Civil War, which deliberately forfeited long-range power-projection for local, coastal command of the sea. It looks at the ways in which the Royal Navy responded to this new technology and uses a wealth of international primary and secondary sources to ascertain how decision-making at Whitehall affected that at Westminster. The result is a better-balanced understanding of Palmerstonian diplomacy from the end of the Crimean War to the American Civil War, the early evolution of the modern capital ship (including the catastrophic loss of the experimental sail-and-turret ironclad H.M.S. Captain), naval power-projection, and the nature of 'empire', 'technology', and 'seapower'. This book will be of great interest to all students of the Royal Navy, and of maritime and strategic studies in general.

This edited volume critically examines the concept of 'security dilemma' and its effects on India-China maritime competition.

Recent challenges to US maritime predominance suggests a return to great power competition at sea, and this new volume looks at how navies in previous eras of multipolarity grappled with similar challenges.

This work examines British thinking about nuclear weapons in the period up to about 1970, looking at the subject through the eyes of the Royal Navy, in the belief that this can offer new insights in this field.

An examination of the German doctrine of commerce-raiding from 1856 to 1888 and its effect on shipbuilding and war planning. The ships built to police the German overseas empire were ideal for cruiser warfare but this was never adopted as an official strategy.

This challenging new book argues that the People's Republic of China is pursuing a long-term strategy to extend its national power by sea.

This text studies Great Britain's economic blockade of Germany in World War I, one of the key elements to the victory of the Entente.

This book traces the evolution of all the various parts of Britain's anti-submarine capability and examines the development of the specialist anti-submarine and submarine-detector branches.

On 3 July 1940, following the collapse of the French front, the Royal Navy opened fire on the French Navy at Mers-el-Kebir, killing 1300 sailors. This books is an objective account of the tragedy.

This book argues that the Duce's aggressive war against the predominant Mediterranean powers, Britain and France, was the only means whereby Italy might secure access to the world's oceans.

Based on extensive work in Russian archives, this book investigates how strategy, organizational rivalry and cultural factors came to shape naval development in the Soviet Union up to the invasion of 1941. The Soviet Navy's weak position among the armed services made a joint approach to military planning hard to achieve.

This book examines the formulation and the implementation of the Royal Navy's policy towards German naval disarmament after the Second World War.

Alfred Thayer Mahan has been called nineteenth-century evangelist of sea power. Chinese analysts invoke Mahan's writings, exhorting their nation to build a powerful navy. This book aims to test the interplay between Western military thought and Chinese strategic traditions. It examines how Mahanian thought shaped China's encounters on high seas.