The centenary of the First World War has inevitably brought a plethora of new titles that deal with its naval aspect. While many of these have focused on Jutland, the only major naval battle of the war, David Morgan-Owen's The Fear of Invasion looks to help the reader understand how the politics of the previous quarter of a century influenced the strategic outlooks of both the army and navy. By doing so, it seeks to present us, as the cover suggests, with “a new interpretation of how strategy was formed in Britain on the eve of the First World War.” Analyzing the relationship between the independent policies of the two services, Morgan-Owen argues that a focus on home defense left the Admiralty subservient to the needs of the British Expeditionary Force. This imbalance, he suggests, precipitated strategic confusion within the navy, and ultimately led them to focus on the possibility of a German invasion.
As Morgan-Owen points out, this thesis is at odds with the view of many historians, who have often seen the invasion threat as something of a distraction, something that had spawned its own genre of literature yet had been seen as fiction—not a prospect taken seriously by war planners. While other scholars have shown that it could be a useful drum to bang in order to whip up a public frenzy for new warships, this monograph is the first serious research to put the fear of invasion, and the place of the defense of Britain (and particularly London, the metropole of the British World System), at the center of analysis. By doing so, Morgan-Owen suggests unequivocally that “how Britain planned to repel an invasion exercised an influence over virtually every other aspect of her military preparations before 1914 and must be understood in order fully to appreciate her position at the outbreak of the war” (3).
This is rather a bold argument. When presented with such a thesis, a reader immediately questions why, if this is the case, no one has thought of this before. It is not as if this is an understudied period, nor is the author drawing from obscure or unknown archives. Morgan-Owen, however, offers convincing reasons why the issue has largely been ignored. Above all, he argues, there has been a fundamental misunderstanding of the sources, whereby scholars have tended to assume that a lack of invasion plans in the documents of the French or German archives is synonymous with British officials’ not seeing invasion as a credible risk. Perhaps more importantly, he points to issues of teleology leading to studies concentrated elsewhere. We know now that invasion plans did not exist, nor were they feasible, and that instead the Royal Navy's most visible contribution to the war was Jutland, an episode that breeds controversy, and thus has dominated studies of the First World War navy. Moreover, the wider perception of the war as one of trenches in France and Belgium has led to a focus on the continental aspect of British strategy. Often, in fact, these two have been seen as opposites, with the blue-water school of the navy warring against the continental strategy of the army.
This traditional narrative has led to problematic oversights. First, British army and navy strategy are necessarily intertwined, and thus the planning of both needed to involve the other. Second, it negates the agency and key role played by consecutive governments, who had to create a war strategy in the face of two competing armed services knowing that favoring one over the other would have inevitable consequences for both. Third, it has led to an overt focus on British offensive, rather than defensive, planning. This is perhaps, again, a teleological issue, with knowledge of the unfolding of the First World War shaping how scholars have interpreted policy envisioned by governments, which inevitably wanted to preserve a status quo in which Britain was the global hegemon.
As Morgan-Owen ably shows, it was in fact Britain's global power that required it take stock of exactly how it would defend the homeland. Worries about the performance of the forces deployed to South Africa at the turn of the century and the perceived possibility of Russian invasion of India necessitated a decision be made about the purpose of the army, which seemed fit neither for home nor imperial defense. To solve this conundrum, Balfour decided that the navy would be responsible for the defense of trade and that the army would be used as a reserve force in India. This sent both leaderships in decisive directions that profoundly affected preparedness for war. With an alliance with France, and Germany becoming the obvious rival, the army increasingly assumed a continental stance, looking to deploy an expeditionary force in support of France. Becoming less sure of its ability to defend Britain's shores, the navy became increasingly focused on resisting any German attack on its east coast. Thus, by 1914, the fear of invasion had led Britain to prioritize its key strength, that of its navy, on facilitating the expeditionary force's shoring up of France, and in protecting its own shores.
Morgan-Owen writes persuasively and is clearly a master of both his sources and the historiography. Thus, although the book is relatively short, at 233 pages, it certainly packs a punch. Where its strength really lies is Morgan-Owen's skill in communicating how complicated, and changeable, the picture is in this period. As any scholar of this period knows, geopolitical reality and popular sentiment and belief (often whipped up by far-from-disinterested public figures), were often at odds. Thus, it is not enough to simply dismiss fears as fantastical as, if acted upon, they had real and long-term effects. Moreover, Fear of Invasion ably shows the important complexities, and sometimes contradictions, within British decision making. By putting the Admiralty, the War Office General Staff, and the (only sporadically interested and often distracted) government of the day in the same frame, Morgan-Owen brings nuance to the discussion, convincingly placing home defense into debates about prewar defense planning.
