Four themes characterize the role of the Pacific’s newly made navies in the making of the US “New Navy.” Demand for new and surplus technology accelerated innovation. Testing and battlefield observation of novel weapons helped refine decisions about acquisitions and strategy. Threat perceptions of ascendant newly made navies in the Pacific made manifest the immediate need for a US New Navy. And, finally, threat perceptions were instrumentalized as political capital in order to sell the utility of navalism to a skeptical public. Appreciating these relationships textures accounts of the emergence of the US empire in the Pacific, the study of military history in the context of international society, and the advent of prototypically “modern” navies. In this the history of the nineteenth-century Pacific is a useful primer for competition in the region between the People’s Republic of China and the United States.

This chapter reviews the leading explanations for the creation of the US “New Navy” and then proposes the book’s core argument: that US naval expansion in the 1880s and 1890s was disproportionately a reaction to the Pacific’s navies and their wars. In a regional context, the US New Navy was one among many newly made, industrial fleets racing for security and prestige. The Introduction then explains the implications of this thesis for historical accounts of the “Pacific World,” US Empire, and military technological development. It concludes with a chapter outline of the book.

In the struggle to sustain the nation’s economy and society accompanying World War One, the concept of ‘applied science’ was widely deployed and further enriched. It gained new traction through wartime and post-war administrative developments and the debates over research amongst the military services, civilian agencies, and private industry. Generic issues of the time were highlighted by the 1917 Sothern Holland enquiry into the organisation of naval research. Subsequently, new establishments, such as the DSIR and the Committee of Civil Research, shaped applied science. The chapter shows the interpretation of applied science by individual institutions and the press by exploring the details of specific research projects in the military, the radio industry and, above all, coal-oil manufacture. Thus it treats research on converting coal to oil at ICI, the Low Temperature Carbonisation Company, and Powell Duffryn. Through their thinking over funding priorities, new bodies often formulated and promoted their own conceptions of applied science. They both responded to public opinion and helped shape widely shared understanding.

By 2024, the prime minister had emerged as the dominant figure in control of foreign policy, taking over the powers initially from the monarch, then Parliament, then the Foreign Secretary. The prime minister decides British foreign relations, whether the country goes to war, and how it is fought. This chapter will examine how and why this transition occurred, and why the prime minister today can afford to be more preoccupied with foreign rather than domestic policy, and what this has meant to the office and powers of the prime minister – even in the face of war and increasing geopolitical tension.

The Nguyen Cochinchina was a maritime power. Its Archipelago-like landscape facing the South China Sea gave it a special character and made it stand out from all the Vietnamese dynasties. The synergy of its economy and the hybridity of its population and culture should all be seen against this background. Overseas trade defined seventeenth-century Cochinchina and regulated its labour and cash crop production on the coast and penetrated all sectors of local production and consumptions and accelerated its interactions with the uplanders. The Nguyen Cochinchina’s history challenges the conventional version of a single Vietnamese past, and the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea encouraged people to seek a much freer way of being Vietnamese. In such a way, it was little surprise that Cochinchina became the historical engine of change and pulled the national Vietnamese centre of gravity – whether seen in political, economic, or even cultural terms – southwards from the seventeenth century.

This chapter covers Heinrich Sohnrey, the Question of the Land debate, Junker, the Agrarian League, the marriage of Rye and Iron, Adolf Wagner, Karl Oldenberg, Agrar- und Industriestaat, and Lujo Brentano. It discusses an Agrarian versus an industrial future for Germany. Bernhard von Bülow became Chancellor in 1900. Inner Colonization had been difficult in Posen and West Prussia, as Poles organizde a counter-colonial program. The chapter also discusses the Expropriation Law of 1908, alongside Junker, Bethmann-Hollweg, Sering in the Navy League, Agrarian Romantics who support building an iron Navy, overseas colonialism, and Geoff Eley. This period sees Sering challenged to a duel, Sayre’s law, Dernburg, and German southwest Africa. In 1908, Sering published Inheritance Law and Agriculture in Schleswig-Holstein from an Historical Basis. Race and Colonialism. The journal Archive of Inner Colonization was founded in this period. Inner colonization was a part of a continuum, from adjacent land to overseas colonies. The Society for the Advancement of Inner Colonization was also founded. The Junker were against Sering and the idea of inner colonization, for it demanded the break up of their large landed estates and parcellization into small farms. In 1912 Sering went to Russia.

The collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the subsequent rise of the Meiji government were accompanied by the Japanese archipelago’s first large-scale conflict in two centuries. Warfare was not merely a consequence of the social and political upheaval of the restoration era. Rather, organizational reforms and the adoption of new technologies helped accelerate the collapse of the shogunate and shaped the manner of the modern state’s consolidation. Rather than recounting campaigns and battles, this chapter focuses on three interlocking sets of themes: technology, social change, and gender. Each theme relates to a particular story of the restoration era: the replacement of traditional Japanese arms by gunpowder weapons; the decline of the samurai and the rise of the conscript soldier; and the effacement of warrior masculinity by the ideal of the patriotically subservient “serviceman” (gunjin).

Chapter 2 considers the war led by Edward Seymour, Protector Somerset. Somerset saw the Scots as culpably resistant to God’s providential plan for an imperial ‘Great Britain’ with Edward VI as emperor. Metalepsis, a reversal of cause and effect, governs Somerset’s rhetoric and military strategy. His 15,000-strong amphibious army entered Scotland in 1547, heralded by a proclamation declaring that Scots who did not recognize the peaceful aim of this invasion would be the cause of violence against themselves. This preposterous logic is perpetuated by modern reference to the wars as ‘Rough Wooings’. The chapter analyses Somerset’s innovative amphibious strategy (fortifying the Forth and the Tay) in terms of the incoherence and hidden violence of his favoured metaphor of Britain as an island fortress walled by the sea, garrisoned by Anglo-Scots love. It interprets Hans Eworth’s arresting painting of Sir John Luttrell rising, naked, from the Firth of Forth. The chapter lays the ground for understanding what is wrong with the modern critical assumption that ‘Great Britain’ was James VI and I’s project and what is at stake in the occlusions that such a misreading of history permits.

Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations presents an authoritative overview of the various continuities and changes in migration and globalization from the 1800s to the present day. Despite revolutionary changes in communication technologies, the growing accessibility of long-distance travel, and globalization across major economies, the rise of nation-states empowered immigration regulation and bureaucratic capacities for enforcement that curtailed migration. One major theme worldwide across the post-1800 centuries was the differentiation between “skilled” and “unskilled” workers, often considered through a racialized lens; it emerged as the primary divide between greater rights of immigration and citizenship for the former, and confinement to temporary or unauthorized migrant status for the latter. Through thirty-one chapters, this volume further evaluates the long global history of migration; and it shows that despite the increased disciplinary systems, the primacy of migration remains and continues to shape political, economic, and social landscapes around the world.

Thucydides served as elected general (strategos) for Athens, and it is likely that he had (perhaps extensive) personal experience of warfare. His work is therefore an important guide both to the practicalities of warfare in 5th-century BCE Greece and to the wider function(s) that war played in politics and society. This chapter analyses what the History tells us about the ‘art of war’ in this period, discussing the use of land troops (light-armed soldiers and cavalry as well as hoplites) and naval forces. It discusses military strategy and tactics, the nature of combat and the consequences of warfare, for non-combatants as well as soldiers.

The high level of the Napoleonic military and financial threat concentrated the minds of different interests in Britain, ensuring broad cooperation. This enabled the government to tax the rich without serious resistance, thus furnishing the basis of war finance. Loans came from the City of London, which worked closely with the government. Contracts with contractors were generally well administered. Naval superiority enabled convoys to protect and maintain trade, and particularly to obtain specie from Mexico, much needed by Wellington’s armies in the Peninsula as well as for subsidies for continental powers. For the last two years of the war, the government had to deploy the talent and energy of Nathan Meyer Rothschild to ensure that the British army on the continent was paid. Despite periods of extreme political stress, financial confidence was never broken. Parts of industry thrived, trade flourished, infrastructure investment continued. The British economy finished the war in a healthy state, although the economic impact of financing the war had very long-term political effects.

This chapter argues that the conflict at sea was an important and frequently overlooked part of the Napoleonic Wars. Focusing primarily on the Royal Navy and French maritime forces, but also mentioning the navies of Spain, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and United States, it outlines the manifold ways in which maritime warfare shaped wider events on land, and helped determine the conflict’s final outcome. It demonstrates that French attempts to invade Britain were successfully rebuffed by the Royal Navy, ensuring that Britain remained in the conflict. The chapter then offers a more modern take on the commonly misunderstood Battle of Trafalgar, arguing that it was far from decisive and did little to change the course of the war. The naval conflict continued in earnest after 1805, and the war of trade became all-consuming, particularly after the inception of ‘Napoleon’s Continental system’. Here the navy offered a stubborn resistance to the French Emperor’s objectives, helping to encourage illicit trade with the European continent while also expanding Britain’s empire and mercantilist reach elsewhere in the globe. Finally, it demonstrates that maritime support was crucial to the land war, not least Wellington’s Peninsula campaign.

Was Churchill a military figure who happened to have gone in for politics or was he a civilian politician with a military background? His role in the early stages of the war as first lord of the admiralty did seem to indicate that he was combining military, naval and political leadership in his own person: taking personal command at the siege of Antwerp, adopting a ‘hands-on’ style at the admiralty and blurring the distinctions between land and sea command. The problem with the Dardanelles campaign was the confusion over whether it was to be a purely naval operation or a joint military–naval one, and the blame for this confusion must lie at least in part with Churchill’s 1914 decision to bring Fisher out of retirement. Churchill’s sacking was a sharp reminder of the ultimate authority of the prime minister, while his service on the Western Front reminded him that his heart really lay in Westminster. Ultimately, he experienced the war from an astonishing range of perspectives while operating as a lone figure. The war provided an important apprenticeship for 1940–5, but it also confirmed that he was essentially a civilian politician who happened to have a strong military side.

Taking its lead from a famous scene in 2 Henry IV and drawing upon the latest historical scholarship, this chapter surveys the modernization of England’s military capacity during the reign of Elizabeth I. By contrast with the success of England’s naval revival, the parallel effort to overhaul the antiquated county militia system and to create armies for service abroad achieved only partial success. While bows and bills were gradually replaced by guns and pikes and a proportion of each county’s militia was formed into “trained bands,” the sheer scale of the effort meant that the modernization of England’s military capacity on land always remained a frustratingly incomplete endeavor. Even so, Elizabeth’s privy council and the lord lieutenants of the counties made greater progress in this effort than has typically been recognized and managed to sustain war on multiple fronts over a period of more than twenty years.

The Caporetto disaster, together with the Russian collapse, threatened the very existence of the Entente. The Allies reacted with unprecedented speed and resolution, accelerating inter-allied integration.

The present chapter presents a recent historical description of the implementation of cross-cultural competence (3C) training programs throughout the United States (US) military. Training for 3C in the military aims at increasing foreign cultural understanding and providing behavioral strategies necessary to improve interactions in a foreign operational environment or with people of different national backgrounds. The importance of 3C was highlighted through a DoD Strategic Plan and an active body of basic and applied research throughout the DoD from 2007 to 2014. However, by 2018, its strategic value waned, except for a few activities within the Marines and US Air Force. Some of the challenges 3C training programs experienced were: (1) limited funding to conduct training evaluations, (2) balancing a need for culture-specific training for immediate deployment vs. culture-general training for having a military force at the ready for "any-time" deployment, and (3) inconsistent language to operationalize “culture” across the forces. After a review of US military 3C training programs from mid 2000s, this chapter concludes with propositions for stimulating a demand signal and furthering valid evaluation research on the effectiveness of 3C training.

This chapter analyzes Iran’s policy toward the Persian Gulf during the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi. The analysis is roughly divided into three periods: the years of 1925‒1932, during which time Reza Shah's court minister, Teymurtash, tried unsuccessfully to regularize the situation in the Persian Gulf through negotiations with the British government; the year of 1933 during which time various crises in the Persian Gulf arising from local challenges to British authority became part of the negotiation process; and the period of 1934‒1941 during which time Iran, encouraged by British withdrawal from Hengam and Basidu, strengthened its reliance on the tactics of deception, bluff, and intrigue in pursuit of its aspiration to obtain a paramount position in the Persian Gulf. This analysis is preceded by a brief discussion of the nature of the Pahlavi state because it provides the necessary context for Iran’s policy toward the Persian Gulf.