Nicholas Tracy - The Collective Naval Defence of Empire, 1900–1940

edited by

NICHOLAS TRACY

Adjunct Professor, Department of History, University of New Brunswick

PUBLISHED BY ROUTLEDGE FOR THE NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY
1997

The development in the twentieth century of a collective system of naval defence for the British Empire was determined by an imperfect compromise between strategic ideals and political realities. The prevailing strategic conception, that unity of control and freedom of movement was essential to ensure that overwhelming force could be brought to bear at the decisive battle which would determine the outcome of a war, was tremendously influential. The necessity for the utmost efficiency of strategic direction was reinforced by the belief that forward deployment for offensive action was the imperative means to achieve naval success. Centralisation was also valued because it was feared that small fleets could not be efficient. In conflict with the strategic and administrative ideals of centralised command and a single, great naval service was the political reality of the need to recognise the constitutional autonomy of the constituent members of the Empire.

The absolute right of the Dominions and Colonies to control their own budgets was undisputed, and this budgetary independence had to be accommodated with strategic requirements, which in practice were perceived differently from the vantage points of London and the subordinate capitals. Until 1926 the Empire maintained at least the fiction of a common foreign policy, but in reality the differing strategic situations of the constituent parts of the Empire affected their views on foreign relations, and influenced their willingness to devote financial resources to a common purpose they imperfectly controlled. Efforts to develop a federal structure which would have made the common foreign policy politically realistic were frustrated, in part by the sheer size of the Empire, and in consequence the Dominions developed their own naval forces paid for out of their national budgets and controlled locally. This necessitated the development of a compromise defence structure which would enable the several navies to train and fight together. It was eventually accepted at the Admiralty that it was more important to foster political support for naval effort than it was to have unfettered centralised command, and that only national navies were likely to receive that support.

The compromise system of co-operative naval defence was imperfect, certainly as an instrument of deterrence. On the other hand, the structure of Imperial defence co-operation retained strong enough political support to keep the Empire intact in the crises of 1940 and 1941, and right through the Second World War. The inadequacy of the system to sustain an effective defence against Japan while fighting Germany and Italy, however, was revealed when Singapore fell in early 1942. That failure set the Empire on its course for eventual dissolution.