Greg Kennedy - The Merchant Marine in International Affairs, 1850-1950

THE MERCHANT MARINE IN
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
18501950

CASS SERIES: NAVAL POLICY AND HISTORY
ISSN 13669478

Series Editor: Holger Herwig

This series consists primarily of manuscripts by research scholars in the general area of naval policy and history, without national or chronological limitations. It will from time to time also include collections of important articles as well as reprints of classic works.

Austro-Hungarian Naval Policy, 19041914
Milan N. Vego

Far Flung Lines: Studies in Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie Schurman
Edited by Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy

Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars
Rear Admiral Raja Menon

The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 19421947
Chris Madsen

Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas
Milan N. Vego

The Pen and Ink Sailor: Charles Middleton and the King's Navy, 17781813
John E. Talbott

The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 19351940
Robert Mallett

The Merchant Marine in International Affairs, 18501950
Edited by Greg Kennedy

Naval Strategy in Northeast Asia: Geo-strategic Goals, Policies and Prospects
Duk-Ki Kim

Naval Policy and Strategy in the Mediterranean: Past, Present and Future
Edited by John B. Hattendorf

Stalin's Ocean-going Fleet, 19351953: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programs
Jiirgen Rohwer and Mikhail S. Monakov

Imperial Defence, 18681887
Donald Mackenzie Schurman; edited by John Beeler

Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond
Edited by Phillips O'Brien

THE
MERCHANT MARINE
IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
18501950

Edited by

Greg Kennedy

First published in 2000 by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS

This edition published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Copyright of collection 2000 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd
Copyright of articles 2000 contributors

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The merchant marine in international affairs, 18501950.
(Cass series. Naval policy and history; 8)
1. Merchant marine History 19th century 2. Merchant
marine History 20th century 3. Naval art and science
History 4. International relations
I. Kennedy, Greg
359.009

ISBN 0-7146-4918-X (cloth)
ISBN 0-7146-4471-4 (paper)
ISSN 1366-9478

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The merchant marine in international affairs, 18501950 / edited by Greg
Kennedy.

p. cm. (Cass series-naval policy and history, ISSN 1366-9478; 8)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7146-4918-X (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0-7146-4471-4 (paper: alk. paper)

1. Navigation-History-19th century. 2. Navigation-History-20th
century. 3. Merchant marine-History-19th century. 4. Merchant
marine-History-20th century. 5. World politics-19th century. 6. World
politics-20th century. I. Kennedy, Greg. II. Series.
VK19.M47 2000
359'009'034-dc21

00-043146

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

Contents

Maritime history, as Greg Kennedy states in his introduction to this volume, recently has undergone a healthy revival. New books have appeared dealing with the navies of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States, to name but a few of the more obvious national fields of study. Other works have re-examined the naval history of both world wars in this century. International conferences in Britain, Canada, Germany and Scandinavia have attracted hundreds of participants and resulted in new anthologies dealing with maritime (and especially naval) power. The partial opening-up of former Soviet archives has led to further research, some of which (on Stalin's naval plans) will be published by Professor Jrgen Rohwer of Stuttgart in this series.

Unfortunately, the same is not true of the more mundane aspects of maritime power, such as logistics. Maritime power consists of long, dull hours of hard work in which no one action is decisive by itself. It is, in the words of the late Admiral Raleigh Bruce, US Navy, very much in the same position with regard to public relations as a virtuous woman. Virtue seldom is spectacular and less often causes long editorials. In addition, the recent globalization of trade impedes our understanding of maritime commerce. The loss, for example, of Honda automobiles produced in Ohio or Volkswagen automobiles produced in Brazil, being transported in a Panamanian-registry ship, manned by a Malaysian crew and insured by Lloyds of London, does not create the same concern as the loss of a national merchant vessel would have 50 years ago. Few people today have witnessed the launching of a great tanker or a roll-on roll-off cargo ship. Above all, cheap and accessible air travel has almost obscured the key role that ocean transport still plays in our daily lives. Even when aircraft are developed that can carry ten times as much freight as today's Boeing 747 freighter or C-17 Globemaster and that day is a long way off large cargoes will still be delivered by sea for less money and in less time.

Thus, it is all the more valuable that Greg Kennedy and an array of distinguished maritime historians have provided this timely and detailed look at how nations in the century between 1850 and 1950 used the non-fighting component of their maritime power to further their national interests, shore up alliances, enforce maritime law and fuel the oil-dependent industries of the Western world.

The various contributions shed light on a myriad of themes. These range from John Beeler's exploration of how the Royal Navy in the nineteenth century tried to use the merchant marine as an auxiliary commerce raider/protector, to Greg Kennedy's analysis of Anglo-American merchant shipping competition from 1933 to 1939, and to William Wray's pioneering study of the impact that war had on the structure and business of Japanese merchant shipping companies. Also, Keith Neilson reveals how Britain used its merchant marine, the largest in the world, to allocate scarce raw materials and to maintain alliance cohesion during the First World War, while Orest Babij examines British oil policy in the inter-war years in terms of the Royal Navy's Far East defence strategy. Finally, Kevin Smith details the tortuous Anglo-American discussions on merchant shipping during 1940 and 1941 in the light of America's role as the arsenal of democracy and its approach to a future alliance structure with Britain; and Mike Hennessy explores the decline of the Canadian merchant marine and how that affected Canada's role in NATO by the late 1940s. The common theme of all the contributions is how merchant marines were a vital strategic resource and link among nations and allies, and a constant element in joint strategies. As such, the book complements in a highly profitable manner the recent renaissance in research on the fighting aspects of maritime power.