In the first sentence of his preface, Richard Harding appropriately cites an earlier collection, Technical Change and British Naval Policy, 1860–1939 (1977), edited by Bryan Ranft. The two volumes share important traits: technology and technological change are central topics in both, and each draws on the expertise of some of the finest scholars working in naval history and related fields. Indeed, one might regard this new work as a follow-up, chronologically, to its predecessor.
That said, there are several points of divergence as well, most notably the degree to which technological change informs the choice of subjects, for Harding and his coauthors focus on innovation, broadly conceived, and thus address topics, in particular amphibious warfare, that range beyond the more narrowly techno-centric focus of Ranft's volume. Indeed, Harding devotes a substantial introductory essay to surveying theories of innovation and situating the Royal Navy's recent history within that scholarly context. The result, he is at pains to stress, is not “an overarching theory of innovation in the Royal Navy since 1930,” but rather an exploration of “a variety of contexts that influence the process of innovation” (10). The observation is underscored by his subsequent assessment—“strategic, operational, tactical, political, and financial considerations drive technological developments rather than vice versa” (11)—and by every one of the essays that follow. The cumulative picture might prompt readers to wonder whether “innovation and constraints” might not be a more apposite subtitle.
Those constraints emanated from numerous sources. Harding's own essay on amphibious warfare planning in 1930s and that by Ian Speller covering the same topic from 1945 to 1998 make clear that the Navy's deficiencies in that branch of warfare stemmed far less from want of vision—Harding argues persuasively that British efforts and experiments were on par with those of the United States and Japan until the mid-1930s—than from want of money, coupled with amphibious operations’ status as “orphan” within the service establishment, unlike the situation in the United States, where the Marine Corps was an assertive institutional “parent.” Well might one wonder, upon reading Speller's section on the institutional context (229–37), whether amphibious capability would have survived at all at several critical intervals had not one of the services regarded it as a means of swelling its share of defense appropriations, as was the case with the army in the late 1960s (235–36) and the navy in the 1990s (237).
Further obstacles are evident throughout. Anthony Gorst's examination of CVA-01, an ambitious carrier design cancelled in 1966, points to size limitations imposed both by British shipyards and by the docking facilities on foreign stations, while Norman Friedman's survey of electronics in post-1945 Royal Navy weapons systems emphasizes the want of robust private-sector demand as a significant limiting factor in Britain's ability to produce state-of-the-art electronic components. Eric Grove's examination of British guided missile technology concludes that “procurement of missiles had sometimes been limited by technical and industrial infrastructure and by the resources that could be made available” (211). Lewis Johnman and Hugh Murphy point to opposition from both management and labor in explaining the reluctance of the private-sector British shipbuilding industry to embrace welding, as opposed to riveting, in the interwar period, and other examples could be adduced as well.
Most such limitations, however, were external to the navy, the Treasury being the most common source. Harding's argument that the service itself was generally receptive to technological and operational innovation is echoed and amplified in several of the other essays, and examples of contrary tendencies are rare, the most glaring instance probably being the failure of a 1931 Anti-Aircraft Gunnery Committee, the subject of Philip Pugh's essay, to make adequate provision for the likelihood of future improvements in aircraft performance, a lacuna that would bear tragic fruit in the early years of the Second World War. More representative is Grove's conclusion that “within overall national resources and capabilities,” the navy “maintained its record for being at the forefront of technological innovation” (211). In this respect the collection stands as one of several outstanding recent challenges, including works by several of the contributors to this volume, to the long-held assumption that military and naval institutions are bastions of conservatism.
Broadly speaking, the essays can be grouped under two heads. Pugh’s, Harding’s, Johnman and Murphy’s, Gorst’s, and Speller's pieces, along with W. J. R. Gardner's examination of antisubmarine warfare during World War II and Malcolm Llewellyn-Jones's account of the Royal Navy's tribulations in countering the threat posed by fast submarines in the immediate postwar period, are narrowly focused case studies. Grove’s, Friedman’s, and David Hobbs's “Naval Aviation, 1930–2000,” in contrast, are wider-ranging surveys. All are accessible to nonspecialists, and several should be of interest to those working in other topical fields. This is especially true of Johnman and Murphy's essay, which is as much business and labor history as it is naval history, and Pugh’s, which sheds valuable light on the development of operational research techniques.
This quality, in turn, suggests another important way in which Harding's collection differs from Ranft’s. The latter is much more “navalocentric” in scope, whereas Harding and his colleagues examine the navy's response to challenges, both technological and operational, in a more global manner, firmly situating the service and its policies in a context that takes in the rest of the government, British society and the economy, and the international sphere. The result is a volume likely to be of value to scholars, naval professionals, graduate students, and interested laypersons.
