In his The Foundations of British Maritime Ascendancy: Resources, Logistics and the State, 1755–1815, Roger Morriss explains British military success in the eighteenth century by eschewing both triumphal class-based histories that attribute victory to heroic statesmen, military officers, and gentlemen capitalists, and those works, like John Brewer's Sinews of Power, that focus on the growth of the fiscal-military state. Rather, he suggests that changes to the bureaucratic culture of the British state, exemplified by its burgeoning administrative expertise and efficiency and the development of equity law, were key contributors to the victories both on land and at sea during the Napoleonic War. It is a provocative work. Unfortunately, his argument outlining an alternative view of the roots of victory in the Napoleonic War is itself weakened by triumphalist and teleological undertones.

At the root of British military success, Morriss suggests, was a change in administrative ideology. For much of the seventeenth century, British civil servants had operated under a system of collective responsibility, one that demanded all administrative action be constantly verified by several colleagues simultaneously. As the burden of government business expanded throughout midcentury to accommodate the global reach of the British state, collective responsibility collapsed, leaving the public skeptical and demanding reform. In its place arose a system of individual responsibility, one that emphasized both individual expertise and duty to the state. Hiring became merit based, and the infusion of experts such as Thomas Blomefield and William Congreve not only brought exacting new standards for personal behavior and job performance but also inspired the rationalization of state structure and function. Doing so allowed for measurable performance improvement in the short term and permitted the stricter records management necessary for the creation of an institutional memory that would permit successive administrations to learn from previous efforts and thus avoid failure in a variety of spheres, from defense (58) to food distribution (296, 301).

If a shift in bureaucratic thinking allowed the British state to learn and adapt, the collaboration between the state and the mercantile world allowed it to function beyond its means. The relationship between the government and its private contractors was affected by the development of equity law in the last half of the century. Less formalized than statute law and less complex than the common law, equity law permitted the quicker resolution of cases of fraud, debt, or breach of contract. Based on growing precedent, government was better able to create contracts that met their needs and private contractors were able to defend their behavior when accused of malfeasance. A greater sense of fair dealing characterized and regularized contracts between the two parties.

British administrations used this newfound relationship to its fullest. Britain had grown from a minor European economic power in the seventeenth century to a global power by the end of the eighteenth century. Those running the British state depended heavily on that economic power, collaborating with private purveyors for vital services, such as shipbuilding and repair, victualing, and the acquisition and transport of naval stores that ultimately allowed Britain to mount enormous overseas expeditions. Morriss notes, for example, that by 1813 nearly a million men were employed in the armed forces (225) and 300,000 of those men were employed outside the European theater of war, a task that would have been unimaginable one hundred years earlier (77). Indeed, while men had starved for lack of provisions in the War of the Spanish Succession, a much larger British military had surplus food in the Napoleonic War (296). Without this ability to collaborate, Britain could not have maintained its military establishment in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and may have been easily overcome by the French (200). Expertise, equity, and efficiency made this possible.

Such a short summary cannot do Morriss's work adequate justice. It is an encyclopedia of naval practice and procedure. A long-time student of the administrative side of naval history, Morriss's command of the subject is unparalleled. Throughout the book, he explores in exacting detail the minutia of naval life, from changes in naval standing orders (147) to the refit of ships of the line (154) to the staffing of a warship (246). Anyone interested in eighteenth-century naval administration would be well served reading this work.

That said, I do have concerns. Morriss marshals impressive evidence suggesting that bureaucratic evolution inspired improvements in shipbuilding, ordnance construction, the disposition of victuals, and the development of naval tactics. How much, however, did that ultimately affect the outcome of Britain's many wars? Though he criticizes class-based triumphal histories, the work is itself a triumphalist history. This book tells the story of English genius in which the triumphs of Nelson and Wellington are replaced by those of experts, like Thomas Blomefield and William Congreve. But the basis for his claims appears teleological. Morriss implies that in helping rationalize the British state, the experts’ efforts made British victory over Napoleon inevitable. But he also suggests that the reason we know their contributions are important is because the British won the Napoleonic War. It is a circular argument—one that I find unconvincing.

Furthermore, for all the forward-thinking civil servants, like Blomefield and Congreve, evidence still suggests that British victory in the Napoleonic War remained contingent on more traditional factors such as the skill of, and good fortune enjoyed by, the military and the ability of the state to collect taxes that could be used to fund both its own military and subsidies to the other European powers. Britain remained a reactive state, one forced to respond reflexively to pressing short-term issues. This does not invalidate his thesis, but it does blunt it slightly.

Roger Morriss's The Foundations of British Maritime Ascendancy is not a perfect book, but where aspects of the administrative history of the Royal Navy are concerned, it has much to offer.