Navies in Northern Waters (Cass Series: Naval Policy and History)

N AV I E S I N N O RT H E R N WAT E R S 1721–2000

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CASS SERIES: NAVAL POLICY AND HISTORY Series Editor: Geoffrey Till ISBN 1366-9478 This series consists primarily of original 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. 1. Austro-Hungarian Naval Policy, 1904–1914 Milan N. Vego 2. Far-Flung Lines: Studies in Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie Schurman Edited by Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy 3. Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars Rear Admiral Raja Menon 4. The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 1942–1947 Chris Madsen 5. Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas Milan N. Vego 6. The Pen and Ink Sailor: Charles Middleton and the King’s Navy, 1778–1813 John E. Talbott 7. The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 1935–1940 Robert Mallett

15. The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period: An Operational Perspective John Moretz 16. Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power Thomas M. Kane 17. Britain’s Anti-submarine Capability, 1919–1939 George Franklin 18. Britain, France and the Naval Arms Trade in the Baltic, 1919–1939: Grand Strategy and Failure Donald Stoker 19. Naval Mutinies of the Twentieth Century: An International Perspective Edited by Christopher Bell and Bruce Elleman 20. The Road to Oran: Anglo-French Naval Relations, September 1939–July 1940 David Brown

8. The Merchant Marine and International Affairs, 1850–1950 Edited by Greg Kennedy

21. The Secret War against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception and Political Control in the 1980s Ola Tunander

9. Naval Strategy in Northeast Asia: Geostrategic Goals, Policies and Prospects Duk-Ki Kim

22. Royal Navy Strategy in the Far East, 1919–1939: Planning for a War against Japan Andrew Field

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

23. Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-first Century Geoffrey Till

11. Stalin’s Ocean-going Fleet: Societ Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes, 1935–1953 Jürgen Rohwer and Mikhail S. Monakov

24. Britain’s Economic Blockade of Germany, 1914–1919 Eric W. Osborne

12. Imperial Defence, 1868–1887 Donald Mackenzie Schurman; edited by John Beeler 13. Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond Edited by Phillips Payson O’Brien 14. The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons Richard Moore

25. A Life of Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Cunningham: A Twentieth-Century Naval Leader Michael Simpson 26. Navies in Northern Waters, 1721–2000 Edited by Rolf Hobson and Tom Kristiansen 27. German Naval Strategy, 1856–1888 David Olivier

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NAVIES IN NORTHERN WATERS 1721–2000

Editors: ROLF HOBSON and TOM KRISTIANSEN

FRANK CASS LONDON • PORTLAND, OR Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

First published in 2004 in Great Britain by FRANK CASS 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. and in the United States of America by FRANK CASS 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 1001 Website: www.frankcass.com Frank Cass is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Navies in northern waters, 1721–2000. – (Cass series. Naval policy and history; no. 26) 1. Navies – North Atlantic Ocean – History – 18th century 2. Navies – North Atlantic Ocean – History – 19th century 3. Navies – North Atlantic Ocean – History – 20th century 4. Maritime law – History – 18th century 5. Maritime law – History – 19th century 6. Maritime law – History – 20th century 7. Sea-power – North Atlantic Ocean – History 8. Balance of power 9. Great Britain – Military relations – Foreign countries I. Hobson, Rolf II. Kristiansen, Tom 359'.0091631 ISBN 0-203-00586-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-7146-5541-4 (hbk) ISBN 0-7146-8551-8 (pbk) ISSN 1366-9478 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress 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. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

1Contents Series Editor’s Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction Rolf Hobson and Tom Kristiansen PART I: THE DOMINANT NAVAL POWER: THE ROYAL NAVY, 1721–1917 1

Great Britain and Maritime Law from the Declaration of Paris to the Era of Total War Andrew Lambert PART II: SECONDARY NAVIES: THE MARITIME BALANCE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

2

The Long Life of Treaties: The Dutch Republic and Great Britain in the Eighteenth Century Jaap R. Bruijn

3

Denmark–Norway 1720–1807: Neutral Principles and Practice Ole Feldbæk

4

Navies and Power Struggle in Northern and Eastern Europe, 1721–1814 Jan Glete

PART III: SECONDARY NAVIES WITH POTENTIAL AND ASPIRATIONS, 1850–1918 5

Prussia, Germany and Maritime Law from Armed Neutrality to Unlimited Submarine Warfare, 1780–1917 Rolf Hobson

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6

The Jeune École: The Strategy of the Weak Arne Røksund

7

The US Navy and the ‘Freedom of the Seas’, 1775–1917 John B. Hattendorf

PART IV: SEA POWER OR COLLECTIVE SECURITY? THE NORTHERN WATERS BETWEEN THE WARS 8

The Interwar Years: Naval Disarmament, Collective Security and Preparations for War Tom Kristiansen

9

Naval Armaments Diplomacy in Northern Waters: The Origins of the Anglo-Scandinavian Naval Agreement of 21 December 1938 Joseph Maiolo PART V: THE COLD WAR AND BEYOND, 1945–2000

10 The Superpowers and Secondary Navies in Northern Waters during the Cold War Eric J. Grove 11 Major Coastal State – Small Naval Power: Norway’s Cold War Policy and Strategy Rolf Tamnes 12 Coastal Power: The Sea Power of the Coastal State and the Management of Maritime Resources Jacob Børresen 13 The Role of Naval Forces in Northern Waters at the Beginning of a New Century Roald Gjelsten 14 Concluding Remarks Olav Riste Notes on Contributors Select Bibliography

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1Series Editor’s Preface Although previous volumes in this series have done something to correct the imbalance, most naval books in the English language tend to focus on the preoccupations, problems and fortunes of the larger maritime powers. This volume, however, concentrates on those of smaller navies. What is special about them? What are their concerns? How different in fact are they? The editors of this volume have assembled a collection of expert papers that help us explore all these issues. One thing that emerges very clearly here is how difficult it is to generalise about the characteristics of the ‘smaller navy’ that makes them different from their larger equivalents – apart, that is, from such obvious considerations as their tendency to have fewer large vessels in their order of battle. Many of the elements of distinctiveness emerge in this book. One, for example is a different doctrinal approach to their role and function. Smaller navies tend to be less concerned with the struggle for command of the high seas, focusing more narrowly on fighting in and for their narrow waters. Contesting command of the narrow seas, rather than that of the open ocean, seems to demand different capacities in the way of platforms, weapons and sensors, moreover. The functional priorities of smaller navies seem to differ too. They are, by and large, less concerned with the classic functions of seapower (the struggle for mastery of the seas, the protection of oceanic shipping, the conduct of large-scale amphibious operations) and more preoccupied with coastal defence and, especially these days, the protection of national resources within their own Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). But the Norwegian example reveals the significant subtleties hidden within such preoccupations. Does coastal defence require the navy to work with land-based forces and, essentially, to concentrate on defeating invaders as they hit the beaches, or should it focus more on moving out to intercept attackers while they are still out at sea? In seeking to shift to the latter emphasis, the Norwegian Navy seemed to be adopting the approach of the larger navy – at least to some extent. In fact, this book demonstrates that all these ‘differences’ are much more matters of degree than of kind. Smaller navies have been concerned with the strategic problems and priorities of the greater ones (such as the balance to be struck between belligerent and neutral rights in the prosecution of a war on shipping) and have often gone out of their way to seek to influence larger navies by joining together in common cause, either with them or with each other. In more recent times, even small navies have followed the general trend of developing an interest in contributing to the conduct of expeditionary peaceCopyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

support operations in distant places, and in accepting the consequence of shifting the character of their fleets a little away from having larger numbers of small fast-attack craft to fewer, bigger, more expensive vessels capable of operating across the oceans. In this way, it is hoped, smaller navies can have larger consequences. Smaller navies also face the same kind of problems in narrowing the gap between commitments and resources, in developing more productive relationships with the other services, and in striking a balance between their war-fighting and their constabulary roles. Even so, smaller navies are much more than large navies in diminished form. The historical chapters in this book show that, above all, it is the strategic circumstances in which they operate that give navies, whether large or small, their distinctive character. The focus here on the smaller navies and the naval experience of northwestern Europe makes that point very well, because of the unique mix of topographic, hydrographic and geo-strategic features that region offers. But this regional focus also shows the unwisdom of the easy generalisation. Despite their apparent similarities, the experience and nature of the navies of Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark have varied enormously over the years, and hugely repay the study that the experts in this book provide.

Geoffrey Till Series Editor

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1Acknowledgements This book is the result of a workshop organised by the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies in Oslo on 9–10 August 2001. It would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Norwegian Naval Staff and the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Defence, which we gratefully acknowledge. We would also like to thank professors John Hattendorf, Andrew Lambert and Rolf Tamnes for their detailed comments on our draft project, which then became the conference outline and can now be found in revised form in the Introduction.

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Abbreviations AA ABM ADM ASW BALTRON CID CINCNORTH COMBALTAP CONMAROPS CSS DDR DNI FO GIUK GPO IEA MCM MCMFORNORTH MC MDAP MTB NDRE OPEC OSCE PD PfP PRO RF SACEUR SACLANT SLOC SSBN SSGN SSN STANAVFORLANT UNCLOS 3 VOC WEU

anti-aircraft anti-ballistic missile Admiralty anti-submarine warfare Baltic Naval Squadron Committee of Imperial Defence Allied Commander in Chief Northern Europe Allied Commander Baltic Approaches Concept for Maritime Operations Confederate States Ship Deutsche Demokratische Republik Director of Naval Intelligence Foreign Office, London Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom gap Government Printing Office International Energy Agency mine countermeasure Mine Countermeasure Force North Military Committee Mutual Defense Assistance Program motor torpedo boat Norwegian Defence Research Establishment Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Plans Division, Admiralty Partnership for Peace Public Record Office, London Russian Federation Supreme Allied Commander Europe Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic sea lines of communication Ballistic-missile submarine nuclear fuelled SSN with dedicated non-ballistic-missile launchers nuclear-fuelled submarine Standing Naval Force Atlantic Third UN Convention of the Law of the Sea Dutch East India Company Western European Union

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1

Introduction R O L F H O B S O N and T O M K R I S T I A N S E N

During the past three centuries the commercial and strategic importance of the Baltic, the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea, the Barents Sea and the North Atlantic has grown continually. The expansion of European and colonial trade, industrialisation and the exploitation of natural resources such as fish, oil and gas have made all states adjacent to these waters dependent on the sea for their welfare – some of them vitally so. All these states, in varying ways, developed navies to protect their interests. The development of navies was also an element in a states system which linked the continental with the maritime balance of power. Maritime law, and the degree to which it was observed, grew out of this connection and the tensions it engendered. A further significant aspect of the linkage was the fact that whereas the United States sought to maintain its distance from Europe for 130 years after the founding of the republic, its commercial interests and its position on maritime law inexorably forced it to take account of both the maritime and the continental balance of power. Finally, for most of the period the states in question have dominated the rest of the world economically, politically and militarily. Hence, the conflicts among them, and the forms of cooperation they developed, have had enormous consequences. Despite sharing maritime interests, these states have differed greatly in most other respects. Economic and strategic importance has not necessarily been reflected in naval strength; some states have outgrown naval insignificance to rival the leading maritime powers; others declined from an important position within the maritime balance to the status of a coastal power. This might be illustrated by the overarching development in the period covered by this book. The Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands were important naval powers during the eighteenth century but suffered a relative decline towards its end. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Britain rose steadily to its nineteenth-century supremacy, only to be replaced by the United States in the twentieth. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries France was the power most consistently opposed to British maritime dominance and could at times count on Russian and Spanish support. In the twentieth it was Germany and the Soviet Union who challenged British and, subsequently, US naval primacy in northern waters. Despite the interrelationship between the histories of large and small maritime powers, for many decades naval history has been written primarily from the perspective of the dominant sea powers and has concentrated on the rivalry between them. Moreover, navies at war have taken precedence over the formative periods between wars, strategy has been preferred to international law, and the focus has been firmly on conflicts between the major powers to the detriment of the cooperation between the smaller ones. The leading navies of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Royal Navy and the US Navy, have received most attention. Their secondary opponents and sometime partners, such as the navies of France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia, have also been the subject of many excellent studies. However, smaller maritime powers like the Dutch Republic, Prussia and the Scandinavian states do not seem to have received the same attention in mainstream scholarship. This is so despite the fact that such navies have played important roles within the maritime balance of power during the last three centuries, not least as the defenders of neutral rights. One reason for the lack of interest in smaller navies from scholars outside the countries to which they belong is that naval history is for the most part written by officers and academics from the major naval powers who are in search of historical lessons. Hence, naval history from the perspective of the great powers has to some extent been written to serve the evolution of strategic theories and operational doctrines applicable to the present day. Another reason is that the cooperation of the smaller navies in defence of maritime law and neutral rights became much less important in the era of total war after 1914 than during the preceding two centuries. Theories of sea power in the major maritime powers concentrated on the concept of command of the sea. This was by definition beyond the reach of small maritime powers, even the secondary powers. A concern with the modern use of sea power to the full extent of its effectiveness in total wars has hampered recognition of the very real constraints which the cooperation of smaller neutrals exercised on that use within the European states system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The present volume sets out to redress the balance by concentrating on the role that the northern maritime states – the Dutch Republic, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Prussia, Russia, Sweden, Denmark and Norway – played within the European balance of power. Since the United States, for more than a century from its founding up through the First World War, was very much involved in the struggle for the ‘freedom of the seas’, its maritime policy has been treated within the same framework as that of the northern states. The contributions focus on topics which make the role of the northern maritime states more visible than has often been the case in previous scholarship. The cooperation between these navies in the leagues of armed neutrality, and the changes this cooperation brought about in the laws of war at sea, represent one avenue of approach which can serve to integrate the history of the smaller navies with that of the leading maritime powers. In taking account of the differences between the Atlantic, North Sea and Baltic theatres the contributions also illustrate the limits to maritime cooperation. Sweden, for example, was less concerned with neutrality and maritime rights in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than was Denmark–Norway or Russia. In a somewhat longer perspective it is useful to compare the interests these powers shared, and the common action they pursued, as neutrals during the protracted hegemonic struggles between Britain and France during the Napoleonic wars, and between Britain and Germany during the First World War. Another avenue of approach is the diplomacy of maritime law from the pre-history of the Declaration of Paris in 1856, through the Declaration of London in 1909 to the interwar years. In this period the attitude of the dominant sea power, Great Britain, was crucial to the evolution of international law. Whether that attitude was formed primarily with regard to the balance of power at sea, or whether domestic ideological factors also played a role, are questions of great importance when it comes to interpreting the collapse of maritime law during the First World War. The resurrection of ‘freedom of the seas’ in Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the attempts at international regulation of naval armaments during the following decades illustrate how conflicts of interest continued to affect the relationship between small and dominant naval powers. French naval thought is particularly interesting in this context. After 1871 the French Navy had to accept permanent secondary status but sought for alternative strategies of commerce warfare as a means of defeating Britain. In so doing, strategy pushed against the boundaries of maritime law and illustrated the dilemma which would be faced by the Imperial German Navy during the First World War. For much of the interwar period the Royal Navy dominated the northern waters. The Russian Navy had been drastically weakened and receded further into the Baltic in the years following the revolution and Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the civil war. Moreover, it almost disappeared from the coast of the Barents Sea, upholding no more than a few gunboats and various small vessels in the White Sea and at the minor station in Alexandrovsk. The Soviet Northern Flotilla was established only in 1933, and during the following years Stalin started to develop his serious ambition to rebuild the strength of the navy. The German Navy was severely restricted by the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. The traditional balance of power at sea appeared to be less relevant than before in the security debate due to such innovations as the League of Nations, collective security and multilateral conferences on arms reduction and limitation such as those held at Washington, Geneva and London. Until the early 1930s the naval aspects of the states system seemed to be fairly successful: at a formal level, the small naval powers had a role to play in the system of negotiations. This situation changed with the advent of Nazi revisionism and the new ambitions of the Soviet Union. The Anglo-German naval agreement of 1935 marked a major breach in the Versailles system, which also marginalised the smaller powers. When the collective security system collapsed in the late 1930s, the coastal states attempted to return to a traditional policy of neutrality. However, they did not sufficiently realise that international law had not been modified in the light of the experiences of the First World War. The experiences of the two total wars of the twentieth century raised the question of whether maritime neutrality as practised during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was at all viable. The advent of the superpower confrontation after the Second World War brought further changes. The north European NATO states adjusted their naval policies to the prevailing bi-polar security structure of the Cold War. That implied a focus on the naval aspects of a superpower confrontation. Within NATO, tasks were to some extent shared among the member states according to their capabilities and competence. In accordance with central allied defence plans the United States and the other major powers developed blue-water navies with traditional war-fighting capacities for the purpose of securing the vital sea lines of communications. Within this framework, the smaller countries contributed with sea power for littoral warfare and auxiliary tasks. In addition to this, the coastal states had to maintain naval forces for tasks that would not automatically generate allied engagement or intervention, such as maritime surveillance, enforcement of jurisdiction in waters under their responsibility and protection of maritime activities and resources. This period witnessed the establishment of an international treaty regime under the auspices of the United Nations that instituted national jurisdiction in economic zones of 200 nautical miles and an international negotiation system to regulate the exploitation of maritime resources and protect fish stocks. These new complex Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

maritime regimes also needed naval protection, albeit of a different kind than the traditional war-fighting forces. This was particularly true of the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea, where some of the borders and the interpretation of treaties were disputed and where the exploitation of the rich maritime resources attracted nations from outside the region. The more fluid situation that has evolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union has once again led to a redefinition of the tasks of the small northern navies. Participation in traditional NATO Article 5 operations has gradually been given a lower priority, while involvement in international operations has been the focus of attention. Furthermore, the coastal states in the region have further developed a capability for the exercise of jurisdiction in low-intensity conflicts of interest which do not automatically involve the alliance. The priority given to these new tasks differs among the smaller maritime states. Norway, due to its long coastline and vast sea areas, is particularly concerned with maintaining its jurisdiction and controlling resources and activities. These matters are of less concern to, for example, the Netherlands. The dilemma of the small northern NATO states is caused by the fact that it has proved very costly to secure naval capacity for both Article 5 operations and the tasks attached to the exercise of jurisdiction and peace support operations within tight budget restraints. The present situation is a further illustration of the long-standing conflict between the legal and power-oriented approaches to disputes in the region. Yet even though tasks have been redefined this has not led to fundamental changes in the force structures, a fact which reflects the inherent flexibility of navies and the permanency of the constabulary tasks. * * * Several of the subjects mentioned above can be followed back to the seventeenth century. However, it is useful to limit consideration of the role of the northern maritime states to the period after the end of the Great Nordic War (1700–21), which was the most intense conflict between them. The war established a political and strategic equilibrium in the region that lasted until the Napoleonic wars. During these eight decades forms of cooperation and confrontation developed which were of major importance for the subjects treated in this book. The contributions on individual countries are grouped under five thematic headings. Part I, ‘The Dominant Naval Power: The Royal Navy, 1721–1917’, covers the attitude of Great Britain to the claims of the smaller navies throughout most of this period. When Britain accepted a very significant extension of neutral rights in the Declaration of Paris of 1856, this represented an important convergence of interests Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

between the dominant and the secondary maritime powers. The decades down to 1914 were an intermediate period between the constant rivalry of the eighteenth century and the unfettered wielding of allied sea power during the two world wars. These years seemed to prove that a new liberal era regulated by international law had replaced the previous mercantilist wars over trade. Very few predicted that Britain would revert to full belligerent rights in a struggle against a powerful enemy. Part II, ‘Secondary Navies: The Maritime Balance and International Law in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, addresses the smaller naval powers, such as the Scandinavian countries and the United Provinces, which cooperated in the defence of neutral rights in the eighteenth century. Their efforts were crowned with temporary success when the League of Armed Neutrality of 1780 gained Britain’s acceptance of neutral immunity. Thereafter they were eliminated as important factors in the maritime balance, and they were to wield much less influence over the further evolution of maritime law. Its liberalisation in the mid-nineteenth century generally accorded with their interests, but they could do nothing to prevent the collapse of the system during the total wars of the twentieth century. Part III, which we have called ‘Secondary Navies with Potential and Aspirations, 1850–1918’, covers those states which grew from minor to secondary, or leading, status or which, like France, were forced to accept an inferior position after many decades of rivalry with Britain. Paris had always encouraged the cooperation of smaller maritime powers to defend their interests, and thereby indirectly assist France against Britain. When French naval strategists of the early Third Republic considered how to compensate for their inferiority compared to Britain, they occasionally proposed the desperate remedy of an allout war against commerce in deliberate breach of international law. The United States and Prussia-Germany are the best examples of powers whose attitude to neutrality and maritime law changed as their aspirations towards first-class status grew. At the beginning of the period they shared the position of the weaker maritime powers. They thereby founded a diplomatic tradition (and a cooperation) which continued until the prospect of rivalry or alliance with Britain forced them to disregard neutral rights. The allied blockade of Germany during the First World War and the latter’s unrestricted submarine warfare marked the final breach with these traditions. The altered nature of the relationship between dominant and small navies during the 1920s and 1930s, and the international legal framework within which they operated, is the theme of Part IV, ‘Sea Power or Collective Security? The Northern Waters between the Wars’. Viewed from the perspective of naval history, the interwar period in the region Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

was characterised by at least three important features. Firstly, as a consequence of the collapse of the German and Russian navies, the region was dominated by the Royal Navy after 1918. This made a great power conflict in northern waters seem very unlikely until the mid-1930s. Secondly, public opinion in the Scandinavian countries was deeply influenced by anti-militaristic and pacifistic ideas in the wake of the Great War. This – in combination with the growing support for the socialist parties, which by 1935 were in office in all the Scandinavian countries – led to strong popular backing for the efforts to establish a states system that could prevent war. This took place within the framework of the League of Nations and the international conferences for the reduction or limitation of naval armaments. Thirdly, the 1930s witnessed a renewed naval arms race, when the long-standing undercurrent of German revisionism was reinforced by Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933. Scandinavian naval policy was torn between those who were in favour of disarmament and the establishment of an alternative security regime, and those who wanted modernisation in accordance with the experiences from the world war. The former regarded international law, the states system and multilateral arms agreements as a civilised substitute for sea power. The latter partly agreed, but claimed that sea power was still necessary as a last resort. In Scandinavia the unilateralists dominated the political arena until the late 1930s. Part V, ‘The Cold War and Beyond, 1945–2000’, carries the story to the present day in considering the roles of small coastal states during and after the Cold War. The northern waters increasingly became a focal point of naval rivalry and decisive for the balance of power as the Soviet Union reinforced the naval base complex on the Kola peninsula from the 1960s. Somewhat later new maritime problems arose which posed tasks not directly linked to the Cold War confrontation: the exercise of sovereignty, environmental safety and resource management. In addition, since the end of the Cold War new areas of cooperation have opened up, such as the Partnership for Peace, confidence building and conflict reducing measures, and, not least, peace operations. Not much – apart from geography, the existence of the states in question and a renewed emphasis on international law – links the major subjects of eighteenth-century naval history with those of the early twenty-first century. But by delineating some of the earlier continuities, showing where they began and when they ceased to obtain, we hope to increase awareness of the role that smaller navies have played within the maritime balance. It is this succession of continuities, limited in time but concentrated within a particular geographical area, which we believe provides coherence to the subject of this book.

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Part I: The Dominant Naval Power: The Royal Navy, 1721–1917

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1

Great Britain and Maritime Law from the Declaration of Paris to the Era of Total War A N D R E W L A M B E RT

For Britain maritime law was merely one of many issues that had to be handled in accordance with the strategic and diplomatic realities of the moment. For all the intellectual effort applied to resolve disputes and codify international practice, the British government, once at war, invariably applied a legal regime that produced the greatest strategic benefit. Nor were they alone in this. The law has never been static. Its pliable character has meant that it has been made to serve the purposes of sea power, and so has become a weapon in the naval armoury. Just how it has played this role has depended on the issues that occasioned resort to naval force, but it has always been prominent in giving form and character to the issues as well as in influencing the conduct of those who have sought their resolution.1

It should be stressed that these issues were uniquely important for Britain. As an island nation and global trading empire Britain relied on the sea for its insular and imperial security, together with the prosperity that underpinned the entire structure. The only security system that could meet these needs was one based on naval dominance. Between 1650 and 1945 naval dominance was based on a sea control force, a battle fleet capable of defeating any realistic combination of rivals. Sea control was the basis for the strategic exploitation of the sea, using an economic blockade to deny the enemy access to trade and raw materials. This could seriously damage their economy. Consequently, it was the cornerstone of that quintessentially British approach to war, the maritime strategy. Any significant legal limit on the application of naval Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

power ‘raised fundamental questions about the utility of maritime [and therefore British] strategy’.2 International law has long considered the sea open to all nations to sail in peace. Nations have jurisdiction only over their own territorial waters, and their ships at sea. In wartime nations have always captured each other’s merchant ships, much as they have invaded each other’s lands. These actions are limited by the laws of war, not international law. However, the question becomes complicated once neutral shipping is considered. Belligerents have long insisted on the right to capture any neutral ship aiding the enemy. Yet such actions compromised the economic interest of neutrals, who saw an opportunity to improve trade, but based their case on ‘freedom of the seas’ and the sovereignty of the flag. Since the seventeenth century there have been two distinct traditions in maritime law. The Dutch approach, codified by Grotius, held that the seas were free for all to use. This work, funded by the Dutch East India Company, relied on ‘natural law’ to support Dutch commercial penetration of seas legally ‘ruled’ by Spain and Portugal.3 The English alternative, exemplified by John Selden, argued that the seas could be ruled.4 While Selden’s case was built largely on fabricated evidence and nonsense,5 it reflected the British tradition that law could be effective only when it was upheld by sovereign authority. If the King of England ruled the ‘British Seas’, however defined, he could tax them, control access and command a salute. The Norman kings had ruled both sides of the Channel, treating the connecting seas as an internal space. This fiction was maintained until 1807, when it was abandoned in favour of legal and political measures better adapted to the commercial needs of a state engaged in a total war.6 Both the Dutch and the British positions were entirely pragmatic, and developed alongside the naval operations they were supposed to control. From the outset, the English legal system was part of the national strategy. In the seventeenth century economic war was the only strategy that could coerce the Dutch. To impose an effective blockade the English had to ensure that the Dutch could not simply transfer their trade into neutral ships. This inspired the development of two distinct legal concepts: blockade and contraband. Blockades had to be legally declared, and based on the presence of an adequate force of ships off the relevant port. This combination of physical force and belligerent right could prevent any shipping, even neutral, from passing.7 Contraband defined militarily useful items, which could be seized from neutral ships stopped on the high seas. Weapons and ammunition were obviously contraband, but any attempt to add food to the list was controversial.8 To impose these rules warships had the right to stop neutral ships on the high seas, check their papers and inspect their Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

cargoes. These concepts were universally adopted, but with wide national variations in interpretation that reflected national interests. To regulate the seizure of neutral merchant shipping Naval Prize Courts were established by all major nations. These allowed the neutral ship-owner to contest the capture of a ship, while the captors attempted to prove that it was a legitimate prize, because it had attempted to break a blockade, carried contraband or in some other way compromised its neutrality. The British courts quickly developed an important body of case law.9 During the eighteenth century the British interpretation of maritime law developed in step with the increasing severity of the Anglo-French wars, and the scale of the neutral challenge. In the Seven Years War (1756–63) the Dutch remained neutral. While Britain easily secured command of the sea it required a legal regime to stop the Dutch replacing French shipping, as they were entitled to do under an existing treaty of 1674. This would have undermined the economic and naval foundations of the British war effort. The Rule of 1756 was developed by the law officers of the Crown to bar the Dutch from carrying French and later Spanish colonial trade. The argument was that the Dutch were barred from these trades in time of peace, by mercantilist laws, so they were not entitled to benefit as neutrals in time of war. Effectively, Dutch ships carrying French goods between the West Indies and the metropole were treated as French, and therefore lawful prize.10 New rules defining blockade, contraband and the continuous voyage were developed. Throughout the war diplomatic issues interacted with legal questions, stretching the talents of lawyers and politicians to the limit.11 By contrast, when French warships tried to escape from battle by entering Portuguese territorial waters off Lagos, the British admiral ignored this legal restriction and burnt them. The next war posed harder questions for the British. By 1779 they were at war with the American rebels, France and Spain. Even so they refused to compromise their belligerent rights, and declared war on the Dutch, who were supplying the enemy.12 At the same time the British were prepared to make concessions to the Russian-led Northern ‘Armed Neutrality’, because the shipping covered by their flags was strategically indecisive. While Britain, as the dominant naval power, invariably adopted a different position on maritime legal issues to those of weaker naval rivals and neutrals, the British regime was tempered by practical politics. A clear distinction can be drawn between the legal policy applied in a ‘total war’, when limitation was generally ignored, and a ‘limited war’ when the views of significant neutrals influenced the execution of policy. Furthermore, peacetime practice generally tried to avoid problems. In individual cases this pragmatism has been misread as Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

concession, but the longer view from the 1750s to the 1940s makes the underlying issues clear. British legal policy was settled in Cabinet, and informed by strategic, diplomatic and legal realities. It was challenged regularly by neutral powers relying on alternative legal concepts, derived from the original Dutch position. The object of all these powers was to minimise the impact of sea power on either neutrals or weaker naval belligerents. Between 1793 and 1815 Britain and France engaged in a total war, with economic attrition on the geo-strategic front line between land power and sea power. This exerted a profound influence over the Senior Admiralty Court Judge Lord Stowell, whose ‘prize judgements show his deep understanding of the much more complex realities of military strategy, shifting government policy and conflicting economic and social forces’.13 The conflict eventually involved all the significant shipping nations. Yet when the United States declared war on Britain in 1812 maritime issues were only a pretext for the invasion of Canada. The failure of the American war effort left the legal issues unresolved. Expecting the inconclusive war would soon break out again both sides maintained their positions. The British also refused to discuss maritime rights at the Vienna settlement of 1814 –15.14 Post-war the issue was subjected to further stress by British policy on the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade, which the United States and other countries interpreted as the imposition of a maritime hegemony for commercial ends.15 British power and interests made any significant change in the legal regime appear improbable.

THE CRIMEAN WAR AND THE DECLARATION OF PARIS

Yet, when Britain next went to war with a major power it did exactly that. Russia had limited maritime interests, and as the Crimean War found Britain allied to France, a close and effective blockade could be imposed. This removed the need to stop and search neutral shipping on the open seas, which avoided antagonising key neutrals especially the Scandinavian powers who controlled strategic access to the Baltic, while the Americans might supply the czar with privateers. Despite their different traditions on maritime legal issues Britain and France adopted a joint policy declaration, although Britain explicitly retained the right to revert to the older tradition in the future. The policy of 1854 was a much more consensual interpretation of belligerent rights than had been used against Napoleon, because a limited war with Russia was not a life or death issue. Allied policy required blockades to be effective to be legally enforceable, while neutral flags covered enemy goods on the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

high seas, and the right of search was restricted to determining nationality and checking for contraband. The British also urged the rest of the world to abandon privateering, clothing self-interest with humanitarian examples.16 After the war this practice was codified, following American prompting, in the Declaration of Paris of 1856.17 Foreign Secretary Clarendon, heavily involved in war-time policy, believed Britain would earn international goodwill by renouncing an arbitrary system which could not be used in the future. In addition he was anxious to outflank the Americans, knowing they would not sign a document that abolished privateering. Prime Minster Palmerston was satisfied with the exchange, but stressed ‘of course such engagements would be binding only as between countries which might be parties to them’.18 He also ensured that the Declaration would be sent to all nations, inviting their adherence.19 Palmerston’s deft approach left the United States almost entirely isolated, the major advantage for Britain from the new legal regime.20 The four terms of the Declaration are often cited: 1. Privateering is, and remains abolished. 2. The neutral flag covers enemy goods, with the exception of contraband of war. 3. Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under enemy’s flag. 4. Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective, that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy. The text went on to say: ‘The present Declaration is not and shall not be binding, except between those powers who have acceded to it, or shall accede, to it.’21 This was clearly directed at the Americans, to stop them using the Declaration in an Anglo-French war. Furthermore, as Clarendon stressed, the impact of the Declaration depended on the definition of contraband, which was left unsettled.22 One Cabinet minister pointed to the core problem that would dominate British policy for the next 60 years. Economic warfare could only be waged with an effective blockade, which had been easily arranged against Russia, but it would be a very different problem in a war with France, which had two long coasts and access to neutral American shipping.23 This argument was soundly based, but unrealistic. The Declaration, like any other treaty between nations, was ineffective in wartime, and Palmerston expected that limits on British action against neutrals could be ignored or revoked once another belligerent broke the terms. While most British commentators, contemporary and historical, have criticised the Declaration as an unwise concession, one that Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

removed a vital weapon from Britain’s arsenal, ‘cutting off her right arm’, as the leader of the opposition termed it,24 the reality, as this chapter will demonstrate, was far less clear cut.25 Between 1856 and 1900 the British government resisted all attempts to register new or widened legal powers that might limit British action in wartime. An American initiative of 1857, to extend immunity to all private property at sea, was rejected because it would undermine blockades, while the Admiralty stressed that the Declaration would not bind the actions of two nations at war, only their actions toward neutral third parties.26 In effect, Britain modified its stance on maritime law to reflect the greater efficiency of steam-powered blockades, the new-found power of fleets to destroy fortified harbours, and weakening of the American position. With a harsh interpretation of contraband, and a close blockade, the old arguments were unnecessary. In the era of Gladstone there seemed little chance that Britain would be involved in another European conflict, let alone a ‘total war’. Therefore the major issues of belligerent rights could be downplayed. The European wars of 1866 and 1870–01 were both short and limited. In such circumstances blockades would be irrelevant, the conflict would be over before they could have any effect. The debate was kept alive by party politics, in March 1871 the Conservative spokesman Lord Salisbury reckoned the Declaration of Paris had left the fleet useless for anything other than insular defence.27 The Liberals were more enthusiastic about international restraint, while the radicals, inspired by Richard Cobden, argued that the old link between trade and war had been broken. Their millennial dreams saw improved trade as the key to abolishing war.28 How this was going to be achieved in a protectionist European state system dominated by Bismarckian Realpolitik they did not care to ask. In contrast, Karl Marx recognised that even ‘the bourgeois weak-mindedness of a Gladstone’, would not ‘at a decisive moment keep John Bull from casting overboard’ the 1856 restraints.29 At this time a number of prominent, if unimaginative, naval officers, oppressed by the onrush of technological change, saw in the new legal ideas an opportunity to focus naval warfare onto purely military lines, ignoring the vulgar and distracting seizure of merchant shipping and commercial blockades, in favour of battle. Such thinking linked up with Cobdenite arguments to create a defensive image for the service, and the global strategy that it served. This wholly erroneous, unrealistic analysis, posed a fundamental threat to imperial security. Only a deterrent strategy based on seizing the initiative and threatening rivals with dire consequences could protect so vast a spread of territory, interests and assets. Mere passive defence was an invitation to disaster. Despite this, Britain, at least in public, adhered to a legal regime that limited the offensive impact of naval mastery. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

In reality, Britain retained a wide a range of options for commercial war, and found the existing regulations useful when neutral. Fundamentally, the definition of contraband was kept open and new restrictions were avoided. Nothing was done in peacetime that might hamper the effective application of national strategy in wartime. Instead, the actions of other powers were watched with care, noting the contrast between theory and practice. The American Civil War led the hitherto hostile federal government to accept British practice. When war broke out the federal government was firmly advised to adhere to the 1856 rules, and avoid privateer outrages, or the British would have to consider other steps to protect their citizens.30 The American counter-proposal that private property be immune was only sent to the French, but Britain summarily rejected it because ‘it would reduce the power in the time of war, of all states having a military as well as a commercial marine’.31 Very soon the federal regime, dominant at sea, found it strategically imperative to adopt a remarkably ‘British’ approach to belligerent rights. The American courts used the Napoleonic era case law of Lord Stowell to impose and regulate the blockade. Despite occasional disagreements over specific cases the British were satisfied with American practice, and delighted by the turn in their legal regime. This made it all the easier to drive home key points of interpretation. Confederate cruisers had been unable to send in neutral ships for adjudication in a Prize Court. The law officers of the Crown concluded that in future such raiders would not seize neutral ships.32 This had obvious attractions for Britain. The wartime collapse of the American merchant marine was another welcome development, reducing the potential for future disagreement. It was highly significant that the greatest diplomatic crisis of the Civil War had followed the unauthorised stopping of a British Royal Mail steamer in international waters, and the forcible removal of two confederate envoys by a federal warship. Faced with British mobilisation the Lincoln government accepted that it was in the wrong, backed down, and apologised.33 Post-war discussions with the Americans on the belligerent right of search were made much easier by the ability to cite federal practice from American legal textbooks. The American extension of the list of contraband was equally welcome, although it was a ‘delicate’ issue and would not be raised unnecessarily.34 The same principles informed the instructions given to the British delegate to the 1875 Brussels Conference on Limiting War. The foreign secretary instructed him to guard against the introduction into discussion of any ‘matters relating to naval warfare’.35 When Britain came close to war with Russia in 1876 the Foreign Office was given the Cabinet memoranda on the Declaration of Paris by Palmerston’s biographer.36 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

The Cabinet balanced the opposing forces at work within the British system, radical liberals and the Realpolitikers who preferred abrupt withdrawal from the Declaration. The hardliners took comfort from the actions and declarations of supposedly more liberal nations, when they were in a position to use naval coercion and blockade. In 1884 the French blockaded Formosa, and made rice contraband without declaring war.37 When Bismarck accepted this blatant abuse, rejecting appeals for protection from German shippers, the lord chancellor minuted:38 This is a somewhat alarming indication of the way in which the great continental powers might be expected to deal with us, if we should be at war. All the concessions made, to the disadvantage of a maritime power by the Treaty of Paris, will be expected to be observed by us; and they will, at the same time submit, as neutrals, to whatever law of contraband the other belligerent may chose to lay down, as having a tendency to shorten the war by crippling our trade and stopping our supplies of food through neutrals. I do not hesitate to say that, if this should happen we should have to denounce, and shake ourselves free from the Declaration of Paris, to resume our old rights of taking an enemy’s goods in neutral bottoms, and of employing privateers against the enemy.39

The following year the threat of war with Russia reopened the question. The law officers advised the foreign secretary to adhere to the 1856 provisions, but emphasised that the government could respond if Russia violated the Declaration.40 When the foreign secretary was asked in the House of Commons to state if the Declaration had ever been ratified Sir Edward Hertslet,41 Librarian at the Foreign Office, advised him merely to say that it had not been abrogated. The Admiralty was also watching developments abroad. The German Chancellor Count Caprivi told the Reichstag that he would not discuss immunity for private property at sea, anticipating it would no longer be respected. In a naval war the dominant power would try to ruin the trade of their rivals to force a conclusion. This would include the blockade of food. Caprivi knew that in war rules were torn up, and ‘humanity and justice’ were ignored. The obvious threat to British food supplies prompted the Admiralty to argue that the Paris regime was ineffective, especially as national auxiliary cruisers had replaced privateers. The Lords of Admiralty, like Clarendon in 1856, recognised that the definition of contraband would determine the effectiveness of the blockade. Furthermore, even if ships could not be made legitimate prize, they could be seized and so delayed as to make their cargo worthless. The definition of blockade had been greatly stretched by the American concept of ‘ultimate destination’ developed from the older British ‘continuous voyage’ during the Civil Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

War. The Admiralty was satisfied that the 1856 regime was dead, and wished to know if the foreign secretary agreed.42 The Admiralty inquiry reflected the latest thinking on strategy, both the intellectual climate prompted by the American naval officer and strategist Alfred T. Mahan, and the impact of new technologies, especially the torpedo boat and contact mine. After a series of exercises the Board had adopted the observational blockade as the basis of naval strategy, rather than a close blockade. This would require a wider definition of belligerent rights to be effective against merchant shipping.43 The Foreign Office stressed the need to avoid agreements ‘that might prove irksome or embarrassing’.44 Four decades of the historical precedent suggested: ‘In my humble opinion, it would be far better that this country should retain a free hand, and not subscribe to any further Regulations which might be prejudicial to its interests in any future wars.’45 This policy was upheld in 1898, when the Americans, only recently returned to maritime affairs, reopened the issue.46 Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century the British maintained a realist position. While neutral powers would inevitably dispute the British view of belligerent rights, and receive support from France, the issue was always one of expediency, not principle. They based their analysis on the actions, not the arguments, of other powers.

HISTORY, THEORY AND STRATEGY

The British position was confirmed at the end of the nineteenth century by historical and strategic analysis. British policy-makers reflected on the lessons of the last major conflict, the ‘great war’ of 1793–1815, as distilled by scholars who believed in the ‘lessons of history’. The most influential naval writer was Alfred T. Mahan. In two books that changed the mindset of an age he persuaded his countrymen, and the world, that command of the sea, or ‘Sea Power’ had given Britain the edge over its continental rivals, and secured its global domination. The first book gave the British renewed confidence in their national strategy, and their national service.47 The second changed the intellectual landscape in Britain for ever. Mahan argued that the Wars of the French Revolution and Empire had been primarily economic wars of attrition.48 The influence of these two texts was immense. Phrases and passages from them would be quoted, paraphrased or plagiarised for the next three decades. Immediately taken up as the occasion for an enlarged navy, they provided the intellectual basis for opposition to new legal restraint on war at sea. Politicians, polemicists, pressure groups and officials adopted Mahan’s line of argument.49 Mahan’s ‘sea power’ cut French economic links and food supplies. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Neutrals who complained were smashed, like the Danes in 1801, or cowed, like the United States into accepting the British regime. The British deliberately detained neutral ships that could not be condemned as legal prize, because the inconvenience ‘was a very powerful deterrent’. In typically Darwinian language the whole system illustrated the ‘natural workings of so great a force as the Sea Power of Great Britain then was’.50 Britain used control of the seas, and even licensed trade with the enemy to fund the overthrow of Napoleon. His defeat could be attributed directly to the economic pressures that drove him to invade Spain and Russia to complete his pan-European ‘Continental System’. This successful strategy was based on naval mastery, not a mass army.51 As French commerce and economic life dried up the British pressed ever harder, using ‘stringent, even forced, interpretations of international law’. Even provisions (and it will be well for Great Britain of the present day to recall the fact) were claimed to be contraband of war, on the ground that, in the then condition of France, when there was a reasonable hope of starving her into peace, to supply them contributed to prolong hostilities.52

History advocated a maritime strategy for total war. His countrymen needed to understand that there would be no security for their shipping without a powerful navy. Mahan stressed that Britain had to cut American trade with France, both to protect its own economy, and to hurt France.53 Napoleon’s Continental System had given Britain a priceless opportunity or excuse. Although the British action was patently illegal, it could be justified by the natural law of self-preservation.54 Mahan believed America had been drawn into the conflict on the wrong side, by maritime complaints, when its real interests lay in the defeat of Napoleonic hegemony. While Mahan’s books launched him as an international celebrity, and an unquestioned authority on the subject, his nationality made him doubly useful to the British, who could cite him as an impartial expert. He had restated the British position, with a force that no British writer could have equalled. In the official history of the 1914 –18 blockade Professor Bell argued that Mahan’s argument was largely vitiated by his limited research.55 However, historical scholarship was never Mahan’s strong point. His analysis was largely correct despite the flimsy foundations, and more significantly, it dominated the naval case and influenced statesmen. In addition Mahan, a consummate publicist, repeatedly set out the case against restraint, international arbitration and immunity for private property.56

Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

MARITIME LAW FOR LIMITED WAR

By the late nineteenth century Britain was no longer self-sufficient in foodstuffs, and had long ceased to be so in raw materials. This prompted the United States, France, Russia and Germany to consider strategies based on the destruction of sea-borne commerce. Consequently, nervous statesmen, merchants and even some naval officers argued that the American concept of making private property immune from capture would be beneficial. The Americans planned to raise this issue at the First Hague Peace Conference in 1899. However, their naval delegate, Mahan, did not believe in this proposal, and helped ensure it was not tabled. Anticipating the twentieth-century AngloAmerican partnership in global politics, Mahan wanted to keep the economic weapon in the arsenal of the sea powers. His work was complemented by the dynamic, if less cerebral, British delegate, Admiral Sir John Fisher, who opposed any attempt to regulate the conduct of war. Fisher took his lead from the German delegate, who had repudiated any attempt to regulate war on land in the opening speech. For Fisher the ability to inflict economic misery on an enemy was a key deterrent capability.57 The immunity of private property was conveniently left for future consideration. The British government recognised that no mere legal form would ensure the wartime security of maritime commerce. The First Lord of the Admiralty, the worldly wise Lord Goschen, had observed in 1898 that any such law resting on paper sanctions would be broken as soon as it was worth breaking; ex-director of Naval Intelligence (DNI), Admiral Bridge agreed: ‘rules for the conduct of belligerents will be respected when a power has been invented to enforce compliance with them by physical means’.58 The underlying pragmatism was confirmed a few months after the Hague meeting, when the British seized neutral vessels suspected of carrying supplies to the Boer republics. The lack of any concrete evidence to warrant this action, and the trifling nature of the issue led to a quick climb down after American and German protests.59 This was pure expediency. Britain did not anticipate a return to the total war conditions of 1793–1815, indeed Foreign Secretary Lansdowne let the Americans know that Britain largely shared their views, because it expected to be neutral in the next big conflict. This reflected the naval advice he was receiving. Between 1900 and 1905 the Admiralty argued that economic warfare was of limited utility, and it was certainly not worth alienating neutrals by trying to make it more effective. The combination of a close blockade and seizing enemy ships would be adequate.60 This analysis did not survive the shift of target from France and Russia to Germany. As Mahan had pointed out, Britain lay astride Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the main sea routes that connected the Second Reich with the rest of the world. Here was the opportunity for a more complete, and less costly, form of economic warfare. The Second Hague Conference of 1907 revisited the questions that surrounded belligerent and neutral rights in wartime, and was heavily influenced by two recent conflicts. These had been short, and decisive, making it unrealistic to argue against greater neutral rights. The German proposal for an International Prize Court, with appellate jurisdiction over national courts, was accepted by Britain and America. The Foreign Office believed this would benefit Britain, as a neutral shipper. In addition, current thinking suggested blockades were unlikely to have much effect in wartime, as neutral shipping would be respected. British proposals to abolish the concept of contraband were rejected, by the very nations that had always complained about its application in the past. The attempt to settle an international legal regime exposed major contrasts between national codes. The Admiralty representative, Admiral Sir Charles Ottley, ex-DNI and soon to be secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), accepted a compromise, which abandoned the continuous voyage concept, under which ships sailing between neutral ports could be made prize if it could be proved that their cargoes were actually destined for a third, blockaded port, in return for the immunity of British raw materials from seizure.61 This was endorsed by the new DNI, Admiral Sir Edmond Slade, and accepted by the Admiralty. The conference closed without settling on a code of law, but the major naval powers agreed to reconvene in London. At the London Conference of 1908 the British accepted a legal regime suited to a limited war, and largely in line with American ideas. The compromise settlement allowed the ten signatories to sign, and, taken together with the International Prize Tribunal Agreement of 1907, seemed to be a first step towards world peace based on legal definition and justice. In fact, imprecise drafting kept the British and Germans talking for five years, while the Treaty was rejected by the House of Lords after a ground-swell of opposition among political, commercial and professional opinion formers. This was timely, for even as the Conference was meeting the key players at the Admiralty and the CID were changing their views. Having abandoned the construct of a continuous voyage, DNI Sir Edmond Slade, one of the few officers to work on the subject for a significant period, recanted. He understood the utility of the concept, and the problem that would be posed if Britain fought Germany. He recognised the Dutch and Belgian ports were a loophole that could render a blockade of Germany irrelevant. In a typically Mahanian passage he advocated keeping the doctrine to terrorise neutral shipping away from these destinations.62 While the First Lord of the Admiralty was Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

persuaded, the foreign secretary refused to compromise the negotiations over the continuous voyage, which he considered unimportant. He would have to eat his words five years later. Slade’s views were only one element in a far wider strategic programme being developed by the Admiralty and CID in response to the failure of the Liberal governments between 1905 and 1914 to adopt a single, coherent strategic programme. Cabinet uncertainty on Britain’s diplomatic and strategic position was reflected in the confused handling of legal issues. While some ministers were committed to support France, and accepted the need to commit a token military force, the rest did not agree, either because they favoured a naval strategy, or because they would not accept any European commitments.

FISHER, THE BALTIC, LEGAL REGIMES AND STRATEGY

The Admiralty position on maritime law began to change as the prospect of a short war receded. Under Admiral John Fisher (1904 –10) a new deterrent maritime strategy was developed to ensure naval primacy in national policy. After 1906 the refusal of the army to take part in planning for maritime operations forced the navy to prepare for purely naval operations. To fulfil its role in national strategy the navy had to be capable of deterring European rivals. Deterrence required offensive plans. Having studied the effects of blockade on Britain, as part of their work on the defence of trade, the Admiralty recognised that other countries, including France and Germany, were also vulnerable. In 1906 Captain Henry Campbell at the Trade Division began to develop the economic blockade as an offensive strategy. If that blockade extended into the Baltic it would force the High Seas Fleet to give battle, and be destroyed. These ideas were quickly integrated into war planning, and the maritime strategic model that was taught to the War Course.63 In July 1908, Campbell contended that a blockade would have an intolerable effect on the German economy, if only in the long term.64 His conclusions were presented to Reginald McKenna, the first lord, in December 1908 as a paraphrase of Mahan’s first Seapower volume. Where the American declared that Cromwell’s battle fleet had ‘caused the grass to grow in the streets of Amsterdam’, Vice-Admiral Charles Ottley, secretary of the CID, claimed ‘grass would sooner or later grow in the streets of Hamburg and wide-spread death and ruin would be inflicted’.65 Work on the blockade had already informed the Ballard Committee’s efforts to develop War Plans in 1906–07. George Ballard, the civilian historical advisor Julian Corbett, and the secretary of the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

committee, Captain Maurice Hankey RM, were already committed to the blockade as a decisive strategy.66 Hankey recognised the basic need for a credible deterrent, and argued that if an economic blockade would not serve then Britain must raise a large land army. Having read his Mahan,67 and worked with Corbett, Hankey relied on history to show that the economic blockade was central to British strategy. To impose a rigorous blockade of Germany under the existing legal regime the Royal Navy would have to operate in the Baltic, cutting iron ore supplies from Sweden. At the First Hague Conference in 1899 Fisher realised the Germans were frightened of losing command of the Baltic. He reminded them of this point in July 1905, sending the Channel fleet through the Sound at the height of the First Moroccan Crisis68 as a calculated act of deterrence.69 Fisher’s strategy was intended to act primarily as a deterrent, and relied on an effective economic blockade, which made the legal regime of any future war at sea highly significant.70 After Fisher left the Admiralty in January 1910 his strategy was ignored by his successor, Sir Arthur Wilson, who did not believe in the blockade. Fisher had expected the First Lord, Reginald McKenna, to maintain his policy, but McKenna could not control Wilson. Consequently, Wilson’s strategic presentation to the CID in August 1911 lacked any intellectual rationale. His failure led to the removal of McKenna, and left maritime strategy to the Edwardian eminence grise Lord Esher. Esher favoured maintaining a ‘free hand’ in Europe, based on the uniquely ‘British strategy’ made possible by command of the sea. He relied on Hankey to develop economic warfare planning at the CID. The main complication remained the uncertain strategic value of a blockade in wartime. On the surface it seemed that the Declaration of Paris had made ‘free ships – free goods’ the basis of international law.71 Yet Britain had adopted the Declaration to outmanoeuvre the Americans and stamp out privateering, confident that any inconvenient legal regimes would be ignored, once other nations had broken their provisions. While the new restrictions propounded in the 1909 Declaration of London provoked an outcry in Britain, Fisher and McKenna, who considered blockade had been weakened, were relaxed. Fisher was confident the agreement, even if signed, would not survive the outbreak of war, while McKenna, a lawyer, concluded: ‘International Treaties are easily evaded.’72 With the Cabinet refusing to adopt a national strategy, Fisher prepared for a full-scale economic war. He prompted Esher to displace the independent minded Ottley from the CID, and replace him with his deputy, Hankey.73 Both Ottley and his successor as DNI, Edmond Slade, had lost Fisher’s confidence over the London Declaration. They believed the Declaration involved no serious loss of power, but Fisher Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

found their position equivocal. Slade recognised that ‘the only weapon that is of any real value to us is sea power, and the hold that this gives us over the enemy’s trade and communications’. This weapon would sooner or later wear down any power, and therefore it was essential that it should not be weakened. While Ottley merely wanted to wait until command of the sea had been secured in battle, before imposing a more rigorous blockade, using Mahan’s argument that to do so would hasten the restoration of peace.74 Fisher saw no need for equivocation. He knew that the US Navy opposed the Declaration, and that the US government would not be unduly troubled by its breach in wartime. He recognised that the rules of war at sea were going to change, particularly with the advent of effective submarines, and that such developments would quickly remove any lingering inhibitions about a more rigorous blockade.75 Immediately after the August 1911 CID debacle Hankey produced a cogent restatement of Britain’s expeditionary strategy, with the army being used to enhance the impact of sea power, support allies, bolster Belgium, or assist the Danes ‘in the event of Germany endeavouring to seize the gates of the Baltic’.76 By 1912 Hankey had developed the strategic underpinnings for a rigorous economic war, but without a settled national strategy Britain could not signal an effective deterrent posture in the July crisis. The nature of the strategic alternative to a continental commitment was outlined by Captain George Ballard, one of the most acute strategic intellects in the pre-war navy. In 1913 he was serving as director of the Operations Division in the newly established Admiralty Staff, and explained the navy’s strategic perspective to Mahan. He noted that it would cost Britain approximately £25 million a year to create a continental scale army: If we added the £25,000,000 per annum to our naval instead of our military expenditures, we should possess a fleet fully equal to the combined navies of all the rest of Europe. We could maintain a force superior to that of Germany in the North Sea, and at the same time despatch another to the Mediterranean, China, or anywhere else superior to any local foreign fleet in its own waters. We could afford to be comparatively indifferent to the trend of Continental politics, and might dispense with our alliance with Japan … It is true we should be in no better position for intervening in land wars than we are now, but, on the other hand, we should have less reason to do so, and if a dictator of the Napoleonic type – or even a Bismarck – attempted by virtue of the military subjugation of Europe to found a compulsorily established maritime coalition with the object of disputing our naval supremacy, we could retaliate by a general commercial blockade Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

on a scale unprecedented in history … I do not claim that further expenditure on national defence may not be advisable, but if my views are well founded, such additional outlay should be devoted to improving our position on the water rather than on the land.77

Such thinking reflected a decade of work on blockades and war plans. In the decade preceding the First World War Julian Corbett transformed British strategic thinking. His wide-ranging, if slightly dilettante, career included legal qualifications and extensive travel, before he settled down in his middle years to become the outstanding proponent of British maritime strategy. By 1902 he was involved in the provision of higher education for naval officers, and by 1904 was advising Admiral Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, on a wide range of issues.78 Corbett’s particular assets were his financial, and therefore intellectual, independence, his depth of historical understanding and his legal background. From this position he was able to analyse the problems of contemporary strategy with uncommon clarity and force. He codified a decade of teaching strategy and the theory of war to senior officers in Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.79 This was the closest thing the British had to a written strategic doctrine in 1914. Corbett’s circle of professional contacts was wide, and his work on various educational and planning bodies had given him access to many of the best minds in the service. He was particularly close to Edmond Slade, who had helped to write the book, Ottley, Ballard, Hankey and the young Herbert Richmond. Corbett had first addressed the issue of belligerent rights in 1896, introducing an account of a blockade running during the American Civil War. He stressed that the power to blockade, and capture all outlying territory ‘gives England, in spite of her military weakness, so commanding a position in Europe’. He also addressed the legal basis of enforcement.80 He returned to the subject in 1907, producing the paper ‘The Capture of Private Property at Sea’, which Mahan immediately republished. Here he argued against further limitation at the Second Hague Conference.81 Mainly concerned to demolish the position adopted by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Loreburn, Corbett stressed that the main advocates of abolition, usually continental military powers, invariably had expedient motives for their policy. By contrast, the British concession of ‘Free Ships – Free Goods’ had been a unique act of self-abnegation, weakening national strategy. Basing himself on Grotius and Vattel he demonstrated that the right to take or destroy enemy property was universally accepted, and remained a legitimate means of coercing the enemy. As a student of Clausewitz he accepted that international law had no power to restrain a nation’s resort to Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

force.82 Any restraints adopted on land were for operational convenience, to maintain troop discipline, or avoid guerrilla action, and did not prevent occupied territory being used to coerce the enemy through the stoppage of national life, citing German practice in 1870–71 as a case in point. He also attacked Loreburn’s confused attitudes to contraband and local blockades, which were not morally distinct from general blockades. Loreburn was advised to read the letters of Lord Hardwicke, his eighteenth-century predecessor, if he wanted to understand British policy and practice. Mahan’s latest book, a study of the War of 1812 was cited in support of the British position.83 The right to capture was the key to British security because it was the one instrument that could make naval power effective on land. Corbett used his strategic primer to establish correct principles, and demolish a wide range of fallacious ideas, from extreme ‘blue-water’ arguments that reckoned naval success was the key to everything, to the liberal ‘free seas’ dogma that wanted to make private property at sea safe from capture in wartime. He based the argument on the 1907 paper, although the attack on Loreburn84 was toned down. Corbett quickly established the importance of sound theory as the basis of higher understanding, with Clausewitz as his authority. Not content with such a radical challenge to the mental habits of his audience he developed Clausewitz’s key concept of total and limited war to show how Britain, perhaps alone, had the capacity to make a truly limited war. He then descended to the level of naval operations: ‘The object of naval warfare must always be directly or indirectly either to secure the command of the sea or to prevent the enemy from securing it.’85 He stressed that the sea, unlike the land, could not be conquered: ‘You cannot, as lawyers say, “reduce it into possession”, because you cannot exclude neutrals from it as you can from territory you conquer.’86 Instead, command of the sea gave control of maritime communications, and the ability to deny those communications to the enemy. This would allow the dominant navy ‘to exert direct military pressure upon the national life of our enemy ashore’.87 For Corbett stopping commerce was the maritime equivalent of the conquest of territory. Corbett also took the trouble to invest this strategy with a moral quality. It was not ‘commerce destruction’, merely ‘prevention’. No form of war indeed causes so little human suffering as the capture of property at sea. It is more akin to a process of law, such as distress for rent, or execution of judgment, or arrest of a ship, than to a military operation.

The object was to counter the moral case being cited against capture. He also contrasted the current approach with the ‘lamentable cruelty’ of privateering.88 This had been replaced by a proper system to secure Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

strategic control of the enemy’s communications. The local, tactical blockade of an individual port had been supplemented by a strategic blockade of the great trade routes. In moral principle there is no difference between the two. Admit of the principle of tactical or close blockade, and as between belligerents you cannot condemn the principle of strategical or distant blockade. Except in their effect upon neutrals, there is no juridical difference between the two.89

Corbett attacked the radical position, justified the system used in the Napoleonic wars and prepared the ground for future practice. The exception was revealing. He went on to argue, as he had in 1907, that the right of seizure at sea was analogous to that of requisition and contribution on land. It would be unbalanced to deny sea powers the same rights. Demolishing the fallacy that war is only about armies and navies he stressed that wars were ended by the ability of one side to ‘exert pressure on the citizens and their collective life’, citing the German General Colmar von der Goltz. Goltz wrote of ‘forcing a peace’, by making ‘the enemy’s country feel the burdens of war with such weight that the desire for peace will prevail’.90 Without the right to capture private property there would be little purpose to naval activity, beyond defence against invasion. To pressure the enemy without blockade it would be necessary to resort to such barbarous methods as indiscriminate coastal bombardment and raids. Indeed, if such rights were denied war would be reduced to a ‘purely legal procedure’.91 Not only was the world unready for such a change, but it would deprive those seeking to preserve the peace (Corbett expected them to be the British) of the greatest deterrent. Because a nation’s financial sinews were a key strategic resource, they were a valid target, and the threat to cut them was a key restraint.92 This was the intellectual version of Fisher’s blood-curdling phrases at the Hague in 1899. For Corbett, blockade, including the capture of enemy property, was the basic strategic weapon of the British. To limit it without applying equal constraint to operations on land would be unrealistic, and any significant change in the legal rights of belligerents on either element would make war more, and not less, likely. His arguments helped to prevent any explicit move by the Cabinet, leaving the question of national policy open until war broke out in 1914. His colleagues, notably Hankey,93 McKenna, Ballard, Esher and Fisher were involved in all the key decisions of 1914, the decisions that transformed the weak and feeble policy of August into a suitable regime for a total war. In this process his clear, cogent and historically based arguments were essential. He continued to be consulted throughout war, providing vital Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

historical and analytical stiffening for the Admiralty and CID opposition to concessions proposed by the Foreign Office,94 writing a pamphlet in 1915 to defend British policy against those at home who wanted a more liberal regime, and another in 1917 to persuade the Americans that ‘Freedom of the Seas’ was unnecessary.95 Corbett had developed a coherent, historically based maritime strategy.96 He demonstrated that decisive battle could only be secured under favourable conditions by forcing the enemy to fight; the best example was by cutting the enemy’s vital trade routes. Fisher knew that the only maritime trade route that was vital to Germany was the one that carried iron ore from Sweden.

THE BALTIC NARROWS AND THE BLOCKADE OF GERMANY

To complete the blockade of Germany Fisher needed to send a fleet into the Baltic. This made the legal regime at the Danish narrows a matter of profound importance. Legal conventions had limited the right of belligerent passage through strategic narrows inside territorial waters since the middle ages,97 and the regime at the Danish straits became embroiled in Great Power politics just as an attempt was being made to codify and internationalise maritime law. The two issues were connected by British strategy. In the nineteenth century Russia had repeatedly attempted to resuscitate a Baltic mare clausum policy against British warships that dated back to Peter the Great. This policy placed small, neutral Denmark in the front line. However, the experience of 1801 and 1807 had persuaded the Danes that strict neutrality, which allowed belligerent passage, would best secure their interests, and clear statements of this policy were issued at times of Anglo-Russian tension, in 1833, 1854, 1877 and 1885.98 This satisfied British strategic needs, and they remained confident that while Russia was the main enemy they would be able to enter the Baltic at will. Between 1900 and 1907, German and Russian fears over the Straits coincided, and the kaiser pressed the czar for a new alliance, breaking with France. His personal diplomacy focused on excluding the British from the Baltic, and in December 1903 Germany offered Denmark a guarantee of support in the event of a Russo-British war.99 The kaiser’s fleet had been built to compromise British diplomacy, by denying Britain the balancing role in European politics that was vital to its global security. Fisher responded with a combination of naval activity, calculated newspaper bluster and careful development to gain maximum advantage from German fears that the British would launch a pre-emptive strike, to ‘Copenhagen’ their fleet.100 The ‘Copenhagen’ Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

complex of October 1904, Fisher’s first policy initiative on taking office, exploited real German fears, and real British capability. The kaiser panicked, telling his chancellor ‘the possibility of being attacked by an overwhelmingly superior force is imminent’.101 On 3 December he ordered the army to plan the capture of Denmark to close the Belts. Graf von Schlieffen observed that he could not spare the necessary six divisions, and as Germany could not hurt Britain he thought it would be better to knock out France.102 The German Navy admitted it would be utterly defenceless in the face of a determined British attack, an admission that would have a profound influence on the first Moroccan Crisis of 1905, which was engineered by sections of the German elite that were not intimately concerned with naval policy.103 Fisher boasted: ‘We could have the German fleet, the Kiel Canal, and Schleswig-Holstein within a fortnight.’104 To play on deep-rooted German fears he sent the Channel Fleet through the Great Belt in mid1905, and mobilised his newspaper allies to produce a barrage of anti-German rhetoric. The ‘Copenhagen Complex’ gave Fisher a lever to deter war and maintain the European balance. The German climbdown in 1905 was due primarily to the reluctance of Tirpitz to risk the Navy.105 After the crisis, Tirpitz, who had always opposed the use of naval resources for coast defence, reluctantly diverted a large proportion of the naval budget to this area.106 In June 1905, just after the Moroccan Crisis had come off the boil, the political separation of Norway from Sweden reminded the Foreign Office that access to the Baltic in time of war was of paramount importance for Britain. Convinced Britain would dominate Norway, and obtain an advanced base for Baltic operations, the kaiser launched an impulsive personal diplomatic offensive that culminated in the Treaty of Björkö, signed with the czar on board the imperial yacht on 24 July 1905. British influence in Norway was the key argument used to draw the czar into an alliance to exclude British warships from the Baltic. In his dreams Wilhelm saw the new grouping attracting the support of all the minor powers of Scandinavia and northern Europe. However, when he moved to close the Baltic, by bringing Denmark into the partnership, he found Danish opinion hostile, and the British forewarned. On 2 August he told the czar that he could not press the case in Copenhagen.107 Although Norwegian neutrality remained an issue for the next three years, the British ensured that the final settlement, a Four Power Guarantee, did not affect the status of the Great Belt. Furthermore, Fisher did not want to guarantee the neutrality and integrity of Norway, because that would leave British strategy ‘seriously handicapped’: ‘If the Germans occupied the Danish islands, it might be necessary for us to seize a Norwegian Port.’108 In March 1907 Fisher said much the same to Fridjtof Nansen, the Norwegian minister in London, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

who was not surprised by the tone or content of the conversation. If Germany occupied Denmark, Britain would seize a Norwegian port, probably Christiansand, as a forward base for operations to open the Baltic.109 To guarantee the neutrality of Norway would give the other signatories of the Treaty casus belli if Britain acted in this way. Guaranteeing the integrity of Norway, not its neutrality, would allow Britain to use a Norwegian port without complications with the other Great Powers. In accepting this line the Foreign Office maintained the basic British aim of ensuring access. The Germans and Russians were still discussing plans to close the Baltic to the warships of non-riparian powers in August 1907, but the two emperors did not dare to take such an overtly anti-British step, and the initiative collapsed. As Sir Charles Hardinge, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, reflected: If in time of war the Straits remain open that is all we want. If Germany tries to close them we shall regard ourselves as absolutely free to do what we like and even to ignore the integrity of Norway should we require a base on the Norwegian coast.110

The basis of British policy on the linked issues of Norway and the narrows was an offensive maritime strategy, intended to annihilate German naval strength, and establish a complete blockade. The issue of access was kept under review, resting on the practice of 1854. Denmark would not close the narrows as long as it feared being punished.111 The Baltic was central to British war planning against Germany.112 After 1909 the Admiralty accepted that control of the Baltic was not simply a matter of sending a fleet. This prompted Hankey to consider how to make the blockade work if the Baltic was not controlled by the Royal Navy. He advised rejecting the London Declaration, and widening the definition of contraband to permit a distant blockade.113 While this was not done in 1911, it was only a question of expediency, not principle.

THE OUTBREAK OF WAR AND THE COLLAPSE OF LEGAL LIMITATION

The confusion at the heart of British decision-making between 1905 and 1914 played a significant part in bringing on the general European war all Cabinet ministers wished to avoid. There was no officially adopted strategy in place, and Hankey at the CID expected that a maritime policy would be adopted. In the event the unexpected arrival of Kitchener, who knew nothing of the pre-war debate, or the naval case, saw an extreme ‘continental’ strategy adopted without debate.114 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

The same failure to decide left the Royal Navy to begin the war operating under a legal regime based on the Declaration of London that, although not ratified, was generally accepted. Having been designed to meet very different needs to those Britain now faced, this code would have crippled sea power. Such one-sided restraint could not long survive the first reverse on land. Pre-war concerns about neutrals, especially Holland, acting as middlemen for the Germans, and early reports of German army food shortages and the nationalisation of food stocks, soon led to pressure for change from Foreign Secretary Grey, Lloyd George and above all First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill. Although the naval lords, and the Cabinet majority disagreed, Churchill pushed through a measure that applied the old concept of ‘continuous voyage’ to food, which was considered contraband because the German government had nationalised stocks. In fact, this had not happened, but such niceties did not trouble Churchill any more than the complete reversal of British policy, as publicly declared for the past fifteen years. However, it took a wily lawyer to come up with a quasi-legal justification for the change. McKenna had never lost interest in the subject, despite his abrupt removal from the Admiralty, and he skilfully harmonised all the useful aspects of the old and new practice. Following a conference at the Foreign Office on 19 August, attended by the key Cabinet ministers, naval chiefs and law officers, as well as Edmond Slade, who would spend the war deeply involved in blockade issues, a new Order in Council was issued. Neutral shipping bound for neutral ports was now seized. For all its dubious legality the measure was entirely appropriate for a ‘total war’. The effect was reinforced on 25 August, when the Dutch government was informed that it would only be allowed to import food if it guaranteed not to pass it or other stocks to the Germans. By 30 August, 52 grain ships had been seized, with no attempt to justify their detention. As Ottley, Slade and McKenna had foreseen, this was intended to terrorise neutrals out of the trade, as Mahan had advised in 1892. Any legal or diplomatic scruples were overborne by public pressure for an alternative to the bloodshed on land. Having roused a democracy to make war the Cabinet would soon discover what a dangerous force they had unleashed. They were no longer in control of the situation, and would have to respond to popular pressure. Opponents of the new order were simply ignored, the old Cobdenite liberals had already resigned, and no-one outside the government cared about legal niceties. Soon oil and other raw materials were added to the list of items to be seized, and detained, even if they could not be condemned legally as prize of war. By early September the British were operating an illegal blockade, because they hoped it could win the war without undue casualties, and the public demanded that it be done.115 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Only one neutral, the United States, had the power to coerce Britain into maintaining the 1909 regime. While the US State Department recognised the illegality of British action, President Woodrow Wilson was unwilling to argue the case. Anxious to avoid the fate of President Madison in 1812, who he believed had been forced into an unnecessary war with Britain over earlier Orders in Council, Wilson tried to keep the issue out of the press, and hoped it would go away. Convinced the allies represented civilisation, Wilson was not going to make the same mistake as Madison in the interests of local and regional interests. While his friend the ambassador in London effectively withdrew support from US nationals trading with Germany, and acquiesced in blocking trade with Holland, Wilson offered the British suggestions on how to defuse the issue. Having got the measure of the president the British simply refused to make any concessions, and further tightened the definitions of contraband. Wilson’s actions ended any Cabinet resistance to a fullscale economic war programme appropriate to the conflict. Fisher, who returned to the Admiralty at the end of October, applied the ultimate weapon to stop neutral trade. Following a long-matured plan he declared that the North Sea was now so heavily mined that ships would have to put into British ports for directions before proceeding. Once they did so they were detained. By January 1915 the British were using the argument of ‘national safety’ taken from Wilson’s lame protest of 26 December as the best justification for their actions.116 This was strikingly similar to the phrase ‘self-preservation’ used by Mahan to justify British action in the Napoleonic era.117 When the Germans warned that their response to the British action might involve accidentally sinking neutral shipping, Wilson immediately sent a stiff protest. The British cited the German threat as a reason to repudiate the Declaration of Paris, exactly as Palmerston had anticipated. In essence, Wilson accepted illegal action by the British because he was convinced that an allied victory was in the United States’ interest.118 In doing so he paved the way for allied victory in 1918, and in 1945. In an age of total war no major power would willingly forgo its major strategic asset if it was not forced to do so, by the threat of neutral action, or enemy reprisal. This did not happen in 1914, leaving the British to develop new rules for war at sea. Only Sweden, secure inside the Baltic, could defy the British, largely because Russia depended on Swedish engineering products. It was impossible to coerce Sweden without hurting Russia.119 The failure of pre-war legal regimes in 1914 reflected the imbalance that had always existed when considering maritime legal issues. Britain believed that it had to exploit its sea control to the utmost extent in order to defeat Germany. The United States was not prepared to argue the case, and Germany had no effective riposte. This last point is the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

key: in the Second World War none of the powers used gas weapons, because none of them would gain a worthwhile advantage from them. In this environment the rights of neutrals are only as good as the power that upholds them.

CONCLUSION

The advent of total war in 1914 led the British to tear up the agreements and limitations so painfully compiled over the preceding 60 years. They did so because they thought it would be beneficial, and because they would not suffer any adverse effect. Ultimately the rule of law is merely one aspect of the rule of force, in 1914 Britain still ruled the waves, and like any ruler it settled the law that would apply in its domain. The outlaws, as ever, fought back with their own illegalities, leaving the neutrals to suffer, as ever, in proportion to their weakness and vulnerability.

NOTES 1. D. P. O’Connell, The Influence of Law Upon Sea Power (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975), p. 16. 2. B. Ranft, ‘Restraints on War at Sea before 1945’, in M. Howard (ed.), Restraints on War: Studies in the Limitation of Armed Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 39. 3. B. Semmel, Liberalism and Naval Strategy: Ideology, Interest and Sea Power during the Pax Britannica (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986), p. 13. 4. John Selden (1584–1654) lawyer and politician. His Mare Clausum pro domini Maris (London, 1634), set out the English case for sovereignty of the seas, on the basis of customary and other vague precedents. The book was closely linked to the ‘Ship Money’ programme that Charles I introduced in the same year, and the eponymous ship of the line, completed in 1637. 5. J. K. Laughton, ‘The Sovereignty of the Sea’, The Fortnightly Review (1866), pp. 718–33 at p. 721. 6. Ibid., p. 733. 7. H. J. Bourguignon, Sir William Scott, Lord Stowell: Judge of the High Court of the Admiralty, 1798–1828 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 201–15. 8. Ibid., pp. 186–201. 9. R. Hill, The Prizes of War: Prize Law and the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, 1793–1815 (Gloucester, UK: Sutton, 1998), contains a very thorough discussion of the prize system in Britain between 1793 and 1815. 10. R. Pares, Colonial Blockade and Neutral Rights 1739–1763 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), esp. pp. 180–204. 11. See ibid., for the development of British practice. 12. D. Syrett, Neutral Rights and the War in the Narrow Seas, 1778–82 (Lawrence, KS: Kansas University Press, 1985). Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

13. See Bourguignon, Sir William Scott, esp. pp. 115–22. Quote at p. 115. 14. C. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh: 1812–1815 (London: Bell, 1931), pp. 147, 185–94, 491. 15. H. G. Soulsby, The Right of Search and the Slave Trade in Anglo-American Relations, 1814–1862 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933). 16. Public Record Office (PRO), FO 87/487, Graham (First Lord of the Admiralty) – Clarendon (Foreign Secretary) 3 March 1854. 17. F. Piggott, The Declaration of Paris 1856 (London: University of London Press, 1919). O. A. Anderson, Liberal State at War: British Politics and Economics during the Crimean War (London: Macmillan, 1967), esp. pp. 248–74 for a discussion of the wider policy concerns that influenced these decisions. 18. British Library, Add. MSS 48,680 f73, Palmerston – Clarendon, 8 April 1856. 19. Ibid., f80, 12 April 1856. 20. Ibid., f69, 5 April 1856. 21. For the full text see A. Roberts and R. Guelff (eds), Documents on the Laws of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 3rd edn), pp. 47–51. 22. PRO, ADM 1/5675, Foreign Office – Admiralty, 16 April 1856. 23. PRO, FO 87/487, Lord Stanley of Alderley, minute 8 April 1856. 24. H. Richmond, Statesmen and Seapower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), pp. 266–7. Semmel, Liberalism and Naval Strategy, citing Lord Derby p. 58. 25. PRO, FO 87/487. The Cabinet memorandum on the Declaration was deposited in the Foreign Office in 1876 by Palmerston’s biographer, and printed for Cabinet consultation in 1885, when war with Russia seemed imminent. 26. PRO, FO/87/487, FO Confidential Print 22 June 1861, ‘The United States and International Maritime Law’. 27. Richmond, Statesman and Seapower, p. 267. His earlier work Imperial Defence and Capture at Sea in War (London: 1932), is more detailed, and combative; see, for example, pp. 167–97 attacking the concept of immunity of private property at sea. 28. For this strand of thought, see Semmel, Liberalism and Naval Strategy. 29. Ibid., pp. 64–5. 30. PRO, FO 87/487, Russell (foreign secretary) to Lyons (British minister in Washington), 18 May 1861. 31. PRO, FO 881/6307, no. 6307, cited in Edward Hertslet, ‘Foreign Office Confidential Print on Extending the Declaration of Paris to Private Property’, 9 January 1893. 32. PRO, FO 87/487, Law Officers – Russell, 15 December 1864. 33. A. D. Lambert, ‘Australia, the Trent Crisis of 1861 and the Strategy of Imperial Defence’, in D. Stevens and J. Reeve (eds), Southern Trident: Strategy, History and the Rise of Australian Naval Power (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001), pp. 99–118. 34. PRO, FO 87/487, Foreign Office Minute, 1 August 1867 on Right of Search. 35. PRO, FO 97/572, cited by Hertslet in 1892, p. 45. 36. PRO, FO 881/2763, Foreign Office Minute, February 1876. 37. PRO, FO 97/570, the French blockade of Formosa in 1884 prompted a fresh examination of the law, ‘Pacific Blockades 1884–1894’. 38. Roundell Palmer (1812–95), created Lord Selbourne in 1872. Long-serving liberal law officer, involved in international maritime law issues from the 1850s. Solicitor General 1861–63, Attorney General 1863–66, Lord Chancellor 1872–74 and 1880–85. 39. PRO, FO 881/6307, no. 6307, cited in Edward Hertslet ‘Foreign Office Confidential Print on Extending the Declaration of Paris to Private Property’, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

9 January 1893. 40. PRO, FO 97/572, Law Officers – Foreign Secretary, 12 June 1885. 41. Sir Edward Hertslet (1824–1902), librarian and Keeper of Papers 1857–94, but still in post in 1896. His department was the ‘memory’ of the Office, from which it drew precedents for future policy. 42. PRO, FO 97/572, Admiralty – Foreign Office, 13 April 1893, pp. 40–4. 43. A. Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era, 1880–1905 (London: 1940), pp. 114–15. 44. PRO, FO 97/572, Hertslett Minute on Admiralty letter, 13 April 1892, pp. 45–52. 45. PRO, FO 881/6307, no. 6307, ‘Confidential Print on Extending the Declaration of Paris to Private Property’, 9 January 1893. 46. Ibid., p. 80. 47. A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660–1783 (Boston, MA: Sampson, Low, Marston and Co., 1890). A. D. Lambert, The Foundations of Naval History: John Knox Laughton, the Royal Navy and the English Historical Profession (London: Chatham, 1998). 48. A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the Wars of the French Revolution and Empire (Boston, MA: Sampson, Low, 1892, 2 vols). 49. Semmel, Liberalism and Naval Strategy, pp. 90–5; T. G. Otte, ‘Eyre Crowe and British Foreign Policy: A Cognitive Map’, in T. G. Otte and C. A. Pagedas, Personalities, War and Diplomacy: Essays in International History (London: Frank Cass, 1997), pp. 19–21. 50. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the Wars, p. 377. 51. Ibid., p. 386. 52. Ibid., p. 395. The similarities with Caprivi’s Reichstag speech of 1892 are striking. 53. F. Crouzet, L’économie britannique et le blocus continental (1803–1813) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958, 2 vols). 54. Ibid., pp. 354–6. This approach would recur in the policy of President Wilson on 1914. 55. A. C. Bell, A History of the Blockade of Germany and the Countries associated with her, … 1914–1918 (London: HMSO, 1961). The book was actually completed in 1931. The delay is significant. 56. A. T. Mahan, Some Neglected Aspects of War (London: Sampson, Low, 1907). Mahan to Sir John Laughton 6 December 1907, Laughton MS LGH 16. 57. R. F. Mackay, Fisher of Kilverstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 216–24. 58. Richmond, Statesmen and Seapower, pp. 275–6. Also, Bridge to Laughton 13 October 1898, Laughton MS LGH 7/44–8. 59. J. W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 30–42. 60. Ibid., pp. 71–4. 61. Ibid., pp. 90–9. 62. Slade minute 14 December 1908; Coogan, The End of Neutrality, pp. 120–1. 63. J. Corbett, England in the Seven Year’s War (London: Longmans, 1907, 2 vols), the published version of the War Course lectures. 64. A. Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), pp. 230–2. 65. Mahan, The Influence of Seapower Upon History, p. 133; Ottley to McKenna 5 Devember 1908 quoted in Offer, The First World War, p. 232. 66. P. Kemp (ed.), The Fisher Papers. vol. II (London: Navy Records Society, 1966), Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

pp. 316–17. 67. S. W. Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets (London: Collins, 1970), p. 77. The reference to Mahan dates to October 1906, only two months before he joined the Ballard Committee. 68. Offer, The First World War, pp. 236–8 citing Kemp’s Fisher Papers, vol. II and the article ‘British Naval Policy and German Aspirations’, The Fortnightly Review, September 1905. 69. E. A. Bradford, Admiral Sir Arthur K. Wilson (London: 1923), pp. 199–204. 70. Offer, The First World War, pp. 250–1. 71. Semmel, Liberalism and Naval Strategy. 72. Ibid., pp. 118–19, 114. 73. PRO, ADM116/1236, Hankey, February 1911, with Ottley–McKenna 17 February 1911. 74. PRO, ADM 116/1236, Slade Paper on Declaration of London February 1911; Ottley Paper February 1911. 75. Offer, The First World War, pp. 270–84. 76. Roskill, Hankey, p. 103. 77. Mahan Papers, Library of Congress, Ballard to Mahan 11 April 1913. Author’s italics. 78. D. Schurman, Julian S. Corbett: Historian of British Maritime Power from Drake to Jellicoe (London: Royal Historical Society, 1981). 79. J. S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (London: Longmans, 1911). New edition edited by E. Grove (US Naval Institute Press, 1988). All references are to the 1988 edition. 80. J. Corbett, introduction to T. E. Taylor, Running the Blockade (London: John Murray, 1896), p. vii. 81. J. Corbett, ‘The Capture of Private Property at Sea’, The Nineteenth Century, June 1907. The paper was reprinted in Mahan, Some Neglected Aspects of War, pp. 115–54. Schurman, Julian S. Corbett, p. 71 makes it clear that this paper was written with Fisher’s blessing. 82. C. von Clausewitz, On War (various editions). This fundamental point is set out on the opening page, book 1, chapter 1, section 2. 83. A. T. Mahan, Sea Power in its Relation to the War of 1812 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1905). 84. Earl Loreburn, Capture at Sea (London: Methuen, 1913). A series of letters to the Manchester Guardian on the subject. 85. Corbett, Some Principles (1988), p. 91. 86. Ibid., p. 93. 87. Ibid., p. 94. 88. Ibid., p. 95. 89. Ibid., p. 97. 90. Ibid., pp. 97–8. The use of Golz’s The Conduct of War to make this point is a typical Corbett device. Germany was the likely opponent in war, so he based British actions on German arguments. 91. Ibid., p. 98. 92. Ibid., pp. 99, 102. 93. Roskill, Hankey, vol. I, p. 162, fn. 94. Schurman, Julian S. Corbett, pp. 169–72. 95. J. Corbett, The Spectre of Navalism (London: Darling and Sons, 1915); J. Corbett, League of Peace and a Free Sea (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917). 96. Schurman, Julian S. Corbett, p. 67, referring to correspondence of March 1907 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

between Fisher and Corbett, resulting in the pamphlet ‘Some Principles of Naval Warfare’, PRO, ADM 116/1043B. Corbett, Some Principles (1988 edn), p. xxiv, including the ‘Green Pamphlet’. Kemp, The Fisher Papers, pp. 318–45. Schurman, Julian S. Corbett, chapters 3, 4 and 5. 97. O’Connell, The Influence of Law, pp. 97–113. 98. C. Holbraad, Danish Neutrality: A Study in the Foreign Policy of a Small State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 49. 99. F. Lindberg, Scandinavia in Great Power Politics, 1905–1908 (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1958), pp. 5–7. 100. Fisher meant the 1807 attack (when a British force occupied the island of Zealand, surrounded Copenhagen, and after a brief bombardment forced the Danish government to hand over their entire navy), and the Germans understood this. 101. N. Rich, Friedrich von Holstein: Politics and Diplomacy in the Era of Bismarck and Wilhelm II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965) vol. II, pp. 689–90. Kaiser–Bülow 29 November 1904 at p. 689. Lascelles (ambassador in Berlin) – Lansdowne, 28 December 1904; G. P. Gooch and H. Temperley (eds), British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898–1914, vol. III (London: 1928), p. 56. 102. P. M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1980), p. 274. 103. Rich, Friedrich von Holstein, p. 696. 104. Fisher to Lansdowne 22 April 1905 in A. J. Marder (ed.), Fear God and Dread Nought: The Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone (London: Jonathan Cape, 1956), p. 55. 105. F. Fischer, War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1975), p. 56. 106. I. N. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, 1862–1914 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1984), p. 334. 107. Lindberg, Scandinavia in Great Power Politics, pp. 35–7. 108. PRO, CAB/2, 95th Meeting of the CID 21 February 1907. 109. Lindberg, Scandinavia in Great Power Politics, pp. 65–6ff. 110. Hardinge – Nicholson (minister at St Petersburg) 5 February 1908 in Gooch and Temperley, British Documents, pp. 164–5. 111. Ibid., Foreign Office Minutes on the Baltic Narrows, 7 May 1908, pp. 180–2. 112. A. D. Lambert, ‘Great Britain and the Baltic, 1890–1914’, forthcoming, examines Fisher’s strategic planning in more detail. 113. PRO, ADM 116/1236, Hankey Memo, February 1911. 114. Roskill, Hankey, p. 134. 115. Coogan, The End of Neutrality, pp. 154–68, discusses the development of British policy. 116. Ibid., pp. 170–215, for the long-running argument of the Americans. 117. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the Wars, p. 357. 118. Coogan, The End of Neutrality, pp. 222–33. 119. I am indebted to Professor John Ferris for this point.

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Part II: Secondary Navies: The Maritime Balance and International Law in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

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2

The Long Life of Treaties: The Dutch Republic and Great Britain in the Eighteenth Century JA A P R . B R U I J N

It was five days before Christmas in 1780 when Great Britain declared war on the Dutch Republic. With that act more than a century of peace between the two sea powers came to an end. The decline of the naval power of the Dutch Republic forced Britain to take this step. The overt trading relations of some Dutch West Indian islands with the rebels in north America and the discovery of the draft of a secret commercial treaty between the city of Amsterdam and the rebels provided Britain with sufficient casus belli. In addition, Britain could expect that the Dutch would join the Maritime League of neutral countries and there would be a continuation of the large-scale Dutch transport of naval stores to the British enemies. This time Britain wanted to deny the Dutch any spoils they might gain from being neutral in wartime. Dutch neutrality was not supported by naval strength. The shock of the outbreak of war was great in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and other port cities, but it did not take long before merchants and ship-owners adjusted to the new situation and resumed a great deal of their activities in disguise. Three years later it was peace again. The Dutch maritime world by then had learnt how to continue trade over waters dominated by a superior naval power. They would use those skills after 1795 when the Batavian Republic was founded as a puppet state of France, and in 1810 when Napoleon incorporated it into his empire. Independence was restored only in 1813.

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THE TREATIES OF 1674 AND 1678

The Dutch Navy was one of the most powerful fleets in the world during the seventeenth century. It fought against the Spaniards, Swedes, English and French. In 1673 the combined Anglo-French navies were not capable of beating the Dutch Navy. Despite three full-scale battles the allies still could not disembark troops on the Dutch coast. For England these three battles were the last in a series of three successive wars against the Dutch that began in 1652. The Peace of Westminster in 1674 ended these conflicts. England and the Dutch Republic concluded two treaties, one in 1674 and the other in 1678. Both were happy with them. The consequences, however, were very different from what the signatories could have anticipated. Freedom of the seas had always been of prime importance for the Dutch. Their countless mercantile vessels carried their cargoes over the seas to all parts of Europe. Peace guaranteed this freedom and wars were to be avoided, but not at any price. If required, the navy protected Dutch interests, and men-of-war provided merchant vessels, sailing in convoys, with armed protection. Barbary corsairs were attacked and the navy sometimes interfered in the Baltic, the core of most Dutch overseas business. The wars against England and France were forced upon the Dutch. For many a ship-owner or trader war was not an insurmountable problem. He transferred his enterprises temporarily to a neutral port city in northern Germany or somewhere else.1 In 1674 at the end of the Third Anglo-Dutch War a commercial treaty was concluded between the two former belligerents. Both countries agreed on terms, in which the principle of ‘free ships, free goods’ was implicit. Ships from neutral countries were permitted to transport goods to and from a belligerent. There was one exception: contraband was strictly forbidden. England preferred a long list of commodities to be considered contraband, but the Dutch refused to agree to such a list. Hence English or Dutch merchants, when their country was not at war, had the right to provide an enemy even with naval stores and also to participate in its coastal shipping. France in 1674 continued its war against the Republic, and England therefore profited greatly from its neutrality. In 1678 the Dutch–French War came to an end. In the same year a second Anglo-Dutch treaty was drawn up, this time of a defensive nature. Both countries promised to support each other in case of an attack upon the other’s territory. The terms of the treaty described in detail the aid each power had to render to the other, should either be invaded by a third. The attacks or the preparations for attack were limited to Dutch and English territories in Europe. The support could consist of troops and/or ships.2

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JOINT MASTERY AT SEA AND ABNEGATION OF NEUTRAL RIGHTS (1688–1713)

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 the two so-called maritime powers became close allies in two consecutive wars against Louis XIV’s France, the Nine Years War (1688–97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13). The cooperation was laid down in an official agreement in May 1689. The agreement had a great impact upon the Dutch Navy. In warfare at sea each partner would contribute, at a ratio of five to three, to the number of warships: five from England for each three from the Republic. On land the ratio was reversed, three from England for each five soldiers from the Republic. An English naval officer would be in command always, not only of the combined fleet but also of smaller contingents. The Dutch Republic surrendered its independence in naval warfare for as long as the agreement of 1689 lasted. Its naval officers would always play second fiddle to their English colleagues.3 After an initial setback in 1690, the two naval powers were masters of the sea. Only French privateers were able to disturb allied shipping. From 1689 on both countries were at war together and so no one had an interest in the 1674 Treaty clauses concerning neutrality. Trade and shipping with France were totally prohibited to the allies as well as to neutral third parties. This prohibition became official policy through the two wars up to 1713. It was aimed mainly at the trade from Northern Europe that supplied France with necessary materials for waging war: timber for ships, iron, hemp, copper, cannon etc. Allied and neutral ships going to and from France were seized, searched and brought into allied ports and brought under the jurisdiction of Prize Courts. The policy had a great impact, not only on neutral countries, but also on internal relations in the Dutch Republic, especially between the provinces of Zeeland and Holland. Zeeland had no interest whatsoever in the Baltic and Norwegian trades. During a war privateering was always of the utmost importance to its inhabitants. Therefore a strict application of the allied prohibition – a new feature – offered opportunities for more prizes than ever before. The Zeeland rulers were strong advocates of the new policy, as was also the English government. In Holland, however, one of the routine consequences of a war had always been the transfer of part of commercial and shipping activities to neutral flags and after that it was business as usual. Only the documents and the nationality of ship, cargo and master were different. Implementation of the allied prohibition seriously upset Holland’s calculations. Long quarrels inside and outside the States General were the result. The issuing of privateering Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

commissions was even temporarily suspended. Compromises, however, were unavoidable. Several prizes from neutral countries and Holland taken by Zeeland privateers were released. The outcry from neutral countries was of course vociferous. Neutral rights were violated, but the outcry was often ambiguous. Already in 1690 a Dutch naval captain observed trenchantly that all the vessels he was encountering at sea were carrying Danish flags. It was as if it was ‘raining’ Danish and Norwegian ships, and all cargoes, either to France or from France, seemed to be owned by merchants in Norway and Denmark whose numbers had grown almost spontaneously, he said. Hundreds of Dutch masters could and did easily move to Scandinavian, Baltic and other north German ports and acquire fake or real local citizenship. Northern European authorities retaliated against allied capture of their vessels by detaining Dutch and English ships in their ports. Financial compensation did occasionally ease tensions. In some years a set quota of Danish and Swedish ships was permitted to trade with France.4 The War of the Spanish Succession showed more or less the same pattern. England and the Dutch Republic were once again masters of the sea and they set the same rules for the neutrals in their trade with France. The prohibition of 1689 was introduced again, but not applied immediately. Pending the result of inter-provincial negotiations, the States General forbade privateers to capture neutral or allied vessels. Meanwhile, as compensation, the privateers got bonuses for taking hostile men-of-war and privateers. The same sort of quarrels as before erupted between Holland and Zeeland. The latter considered all trade with the enemy forbidden because of the declaration of war. The trade boycott of France was not complete. On a limited scale some trade was permitted, with Zeeland in the end accepting part of Holland’s interpretation of the prohibition. Some neutral prizes and/or their cargoes were released.5 Holland for the second time had supported a policy that acted against its own tradition and interests. But Holland and the Republic would not again have a role in setting the wartime rules at sea.

A SECOND-RATE NAVY AND THE IMPACT OF OLD TREATIES

In 1700 the two naval powers of England and the Dutch Republic had tried to intervene in the Great Northern War and to ease Charles XII of Sweden’s position against a strong coalition of enemies. A combined Anglo-Dutch squadron bombarded Copenhagen and the Danish fleet. Denmark was forced to make concessions. The troubles around the Spanish succession and the ensuing war forestalled any other intervention in the Nordic conflict. From 1710 onwards Dutch and British Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

merchant vessels were being arrested in Denmark and Russia or captured by Swedes. So in 1714, after the Peace of Utrecht had ended the War of the Spanish Succession, Great Britain decided to give up its passive role in Nordic affairs. The balance by then had turned against Sweden as Peter the Great had occupied the east coast of the Baltic. Sweden had blockaded major trading ports and issued privateering commissions. British as well as Dutch shipping faced growing risks. A British proposal for a joint naval force to protect neutral shipping was in the first instance turned down by the Dutch. The proposal itself was in line with Anglo-Dutch co-operation during the previous two or three decades. When the offer was repeated in 1715, the Dutch accepted it but their commander received strict orders to abstain from any kind of hostility. The size of the two squadrons was determined by the three-tofive ratio as established in 1689: 12 Dutch and 20 British ships. The carefully formulated Dutch instructions also curtailed freedom of operations of the British, for on its own the British squadron would have been too weak for armed actions against the Swedish Navy. In 1716 another force sailed into the Baltic. In 1717, however, Britain stiffened its policy against Sweden, creating difficult problems for its ally. The city of Amsterdam, the main seat of Baltic trade, was worried about the consequences. The Dutch therefore ordered a halt to their Baltic shipping. In 1718 it was again decided to return to the fruitful policy of sending a squadron. A force of 11 Dutch and 12 British ships operated successfully during that year. The Dutch government, however, did not accept another plan for a combined force in 1719 despite strong British pressure. From then on, the British operated alone in the Baltic until peace was concluded there in 1721. No Dutch men-of-war were sent to the Baltic. The Republic did not follow the change in British foreign policy that now favoured Sweden rather than Russia. The effects these allied squadrons had on Dutch shipping activities in the Baltic is unclear. In the years without convoys more ships passed through the Sound than in the years when there was armed protection. In the years without convoys the numbers were as follows: 569 (1714), 193 (1717, the year with a prohibition of shipping) and 544 (1719), the convoy years: 373 (1715), 324 (1716) and 360 (1718). More than 200, 300 and 260 vessels sailed under armed protection in the latter years respectively. The formation of convoys always implied delay. Several vessels therefore could not make more than one voyage in a year, instead of two or three which was the norm.6 The impact of the Anglo-Dutch squadrons on the Nordic struggle itself should not be exaggerated. Nevertheless, from a Dutch point of view the despatching of those squadrons were important naval activities. With one later exception in 1729, it was the last time that the Dutch Navy operated on equal terms with the British one. Another Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

more important aspect is the fact that, in sharp contrast to previous wars, both navies now had to claim and support the rights that neutrality was supposed to give to mercantile shipping, rights they had earlier denied to Scandinavians, for example. The two allies did not enjoy mastery in the region. For Great Britain the Baltic cruises turned out to be just another incident, for the Republic it was the first and irreversible step towards the status of a second-rate naval power. During a later Baltic conflict in 1741–43, Swedish privateers again attacked neutral ships. The cry for convoy was loud in Amsterdam and nine frigates were equipped. In order to cause no political or military stir this force of small ships was split into three groups. The ships oversaw uneventful trips to Russian and Polish ports.7 In 1714 there were two very good reasons for the Dutch government not to play an active role in the Nordic wars: the enormous debts of the admiralties and the inactivity of the fleet. The Republic was financially exhausted. Until around 1700 William III had been able to keep the size of the public debt under control, but Grand Pensionary Heinsius was not so successful during the War of the Spanish Succession. At the end of the war the debts were enormous. Many government activities came to a complete or nearly complete standstill after peace had been restored. Hardly any men-of-war were built and as few ships as possible were fitted out. Suppliers and naval captains did not receive their money. Many warships were laid up permanently and later broken up or sold. The fleet became smaller and smaller. For the three Baltic squadrons in 1715–18 the admiralties had to find special funds.8 After the War of the Spanish Succession and the Great Northern War nearly all the European countries reduced the size of their navies and returned to configurations befitting a period of peace, the French, British and Dutch navies, in particular. After some time a period of rearmament started, gaining full speed from the 1750s onwards. It was general policy in western Europe as well as in the Baltic. The Dutch Republic did not follow other states, however. On the contrary, its fleet continued to decrease. Figures in the following table show how the navy declined, and not only to secondary status; the Dutch Republic fell temporarily to the status of a third-rate naval power.9 There were no major conflicts in Europe after the War of the Spanish Succession and the Great Northern War until 1744. The Dutch Republic remained a loyal, but weakened ally to Britain, and when international tensions heated up, small squadrons were fitted out to join the British Navy. In the summer of 1729, for example, 12 Dutch menof-war were gathered together with 20 British ships at Spithead because of a crisis on the Continent. It turned out to be a false alarm. Meanwhile the fleets killed time with races to measure the sailing qualities of some of the new ships. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Dutch 1700 1715 1730 1745 1760 1775 1790

83/29 71/24 38/18 33/27 28/29 26/38 48/36

British

French

127/49 108/31 119/63 62/12 105/45 38/7 104/67 45/23 135/115 54/27 117/82 59/37 145/131 73/64

Spanish –/– 9/13 39/11 31/6 49/23 64/28 72/46

Danish 32/10 36/15 25/9 28/8 30/12 33/15 32/16

Swedish Russian 39/10 29/13 19/7 24/8 25/15 24/13 16/13

–/– 28/8 38/10 28/6 24/4 34/14 51/30

Total 389/129 354/148 302/107 293/145 345/225 357/227 437/336

Note: In each column the first figure indicates ships-of-the line, the second, frigates. Source: Glete, Navies and Nations, pp. 549–674.

The year 1744, however, was decisive for Anglo-Dutch naval relations. In that year, in the middle of the War of the Austrian Succession, Britain asked for naval support on the basis of the Treaty of 1678, and it then realised what an enfeebled naval power the Dutch Republic had become. The call for an auxiliary squadron of 20 ships for use against France in order to forestall an invasion proved a request impossible for the Dutch to fulfil. The Dutch naval organisation was accustomed to fitting out no more than five to nine ships per year. The total size of the fleet had dwindled to no more than 60 vessels. Shipsof-the-line were employed only rarely. Many months passed before this Dutch auxiliary force assembled at Spithead and it became clear immediately that it was not of much use to the British Navy. Hundreds of seamen became sick, and there was a shortage of many items on board. The ships themselves leaked; the flag officers and captains quarrelled constantly; 6,000 auxiliary troops had to be transported to Scotland by British transport vessels, where they proved to be ill provided for, badly led and very uncooperative. In 1747 the Republic at long last got involved in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), and could not defend itself sufficiently. British warships had to help in safeguarding the Scheldt estuary from a French invasion.10 The Treaty of 1678 had thus been applied two times in a row and on behalf of both signatories. The lessons to be drawn were obvious. Britain had learnt that the Republic was no longer a power to be reckoned with; the events of 1744 had been a sort of unmasking. Dutch merchants and skippers, however, continued to profit greatly from the Treaty of 1674. Until 1747 Dutch shipping was considered neutral and Dutch skippers exploited the terms of that old treaty, which favoured neutrals. They traded with France in all sorts of goods, including naval stores; only actual weapons were excluded. This trade was advantageous for the Dutch as well as the French. Naval stores were carried Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

from the Baltic to French dockyards with little if any harassment from British warships or privateers. When cargoes were captured, they were sold to British dockyard contractors, the freight was paid and the ships along with their crews released. It was the first time Britain was committed to a war on global scale, and it did not press too strongly on Dutch shipping activities. Britain would not repeat that policy in the Seven Years War of 1756–63.11

THE OLD TREATIES, THINGS FROM THE PAST (1756–59)

The neutralist line in Dutch foreign policy, obvious already during the War of the Austrian Succession, was continued for much of the rest of the century. The internal situation in the Republic often made choices in foreign policy impossible. The stadtholder- and anti-stadtholder groups kept each other in balance. The Seven Years War was a conflict on a world scale, but raged also in Europe. In 1756 Britain feared a French invasion and the British government demanded Dutch assistance provided for in the 1678 Treaty. The British even sent transports to Hellevoetsluis near Rotterdam to collect the troops, but The Hague refused to provide them.12 The seventeenth-century Treaty had thus lost its meaning and had become a thing of the past. The same applied to the Treaty of 1674. By the mid-eighteenth century neutral trade and shipping had developed vexatious problems with two main aspects. The first aspect was related to colonial trades and shipping, with the focus on the French Caribbean islands. France’s trade and shipping with these territories had greatly increased in volume and value. The second aspect was centred in Europe and dealt with the supply of naval stores to France which had become of great importance since France’s mercantile, naval and privateering forces enjoyed considerable growth. The dependence on Baltic pine spars in particular was great. France tried twice to negotiate the creation of a neutral maritime league, whereby neutral states would join together to protect their shipping and trade and preferably their trade with France.13 In 1756 the issue of naval stores did not yet cause serious conflicts between the Republic and Britain. These goods were not part of the contraband formula of 1674. A couple of times Dutch ships laden with naval stores for France were arrested by British naval squadrons, but neither ships nor cargoes were declared lawful prizes. Instead, the old practice was revived whereby the cargoes were sold to dockyard contractors, although at lower prices than they would have commanded in France. Insurance premiums on Baltic voyages varied only with the seasons of the year, not with the war. There is also little proof that Dutch masters carried increased quantities of naval stores to France Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

during the Seven Years War. The British and Dutch were, however, at loggerheads with each other over the Caribbean. In the recent past increasing numbers of alien merchants, British included, had taken Rotterdam citizenship and launched themselves into the French carrying trade, especially with the West Indies. These men asked that extra warships be supplied for convoy duty. When war broke out, France opened its Caribbean ports and trade to neutrals, who had hitherto been excluded. The carriage of belligerents’ colonial products to neutral ports was generally accepted, but the transfer of such goods from belligerent to neutral vessels in neutral ports became a serious issue. That happened frequently on the Dutch West Indian islands of Curaçao and St Eustatius. The same was the case on Danish islands in the region. Great Britain did not accept this practice. Several vessels participating in such enterprises were captured, and tensions were high. The culmination came in 1758 when Britain started an economic war against the Caribbean source of French wealth. Britain launched a comprehensive attack on the trade between Dutch ports and European settlements in the West Indies. Also from June onwards Dutch ships plying to and from Curaçao and St Eustatius were attacked and captured. The ensuing crisis did not turn into a Fourth Anglo-Dutch war. It was resolved in a remarkable manner. A series of judgments in British Admiralty Courts of Appeal in 1759 in cases concerning these Dutch vessels clarified what trade was permissible and not permissible to neutrals. The Dutch accepted this clarification. Neutral traders and skippers were thus able to conduct their business in such a way that they could expect to be free from arrest by British privateers. The British and Dutch governments handled the entire affair carefully. Three Dutch commissioners assisted in the relevant court cases. From then on it was clear that subjects of neutral powers were not permitted to trade in areas from which they were excluded in peacetime. In 1759 the conflicts and confrontations between British and Dutch warships were over. Dutch men-of-war were not to give protection to or convoy Dutch merchant ships trading directly to French overseas settlements. The Dutch government would not issue licences to merchants operating in such trades. Relations between Britain and the Republic had been smoothed and clarified. Dutch neutrality in the Seven Years War was thus orientated to Britain and British interests, not towards France.14

THE FOURTH ANGLO-DUTCH WAR OF 1780–84

By the mid-eighteenth century the finances of the two main admiralties, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, had been restored. The finances of the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

other three were beyond recovery. The admiralties at Amsterdam and Rotterdam now managed to build one or more frigates or a smaller ship-of-the-line each year and to fit out a number of ships for convoy duty. From the 1750s through to 1780 naval operations were rather routine affairs. Regular convoy services were provided to shipping in Europe and also going to the West Indies and Surinam. The relations with the Barbary States remained fluid. Many squadrons showed the Dutch flag along that coast and brought the annual tribute to those states or chased their corsairs and attempted to blockade their ports. Peace established with one state was often followed by war with another. In international politics the Dutch Republic had ceased to be a major power. The figures in the table illustrate how weak a naval power it had become. Neutrality was the only option; there was no other possibility. Moreover, the internal political situation prohibited any other choice. Friendly relations with Great Britain in naval and maritime affairs were the best one could hope for. The navy could boast a meagre 27 shipsof-the-line; the number of frigates – 38 in 1775 – was growing only slowly; no more than a small minority of them were ready for service, when needed. Denmark and Sweden could deploy more fighting power than the Dutch Republic, a country that a century earlier had intervened in Nordic affairs at its own discretion.15 British contacts with its old ally in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War had convinced British politicians and admirals that the Dutch Navy had become almost a nonentity. In the latter war British warships could search Dutch merchant vessels undisturbed. No more than a few minor confrontations took place between Dutch convoys and British squadrons and never with any serious consequences. London could enforce its own interpretation of the Treaty of 1674 and the meaning of contraband. Dutch transport of French Caribbean products was curtailed. Decisions of the Admiralty Court of Appeal gave guidance for neutral trade and shipping to the Dutch as well as to other foreign, mostly Nordic, entrepreneurs. In 1763 peace was restored. Dutch mercantile shipping could spread its wings once again, and it flourished. The public interest in the navy, revived in the years of tensions with Britain, soon passed away. The Republic’s naval power declined further. The States General continued to disagree about the necessity of a naval building programme. Traders to the West Indies did not bother about such questions. Their illegal trade with the North Americans was booming and they made great profits. The situation changed when the North Americans turned into rebels, and British privateers in the Caribbean began to capture Dutch vessels carrying goods to and from North America. St Eustatius became a bone of contention, because of its enormous warehouses full of legal Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

and illegal commodities. France, soon joined by Spain, openly supported the insurgents. A new war was imminent and finally broke out in 1779. British naval and privateering forces half-heartedly blockaded French and Spanish ports. Dutch merchantmen on their way to those ports were stopped, arrested and brought into British ports. The British authorities were interested in particular in timber of use in shipbuilding. The interpretation of the word contraband was thus unilaterally extended. As before, however, a compromise looked as if it was just around the corner.16 The cargoes were sold in Britain, the proceeds going to the Dutch merchants and the ships and their crews released. The situation became more complicated when Britain brought the Treaty of 1678 to life again by requesting Dutch troops. The British feared a French invasion. The Hague reacted in the same negative way as in 1756. This time Britain considered naval stores vital for French and Spanish war efforts. The Dutch government and mercantile world did not want to accept the British interpretation of the Treaty of 1674. London’s reaction was counterproductive for maintaining good relations. If The Hague did not comply with the commitments formulated in the Treaty of 1678, then Britain would no longer observe the other treaty. It would treat Dutch traders and masters as ordinary neutrals without any special privileges. France tried to prevent Dutch concessions and threatened to abolish the economic rights and privileges the Dutch enjoyed in France if the Dutch gave in to the British. The discussion in the Republic about this issue got confused with all kinds of domestic political problems. Some political groups lined up with France, others with Britain. About one aspect disagreement no longer existed – the navy had to be enlarged and more ships fitted out to provide extra convoying in European waters. But what kind of vessels were to be protected; even those carrying naval stores? The Hague opted for so-called limited, Amsterdam for unlimited, convoys. It turned out to be irrelevant, for Britain also wanted to search vessels which the Republic guaranteed were laden with non-contraband cargo. On New Year’s Eve, 1779, a British squadron in the Channel near the Isle of Wight stopped a Dutch convoy in order to search the cargoes of the merchantmen. The commander of the accompanying warships, Rear Admiral Van Bylandt, refused to give permission for this search but the British went ahead anyway. After a symbolic defence the Dutch naval vessels surrendered and had to follow their merchantmen into Portsmouth.17 Dutch honour had been violated. A public outcry was the result. It was not difficult for French diplomats in The Hague to push the Dutch Republic further away from Britain and the old alliance. The profits of neutrality would be great, the Dutch were told. Perception of the real situation was largely lost. The Dutch Navy would never be a match for Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

its British opponent if the British wanted to continue to arrest and search Dutch merchantmen. The more so since Dutch politicians cried for unlimited convoys, what meant also ships laden with contraband. France stirred up anti-British feelings and rewarded the decision about unlimited convoys with the suspension of all duties on Dutch shipping. For many decades no money had been available for augmentation of the fleet, but in the course of 1780 the States General unanimously decided on a big building plan. The construction of these ships would of course take time, while the few ships available had to face a superior enemy. The average age of the ships-of-the-line and frigates was about 17 years. On paper, the officers’ corps was in full force, but many officers from the lowest to the highest ranks had seen little active service. The recruitment of more petty officers and ratings proved to be very difficult.18 Among many other things the British government had been very irritated by the way in which the American privateer John Paul Jones, with a number of British prizes in his wake, had been received in the Republic in the last months of 1779. It was especially annoyed at the glorification of the man. The ‘berugte held [infamous] Paul Jones’ was even the hero in popular songs; a Dordrecht brewer even named a beer after him.19 Britain began to care less about the risks of having the Dutch as enemies. The Republic still owned one of Europe’s main shipping fleets, ranking third after Britain and France. The Dutch were also renowned masters in forging shipping documents and using false papers. The disadvantages of letting the generally undisturbed Dutch commercial practices continue grew. War between the two traditional allies became unavoidable.20 There seemed to be one escape route for the Dutch to avoid a fourth Anglo-Dutch War. That was joining the League of Armed Neutrality. Denmark and Sweden, and later Russia, had taken the initiative to form a league of neutral states. The purpose of this alliance was the protection of neutral shipping and trade, if need be with force. Contraband was described as weapons, gunpowder and lead. Ships under neutral flag could not be arrested when laden with a non-contraband cargo. Only an effective blockade was recognised. In such a blockade hostile naval forces closed off ports completely. The Dutch Republic had been informed about the formation of this league, but did not immediately consider joining. Britain warned that entering the League would mean war. After long discussions, however, the States General voted by four to three to join. That was on 20 November 1780. It was a desperate move, not out of sympathy for or an interest in Nordic affairs, but as the ultimate effort to secure neutrality and rights for free shipping and trade. The accession to the League had to be formally announced at foreign courts within six weeks time. Thereafter the membership would be valid. Matters did not get that far. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Great Britain could use the discovery of that draft commercial treaty between the city of Amsterdam and the North American insurgents as a perfect casus belli. The official Dutch announcement of the accession to the League of Armed Neutrality arrived in London on the day the British declared war, 20 December. The British returned the announcement unopened. A continuation of the century-long alliance was for the British government not an option. War was taken for granted. The Cabinet took the decision during its usual meeting over dinner and foreign affairs always came over the port. According to an eyewitness, the decision was taken when most members were asleep. Only a few even thought about it. When the others awoke, all approved of what was proposed, the declaration of war.21 The Republic’s membership in the League of Armed Neutrality was then not yet valid and was of no effect whatsoever in the ensuing war. The war lasted for more than two years and was a disaster for the Dutch from a naval point of view. The Dutch Navy was not able to take any sort of hard line towards its British opponent. There was an occasional skirmish but by and large the authorities in The Hague had to accept that the fleet could not leave the Dutch roadstead. In other words, the British were masters of the North Sea and could effectively blockade the Dutch coast. The mercantile marine proved a different story. Until war broke out, many British, North American and French vessels took refuge under the Dutch flag and profited from the Republic’s neutral status. That stopped of course soon after 20 December 1780. Though the States General immediately prohibited the sale of Dutch merchantmen to foreigners, the prohibition was not of much effect and was already withdrawn by mid-November 1781. There was silent consent in the fabricated sale of Dutch vessels to foreign owners abroad in Denmark, Prussia, the southern Netherlands and some north German port cities. Hundreds of Dutch masters moved abroad and seemingly disappeared from the Sound Toll Registers. The evidence of the sale of at least 900 vessels has been discovered. The dip in the number of vessels going in and out of the Baltic in 1781 was almost restored to the pre-war level in 1782.22 After the Peace of Paris in 1784, however, the Dutch Republic’s economy did not pull off a full recovery either in trade or shipping.

ONCE AGAIN BRITAIN’S ALLY 1788–95

On the eve of and during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War funds had to be raised and spent in larger amounts than at any time since the War of the Spanish Succession. Construction of ships takes time so the programme for the extension of the fleet continued after the war. The Republic at Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

first tried to buy warships in Denmark and Sweden, but to no avail. Turning then to the option of building their own ships, the admiralties discovered that the capacity of their naval dockyards was too small to accommodate the numbers decided upon. Offers from private yards had to be accepted. The effort to expand the navy finally resulted in a much bigger fleet (see table, p. 47). During the 1780s no less than 46 shipsof-the-line, 28 frigates and several smaller vessels were built. Many of the ships, however, suffered from leakage and other defects due to the green timber used in their construction and to the great haste of the building process itself. A number of disasters at sea were the consequence. Nevertheless, as to its actual size the Dutch Navy once again could be considered a good second-rate navy. The officers corps had considerably increased in numbers. The average young officer was now better educated; he had to attend classes and sit for exams. This enlarged and theoretically educated corps also needed more opportunities for practical training. In 1788 it was decided to organise annual training squadrons in the North Sea. The picture for the petty officers and common seamen on board remained rather gloomy. Enlistment was still for one voyage and for the same wages as in the past. Demand exceeded the supply of men. Only the persistent clamouring of some leading officers finally led to the creation of a permanent corps of artillerymen in 1792.23 After the restoration of peace the fleet’s activities were drastically extended. In addition to the normal sailings to the Mediterranean and the West Indies and Surinam, naval vessels visited a completely new region. The East India Company’s own naval power had been weakened over the years, at an increased pace during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. The Company therefore made its first request ever for naval support. From 1783 a rather large number of Dutch warships were sailing to Asia. Spread over the period from 1783 to 1795, no fewer than 25 Dutch naval vessels operated in Asian waters. The safety of the overseas territories had become a concern of the States General over the previous decade.24 It was also one of the topics The Hague had brought forward in the discussions about joining the League of Armed Neutrality in 1780. Russia, however, had refused to make any such guarantee of security.25 In fact, Britain captured some overseas possessions, but most of those were handed back later to the VOC. Traditional relations between the Republic and Great Britain were repaired in 1787, but under a different aegis than previously. The political unrest in the Republic, which had become so manifest during the war, did not disappear. Both French and British diplomats supported one of the two parties, the anti-stadtholders and the supporters of stadtholder William V. The struggle reached its climax in 1787, when armed groups confronted each other. The stadtholder had to leave The Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Hague and to find refuge in the eastern part of the country. The crisis was resolved by the intervention of a Prussian army, in close cooperation with the British government. William V returned to The Hague and was restored to his old position. From then on he and the country stood under a sort of Anglo-Prussian tutelage. The traditional naval alliance with Britain was also renewed, in particular the Treaty of 1678. In the Nootka Sound crisis of 1790, when Spain and Britain quarrelled about the ownership of the later Vancouver Island on the North American west coast, a Dutch squadron of 12 warships sailed to Spithead. For six weeks it joined the British fleet against Spain, but diplomats resolved the dispute before war could break out. The ghost of 1689 and 1729 seemed to be back. In 1793 revolutionary France declared war against both the Dutch Republic and Great Britain. The French Army conquered the southern Netherlands and the same fate soon befell the Republic. British troops and naval vessels had supported the Dutch forces, as in 1747, but this time to no avail.26 In January 1795, the stadtholder and his family found shelter in Britain. The Dutch Republic was transformed into the Batavian Republic and became a French protectorate. Great Britain was again the enemy as in 1780.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

During most of the eighteenth century the Dutch Republic was a second-rate power in Europe. Its navy, one of the largest in the War of the Spanish Succession, suffered dramatic decline and neglect from immediately after that war onward. It operated only on a small scale, mainly providing convoy services and taking action against the Barbary States and their corsairs. The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War was a disaster, but after that the admiralties received subsidies for a huge building programme. The Dutch became again a solid second-level naval power, a force to be reckoned with by the leading powers. Once the Dutch lined up with France in 1795, the British Navy was all too keen to remove this potential threat. In three operations in 1796, 1797 and 1799 the major part of the Dutch Navy was destroyed or captured. It was no longer a factor of importance during the rest of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic era. The Dutch Republic was bound to Britain through the Treaties of 1674 and 1678. The alliance forestalled an independent foreign policy for most of the eighteenth century. It was as if the Dutch Navy in particular always had to jump upon the British bandwagon. That was not only the case with the Baltic squadrons in the 1710s, but also in 1729, 1744 and again in 1790. That was the result of the Treaty of 1678. In 1747 and 1793 Britain sent support to the Republic. In 1756 and 1779 the Dutch did not honour a request for Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

troops and ships. The British reaction was unambiguous: no application of the Treaty of 1674. The commercial Treaty of 1674 was of great profit to the Dutch during the War of the Austrian Succession. But when in 1756 the British government received a blunt refusal to its request for the implementation of provisions of the Treaty of 1678, it responded with a stricter interpretation of the Treaty of 1674. Britain did not tolerate the usual explanation of the rule ‘free ships, free goods’. The Dutch had to accept the British point of view on the meaning of contraband and naval stores. During the War of American Independence the Republic tried to opt for a neutral role, but Britain did not accept this. War was the outcome, despite the Dutch effort to join the League of Armed Neutrality. If Britain had agreed to Dutch neutrality and the application of the Treaty of 1674, it would have jeopardised its own interpretation of contraband and of naval stores in particular, accepted in 1759, and also its selfasserted right to search neutral vessels. From 1788 onwards Britain had clipped Dutch wings almost completely. Nordic affairs were no matters of great concern for the Republic in the eighteenth century. The sending of the three squadrons in the 1710s to the Baltic was not a Dutch initiative. The convoy force established in 1742 was a minor episode. The irregular convoys to northern Russia had no military or political background whatsoever. Those convoys were of a purely commercial nature. When in 1779 neutrality became an option – also because of internal troubles – Russian approaches received a favourable response. The principles of the League of Armed Neutrality seemed to fit Dutch policy. It was all in vain though. The whole flirtation with neutrality was quickly forgotten. The entry of naval squadrons in Asian waters from 1783 onwards was the first symptom of a new orientation in Dutch naval policy. The focus had always been on Europe, but that was certainly no longer the case after the restoration of Dutch independence in 1813. Increasing numbers of warships found employment in Indonesian waters, and their vessels became a prime concern of naval administrators and naval officers. European waters changed into training grounds. The Netherlands was neutral in European affairs. Overseas in Asia the navy and the colonial government ruled the Indonesian archipelago. British consent for that was always implicit.

NOTES I am very grateful to Professor Dr R. W. Unger (University of British Columbia, Canada) for his comments on the text and improvement of my English. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

1. See, for instance, the merchants Van Hinsbergh and Schepers 1665, in J. R. Bruijn and C. A. Davids, ‘Jonas vrij. De Nederlandse walvisvaart, in het bijzonder de Amsterdamse, in de jaren 1640–1664’, Economisch en Historisch Jaarboek, 38 (1975), p. 166. 2. A. C. Carter, Neutrality or Commitment: The Evolution of Dutch Foreign Policy 1667–1795 (London: Edward Arnold, 1975), pp. 15–16; E. S. van Eyck van Heslinga, ‘A competitive ally. The delicate balance of naval alliance and maritime competition between Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, 1674–1795’, in G. J. A. Raven and N. A. M. Rodger (eds), Navies and Armies. The Anglo-Dutch Relationship in War and Peace 1688–1988 (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1990), pp. 1–11. 3. J. C. M. Warnsinck, De vloot van de Koning-Stadhouder 1689–1690 (Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche uitgeversmij, 1934), pp. 9–24: J. R. Bruijn, ‘William III and his two navies’, Notes and Records, Royal Society, London, 43 (1989), pp. 117–32. 4. J. Francke, Utiliteyt voor de gemeene saake. De Zeeuwse commissievaart en haar achterban tijdens de Negenjarige oorlog, 1688–1697 (Middelburg: 2001), ch. 8.2. See also T. Ufkes, ‘Nederlandse schippers op Danziger en Stockholmse handelsschepen’, Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis, 15 (1996), pp. 117–32. 5. J. Th. H. Verhees-van Meer, De Zeeuwse kaapvaart tijdens de Spaanse Successieoorlog 1702–1713 (Middelburg: Koninklijk Zeeuwsch Genootschap der Wetenschappen, 1986), pp. 73–120. 6. J. R. Bruijn, De admiraliteit van Amsterdam in rustige jaren 1713–1751 (Amsterdam: Scheltema and Holkema, 1970), pp. 12–8. 7. Ibid., p. 19. 8. For more details, ibid., pp. 80–98. 9. J. Glete, Navies and Nations. Warships, Navies and State Building in Europe and America, 1500–1860 (Stockholm: AWI, 1993), 2 vols, chs 2 and 2.3. 10. J. R. Bruijn, Varend Verleden. De Nederlandse vloot in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (Amsterdam: Balans, 1998), pp. 192–3. 11. Carter, Neutrality or Commitment, pp. 72–4. 12. N. A. M. Rodger, ‘The British view of the functioning of the Anglo-Dutch alliance, 1688–1795’, in Raven and Rodger (eds), Navies and Armies, 24 (see note 2). 13. Carter, Neutrality or Commitment, p. 85. 14. A. C. Carter, The Dutch Republic in Europe in the Seven Years War (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 103–28. 15. Bruijn, Varend Verleden, pp. 194–6. 16. J. S. Bartstra Jr, Vlootherstel en legeraugmentatie (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1952), pp. 196–226; Carter, Neutrality or Commitment, pp. 95–102. 17. J. C. de Jonge, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche zeewezen IV (Haarlem: A. C. Kruseman, 1861), pp. 395–440. 18. J. R. Bruijn, The Dutch Navy of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), pp. 156–7; D. A. Miller, Sir Joseph Yorke and Anglo-Dutch Relations 1774–1780 (The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1970), pp. 78–87; D. F. Scheurleer (ed.), Van varen en vechten. Verzen van tijdgenooten op onze zeehelden en zeeslagen, lof- en schimpdichten, matrozenliederen, III (The Hague: Gravenhage, 1914), pp. 367–74. 19. R. W. Unger, A History of Brewing in Holland 900–1900: Economy, Technology and the State (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 237. 20. Miller, Sir Joseph Yorke, pp. 78–87; Scheurleer (ed.), Van varen en vechten, pp. 367–74. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

21. Rodger, ‘The British view’, pp. 25–6; Miller, Sir Joseph Yorke, pp. 88–105. Two commemorative medals were struck, texts and pictures in De Jonge, Geschiedenis, pp. 785–6. 22. E. S. van Eyck van Heslinga, ‘De vlag dekt de lading. De Nederlandse koopvaardij in de Vierde Engelse oorlog’, Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis, 1 (1982), pp. 102–13. 23. D. J. A. Roodhuyzen-Van Breda Vriesman, In woelig vaarwater. Marineofficieren in de jaren 1779–1802 (Amsterdam: Bataafsche Leeuw, 1998); Bruijn, Varend Verleden, pp. 199–200, 229–31, 240–4. 24. J. R. Bruijn, ‘The Dutch Navy goes overseas (c. 1780–c. 1860)’, Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis, 20 (2001), pp. 163–74. 25. P. J. Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche volk, VI (Groningen: 1904), pp. 335–6. 26. R. B. Prud’homme van Reine, Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen 1735–1819. Admiraal en filantroop (Amsterdam: Bataafsche Leeuw, 1990), pp. 282–8, 302–31.

Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

3

Denmark–Norway 1720–1807: Neutral Principles and Practice OLE FELDBÆK

It is important to keep in mind the conglomerate character of the Danish state, consisting of the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway with the North Atlantic possessions and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, and with overseas colonies in India, Africa and the West Indies. Some parts of the state were, of course, politically more important than others, but they all played a role in the foreign and economic policy of the absolute king. Denmark enjoyed a virtually unbroken period of peace and prosperity from the end of the Great Northern War in 1720 – which reduced the former regional great power Sweden to a state at Denmark’s own level – and until 1807 when Britain forced Denmark into the Napoleonic Wars on the side of France. Politically, Denmark belonged to les satisfaits, with no territorial aspirations of any real importance. Its obvious policy therefore aimed at staying out of the wars of the Great Powers and exploiting its neutral status as much as the warring powers – that is, in all essentials, Britain – would and could allow. This chapter deals with three questions. Firstly, what neutral principles did Denmark claim? Secondly, what neutral policy did it actually pursue? And, thirdly, what role did its navy play in that policy?

NEUTRAL PRINCIPLES CLAIMED BY DENMARK

Every maritime state claimed its own neutral principles – which of course were consistent with their concrete interests at the moment. Binding bilateral agreements hardly existed. International law was imprecise, to say the least. Moreover, the cases of ships and cargoes brought before the British Prize Courts were decided on the basis of Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

political instructions given to the judges by the government over breakfast. Anglo-Danish relations on this point were, therefore, not dictated by right, but by might. It was, however, not a simple bilateral power relationship between a Great Power and a third-rate Nordic state. Denmark occupied a strategically important position with regard to Britain’s vital Baltic trade. Other neutrals might find it in their interest to back Denmark against Britain. And so might France and other enemies of Britain. In principle, Denmark claimed that it was entitled to trade with whom it liked, where it liked and with what it liked. However, it did not claim these principles to their full extent. It would not claim its right to transport war contraband, but only if it was defined as actual war material – such as guns from Norwegian ironworks. Danish authorities would never recognise foodstuffs as war contraband. They would formally claim the right to carry goods belonging to the belligerents. The Danish principle for wartime trade was that free ships should carry free goods. But the authorities much preferred cargoes for French, Spanish and Dutch accounts to be entered in the ship’s papers as goods belonging to the king’s subjects – whatever the colour of their skin and however clumsily camouflaged. The Danish ships would be warned against entering ports under effective blockade – but a mere paper blockade would not be accepted. Even so, Danish foreign ministers – for obvious reasons – refused to accept the so-called rule of 1756, which forbade neutrals to trade with the colonies of the belligerents. And the Danes denied that neutral convoys escorted by ships of war might be exposed to visit and search on the high seas – as long as such a denial was compatible with the country’s overall political considerations. Such were the neutrality principles claimed by neutral Denmark. Except for Norway, the conglomerate state produced very little for export, and the home market consumed only a very small portion of the goods carried under the Danish flag. The emphasis on the exploitation of neutrality was, therefore, on transport. Denmark thus could benefit from filling the tonnage vacuum created by the greater maritime powers waging their wars at sea. The main operation areas were the routes between the Baltic and western and southern Europe, and the routes between the colonies in Asia and the West Indies and the European continent. And the really flourishing trade, incidentally, did not really start until the Dutch – the great carrier nation – went to war.

DANISH NEUTRALITY POLICY

Danish neutral practice was in many respects an entirely different matter, just as the wars of the period differed. It has proved useful to Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

distinguish between a mainly defensive and a predominantly offensive neutrality policy. The defensive policy was based upon a recognition of a strong British position, which made it necessary to water down efforts to make Britain accept the Danish neutrality principles – if not formally, then at least in practice. In such a situation, typically during the war of 1756–63, it was important not to be forced into a formal renunciation of the principles in question, but instead keep them for better times. Such times came in the war of 1778–83, where Britain de facto recognised an offensive Danish policy characterised by a flourishing trade with the French, Spanish and Dutch islands in the West Indies, just as Britain abstained from interfering with the Danish convoys. This was actually a dangerous piece of political brinkmanship. In the opening years of the Revolutionary Wars Denmark pursued a predominantly defensive policy. But when the Prince Regent took over the reins of the government at the death of the old statesman Andreas Peter Bernstorff in 1797, Denmark embarked on a conflict with Britain over a distinctly offensive convoy policy. A deliberate course which – over the Freya affair in the summer of 1800 – led directly to the war with Britain in 1801, defeat in the battle of Copenhagen, and the formal and definitive renunciation in the summer that same year of virtually all the neutrality principles of the eighteenth century. No wonder, therefore, that Denmark after the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803 pursued an extremely cautious neutral policy. A caution that could not, however, spare Denmark the British attack in l807, the bombardment of Copenhagen, the loss of the entire navy – and eventually the loss of Norway. Two special features of the Danish policy of neutrality should be mentioned briefly here. One is the neutrality conventions of 1756 and 1794 and the League of Armed Neutrality, 1780 and 1800–01. The other is the endeavour to transform the Baltic into a mare clausum – a sea closed to foreign men-of-war and privateers. In 1756 France took the initiative to let its two Nordic allies proclaim a Neutrality Convention to defend their shipping and trade. The Danish foreign minister however, managed to remove almost all the clauses that might offend Britain, and when Sweden the following year entered the war, nothing came out of the French initiative in the field of Realpolitik. The picture is somewhat more blurred with regard to the Neutrality Convention of 1794 between Denmark and Sweden. It is probably the only example in the eighteenth century of an effective united neutral front. In 1794, 1795 and 1796, Denmark and Sweden each contributed eight ships-of-the-line and two frigates, which were ordered to cruise the North Sea – apparently resulting in a more relaxed attitude from British warships and privateers. The famous League of Armed Neutrality of 1780 and 1800 might be dismissed curtly in this Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

context as Russian attempts to utilise Catharine’s and Paul’s positions as leaders of a bloc of neutral maritime nations to promote traditional Russian territorial interests on the European continent. As to the endeavour to make the Baltic a mare clausum, the initiative was taken by France in 1756. As the Royal Navy did not enter the Baltic during the Seven Years War, Denmark’s entry into the convention between Russia and Sweden in 1759 had no political repercussions. The vague mare clausum stipulation from 1756 was repeated in the Danish–Swedish Neutrality Convention of 1794. As to the League of Armed Neutrality of 1780 and especially of 1800, the mare clausum stipulations clearly aimed at blocking the entrance into the Baltic of the Royal Navy.

THE ROLE OF THE NAVY

The navy was a flexible instrument in the Danish policy of neutrality. At the same time, however, overall political and military considerations drew rather narrow limits, within which this instrument might be applied. In the first generations after the Great Northern War – when the Swedish and the Russian navies were allowed to rot in their harbours – the Danish Navy had a comfortable superiority in the Baltic. But the Danish Navy’s role as a fleet-in-being based in Copenhagen and scheduled both to operate in the Baltic and secure the connection lines between Denmark and Norway, meant that it was limited in how many ships could be spared for overseas duties and for trade protection. The navy consisted of some 20 ships-of-the-line and 10–15 frigates manned with plenty of Danish and, in particular, Norwegian trained sailors – provided the recruitment system was alerted in ample time before the fleet was to put to sea. A special feature with the Baltic fleets was that the only entrance into the Baltic was the Sound. Not until the summer of 1801 – when the British Baltic fleet went home by way of the Great Belt and took its time to make reliable soundings and bearings and maps – did Zealand become an island, seen from a naval strategy point of view. And the Drogden Shallows in the Sound just south of Copenhagen had no more than 7 metres of water – forcing the Baltic navies to concentrate on smaller types of ships-of-the-line, and foreign navies to abstain from using their heavy three-deckers. The political and naval situation in the north changed dramatically with the coup d’état of Gustavus III in 1772. It was evident that the main object of the king and his successors now was to acquire Norway. This strategy finally succeeded in 1814. Danish naval strategy was immediately transformed into an arms race in order to be sufficiently Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

strong in comparison with the Swedish Navy to always maintain control over the Sound. This would keep Sweden from staging a lightening attack against Zealand and Copenhagen, in order to force Denmark to cede Norway. The political side of that strategy was the close alliance of 1773 with Russia who had similarly good reasons to fear a Swedish attack over the Finnish border. An alliance which de facto ended in 1809, when Russia conquered Finland and openly pointed to Norway as the obvious territorial compensation for Sweden. In this scenario it was obviously impossible to station more than insignificant forces in, say, Glückstadt on the river Elbe, or at the naval base of Frederiksværn in the Oslo Fjord. This does not mean that naval force could not be used to protect Danish interests in distant waters. Naval vessels did occasionally patrol the waters close to Iceland and Greenland against Dutch and British whalers. And the navy played an important role in concluding trade treaties with the Barbary States around 1750 – and also in making their rulers honour their treaty obligations. Naval vessels likewise patrolled the waters in the West Indies. And ships-of-the-line were sent all the way to the Cape of Good Hope, and some all the way to India, to convoy the richly laden East Indiamen and Chinamen safely home to Copenhagen. The navy was an important instrument for Danish foreign ministers. From Copenhagen, Danes and foreigners alike had an unimpaired view of all that was going on in the naval dockyard. Actually, the government had no intention of hiding these activities. On the contrary, the foreign ministers in their conversations with foreign diplomats at the court of Copenhagen consciously made use of information about the number of ships being fitted out and their number of sailors and guns, to signal the level of Danish naval preparedness, namely the government’s peaceful intentions. At the same time they kept themselves well informed about the state of the Swedish Navy in Karlskrona. It was, of course, no secret either that the naval balance in the Baltic was undergoing remarkable changes. At the same time as the Swedish Navy was deteriorating for lack of money, and because of losses in the war with Russia in 1788–90, Catherine had embarked upon massive naval building programmes which once and for all ensured Denmark’s naval preponderance in the Baltic history. From 1780 Danish naval policy had to abandon competition with Russia. Towards the end of 1806 the government therefore took an extraordinary decision: to let the Danish Navy be gradually diminished – though still keeping a comfortable majority in the number of ships-ofthe-line and frigates over the Swedish fleet; and to use the money to build a new navy of gunboats, gun vessels and light crafts, constructed so as to be able to operate with the army along the southern border, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

where the mighty armies of France were now moving closer to Holstein. This grand design, however, was never to be put to the test. Only nine months later a powerful British army and navy attacked Copenhagen; and after three nightly bombardments against civilian targets, the commandant capitulated under pressure from the population and delivered up the entire navy: 15 ships-of-the-line and 15 frigates, to prevent them falling into the hands of Napoleon. This was probably the most successful combined operation in the military history of the era.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andersen, Henning Søby, En lus mellem to negle. Dansk-norsk neutralitetspolitik 1801–1807 (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1991). Bergersen, Olav, Nøytralitet og krig. Fra Nordens væpnede nøytralitets saga. En sjømilitær studie (Oslo: Tveitan, 1966). Boye, Thorvald, De væbnede neutralitetsforbund. Et avsnit av folkerettens historie (Kristiania: Grøndahl, 1912). Due-Nielsen, Carsten, ‘Vindskibelighed eller vankelmod. Nogle spørgsmål til dansk neutralitetspolitik’, in Hans Jeppesen et al. (eds), Søfart. Politik. Identitet. Tilegnet Ole Feldbæk (Helsingør: Københavns Universitets Fond, 1996). Feldbæk, Ole, Dansk neutralitetspolitik under krigen 1778–1783. Studier i regeringens prioritering af politiske og økonomiske interesser. With an English summary (Copenhagen: Københavns Universitets Fond, 1971). Feldbæk, Ole, Denmark and the Armed Neutrality 1800–1801: Small Power Policy in a World War (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1980). Feldbæk, Ole, ‘Eighteenth Century Danish Neutrality. Its Diplomacy, Economics and Law’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 8, 1 (1983). Feldbæk, Ole, ‘Denmark and the Baltic 1720–1864’, in Göran Rystad et al. (ed.), In Quest of Trade and Security. The Baltic in Power Politics 1500–1990, Vol. 1, 1500–1890 (Stockholm: 1984). Feldbæk, Ole, Slaget på Reden (Copenhagen: 1985/2001). English edition, The Battle of Copenhagen 1801: Nelson and the Danes (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2002). Feldbæk, Ole, ‘Denmark in the Napoleonic Wars. A Foreign Policy Study’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 26, 2 (2001). Feldbæk, Ole, ‘Tiden 1720–1814’, in Carsten Due-Nielsen et al. (eds), Dansk Udenrigspolitiks Historie (Copenhagen: Gyldenhal, 2002). Frantzen, Ole L., Truslen fra Øst. Dansk-norsk flådepolitik 1769–1807 (Copenhagen: Marinehistorisk Selskab, 1980). Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Holbraad, Carsten, Danish Neutrality. A Study of the Foreign Policy of a Small State (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991). Lind, Gunner, ‘The Making of the Neutrality Convention of 1756. France and Her Scandinavian Allies’, Scandinavian Journal of History (1983). Tuxen, Ole, ‘Principles and Priorities. The Danish View of Neutrality during the Colonial War of 1755–63’, Scandinavian Journal of History (1988).

Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

4

Navies and Power Struggle in Northern and Eastern Europe, 1721–1814 JA N G L E T E

WHY STUDY SECONDARY SEA POWERS?

Broad syntheses of naval history about the eighteenth century and the Napoleonic Wars have concentrated on the Atlantic hemisphere. In that perspective, the British, French and Spanish navies are the main contenders, the wars are essentially naval in character and operations are concentrated to the coasts of western Europe, North America and the West Indies. The Baltic and the Levant (eastern Mediterranean– Black Sea) are mainly highlighted when visited by the navies of western Europe, in practice, during the war period of 1792–1815. Why there were considerable regional navies in the Baltic and Levant is not discussed and sometimes hardly mentioned, apparently because they seem to be irrelevant to the power struggle in the Atlantic hemisphere. Major battles between these regional fleets are frequently not even mentioned in books, which pay considerable attention to smaller actions in the Atlantic. A post-modernist would probably explain to us that the Baltic and the Levant have been placed outside the discourse of naval history. Our perception of realities is shaped by what we are used to thinking about, and as these regions are seldom given much attention in general naval history they are presumed to be unimportant.1 Naval warfare in the Atlantic in this period was of great importance for the future of Europe and America and for nineteenth- and twentiethcentury European participation in global history. Historians who wish to have a broad perspective on this must study eighteenth-century navies: their policy, administration, operations, logistics and human interaction with technology. We need more of it, not less. But for syntheses about sea power and navies in general, as well as of European Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

wars and the interaction between warfare on land and at sea, it is unfortunate that there are few modern studies of naval warfare and the political roles of sea power in the Baltic and the Levant. These regions were important in European power politics – from a central and eastern European perspective they were indeed more important than the Atlantic. For those who write and read naval and military history with the intention of finding historical lessons about doctrines and organisation these regions are also very rewarding in an age when close interaction between warfare on land, sea and air is the ‘typical’ war. Problems and opportunities connected with combined operations and amphibious strategies in littoral areas are easy to study in northern and eastern European warfare. Somewhat surprisingly, even recent books which present syntheses of warfare and the interaction between states, society and wars in the Baltic do not take much account of the fact that warfare in littoral areas, by its very nature has to be amphibious and that control of the sea is often decisive.2 This chapter is a survey of the navies of Denmark–Norway, Sweden and Russia from 1721 to 1814. It will give an outline of the role of these navies in the context of Baltic and north-eastern power politics, with emphasis on how the special conditions in the Baltic made it necessary to develop naval doctrines, warships and naval organisations suited to the operational requirements of amphibious and shallow-water warfare. The Baltic navies were tailored for regional warfare, the struggle for power or supremacy in the Baltic, rather than for oceanic warfare or overseas expansion. They were, to a higher degree than Western navies, integrated parts of defence systems with armies, battle-fleets, oared flotillas and fortresses. Combined operations were very important but battle fleet actions were also common. The territories of Sweden (with Finland) and Denmark–Norway were intersected by seas and it was necessary to keep control of these waters with naval forces, if the different parts of the state were not to be isolated and rendered incapable of supporting each other in wartime. The type of naval warfare which dominated in the Baltic was therefore partly different from that on the oceans but it was complex and often decisive. Rulers and policy-makers in the Baltic were very much aware of the importance of sea power, and studies of European sea power cannot neglect these navies without missing important dimensions of maritime warfare.3

NAVIES IN THE CONTINENTAL POWER STRUGGLE

Peace was more common than war in the Baltic from 1721 to 1814 but there were also long periods of tensions and diplomatic and military preparations for war. Europe during this period was involved in almost Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

constant negotiations about alliances and alignments between the various powers shifted frequently. Historians have tried to analyse this as various systems of power relations. In a long-term perspective, it seems difficult to discern any ‘systems’. It is rather the repeated changes which set the pattern – the ‘system’ was fluid, unpredictable and consequently not a great source of security, especially for secondary powers. Every state had to be prepared for anything and that kept the cost of maintaining armies and navies at a high level. The three Baltic powers had no closed system of alliances and conflicts. Instead, they participated in many European alliances and for a century almost every combination involving the two Nordic powers and the five European Great Powers, France, Great Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria, was tried. Behind these changes it is, however, easy to discern a certain continuity. Russia and Denmark were on guard against Swedish attempts to regain a strong power position in the Baltic, and Sweden up to 1789 normally had friendly relations with France. Versailles saw the Nordic country as a useful part of various political combinations and alliances, a valuable source of naval stores and an unlikely enemy.4 The first years of peace after 1721 were uneasy in the Baltic. Russia wished to assert its new power by putting pressure on both Sweden and Denmark–Norway and the Russians used their growing navy primarily as an instrument of that policy. Up to 1727, England repeatedly sent fleets to the Baltic as a counterweight to Russia. After that the Russian Navy rapidly declined as conservative Russians tried to eliminate many of Peter I’s reforms. In the 1730s, France and Sweden gradually became closer and discussed possible actions against Russia; either a Swedish attack in the Gulf of Finland, or (as in 1734) a Swedish intervention in Danzig in support of French policy during the War of the Polish Succession. After the Russian defeat of Sweden in the war of 1741–43, a period of high tension followed in the Baltic until 1751. From time to time, war seemed imminent between various combinations: Russia and Sweden against Denmark (1743– 44); Sweden against Denmark and Russia (1746– 47); Prussia and Sweden (supported by France) against Russia and possibly Denmark (1748– 49). After some years of lower tension, Russia and Sweden found each other as allies in the great coalition against Prussia in 1757–62, although both states avoided war with Prussia’s ally, Great Britain. The 1760s was calmer in the Baltic but it became increasingly obvious that the three Great Powers which had emerged in eastern and central Europe: Russia, Austria and Prussia were bent on territorial expansion. They had, however, learnt to cooperate rather than to fight each other and the chief victims of this new policy were Poland and the Ottoman Empire. For the Baltic, the repeated divisions of Poland (1772–95) and the Russian–Austrian plans to divide the Balkans had the important naval Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

consequence that Russia increased its sailing battle-fleet from that of a second-rank regional power to that of a European great sea power. The navy was intended both for deployment to the Mediterranean during wars with the Ottomans and as a protection against possible Western interference in Russia’s Polish strategy. Another consequence was that the secondary powers in the Baltic began to feel both under threat and a desire to take part in the great realignment of European powers. One example of this was the agreement of 1769 between Russia, Prussia and Denmark to make a joint military intervention against Sweden if the king strengthened his domestic political power. King Gustav III (reigned 1771–92) of Sweden did in fact strengthen his power by a coup in 1772. This caused an international crisis but the three neighbours failed to act effectively. France supported Gustav, the Danish court was involved in a crisis, Russia was at war with the Ottomans and a large part of the Baltic battle fleet was in the Mediterranean. Technically, the large Prussian Army might have invaded Sweden, supported by a combined Danish–Russian fleet (if France had not sent a fleet to the Baltic), but in fact not even a naval demonstration was attempted. Alliances had shown their weakness and Gustav III had got an appetite for coups which might create faits accomplis. By 1779–80, he had begun to prepare for a conquest of Norway by a surprise naval attack on Copenhagen. When Russia failed to agree to his plans of mutilating the Danish Kingdom, he attacked Russia instead, in the hope that his expanded navy would give him a technological advantage.5 The long period of war from 1792 to 1815 saw a dramatic realignment of borders and power structures in the Baltic. Denmark–Norway became involved in conflicts with Great Britain, which saw the large Danish–Norwegian Navy as a threat to the European balance of naval power. The navy was captured and the Danish government lost control of the lines of communication within the monarchy. Sweden lost Finland to Russia and attempted to compensate for that with a conquest of Norway. Even more so than earlier, the sea became the ‘natural’ border between the Nordic countries. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Baltic had been dominated by two states which by geography tended to be maritime, Sweden and Denmark–Norway. Both had very large navies (and armies) in comparison with their small population base. Russia’s determined effort to become a European Great Power and a major sea power had changed Baltic power politics considerably, but up to the 1780s the three Baltic powers could participate in European power politics as sea powers of the same order. In all the wars and alliances which have been briefly mentioned in this section, warfare in the Baltic was oriented around maritime lines of communication that would give the navies a Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

decisive role. Naturally, this was an advantage for the two Nordic powers with their smaller population base but relatively strong navies. The Danish–Norwegian sailing battle fleet was normally the largest of the three, but Russia and Sweden also had large oared flotillas for amphibious warfare. By 1800, the Baltic had become an area of contest or cooperation between Great Britain and Russia. By 1815, they were the two European superpowers whose maritime and continental interests were to determine much of nineteenth-century world politics. The smaller Baltic powers, now far from domination, had to use the sea as a barrier against invasions from the Great Powers in east, west and south. Technical development in the nineteenth century would gradually make it possible to formulate new naval doctrines where purely defensive naval forces could provide credible coast defence systems against Great Powers. But the days when the Nordic powers could use their battle fleets as parts of the European balance of power and as instruments of offensive warfare had gone.6

BALTIC GEOGRAPHY AND PRECONDITIONS FOR NAVAL OPERATIONS

The task of the three Baltic navies was to fight for control of the lines of maritime communication within the region.7 The Atlantic powers often fought for the control of these lines on a global scale but that was irrelevant for the Baltic. Here, control of the sea was often important for the concentration of superior military strength in decisive places. Especially since the Swedish conquests of the Danish provinces east of the Sound in 1645 and 1658, warfare and strategy in the Baltic had by their very nature to be maritime and amphibious, as major forces often had to be transported across a sea in order to get in contact with the enemy. Denmark–Norway and Sweden had a long border on land between Sweden and Norway but this was to a large extent mountainous and impossible to use for large-scale military operations. Similarly, the long border between Russia and Finland was covered by deep forests. Both border zones were unsuitable for major military operations as late as in Second World War. Sweden and Denmark could only fight decisive warfare by sending their armies across water or by combined army–navy operations along the archipelagic coast between Christiania (Oslo) and Gothenburg. Similarly, Sweden and Russia could fight major wars on land only along the archipelagic coast in southern Finland or by launching large-scale amphibious assaults on territories of decisive importance: central Sweden and Stockholm or Estonia-Livonia and St Petersburg. Russia and Denmark–Norway could naturally fight each other only across the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

sea (unless they had continental allies). In wars with continental powers without navies in the Baltic, the Baltic Sea powers could use the sea for flanking amphibious operations or for unhindered logistic support of army units from the sea. Alternatively, one Baltic state might ally itself with a continental power without a navy against another Baltic state and play the role of the naval branch of the alliance. The most likely continental power of that character was of course Prussia, although in a brief but important period (1806/07 to 1813) the French army controlled the German Baltic coast. The Baltic was consequently a region where the sea was of decisive importance both when the lines of army operation stretched across the sea and when they ran parallel to a coast. It was not only the transfer of soldiers for a strategic assault that was dependent on the sea. Roads in this period were underdeveloped and the carrying capacity of ships easily surpassed that of roads. Finland, Norway and large parts of Sweden had such a limited agricultural base that large concentrated forces – friendly or hostile – could not survive there without a continuous supply of food from other regions. Any large-scale concentration of armed forces in a region, whether for offence or defence, had to be supplied from the outside, and the speed and efficiency of this logistical service was often decisive. To put it in simple terms, if it was to be continually supplied with reinforcements, food and munitions, an army ought to be placed at one end of a maritime line of communication controlled by a friendly navy.8 The areas where this situation was most obvious were southern Finland and the coast between Gothenburg and Christiania. Both were likely to attract major armies, both were agriculturally poor, both had bad roads and archipelagic coasts which made it possible to control a sea line of communication with oared forces. Furthermore, many important cities – capitals, military and naval bases and trading ports – were easily accessible from the sea if they were to be attacked by a large military force. Transport by water was especially important for the strategic heavy siege artillery which was necessary for the successful conquest of a fortified place. St Petersburg/Kronstadt, Copenhagen, Riga, Reval, Karlskrona, Gothenburg and Christiania were vulnerable to large-scale amphibious attacks if control of the sea enabled an attacker to bring in supplies and reinforcements faster than the defender could match with road transport. Stockholm was somewhat less exposed, as the city was located behind a broad archipelago which, if properly defended, would take time to penetrate with an amphibious force. Control of the sea made it thus possible both to project power and to increase the freedom of operations for armies in defensive operations. Major armies could not meet in combat without cooperation with Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

navies and naval operations were determined by the opportunities they created for armies. Battle fleet operations in the Baltic also aimed at controlling trade and enforcing or breaking blockades just as in other parts of the world but these tasks were normally overshadowed by the importance of increasing freedom of operation for the army, either by relieving it of defensive tasks along the coasts or by securing the sea for logistical transports or strategic movements of army forces. Cooperation and interaction between armies and navies had to be both strategic and tactical, especially in archipelagos where oared warfare made it necessary to use a large number of soldiers as oarsmen. This also made the army more mobile and flexible, as oared galleys and gunboats were landing craft and troop transports as much as they were fighting vessels. The power which could organise this cooperation best was likely to win wars. In the Baltic it could be argued that wars were not won by the power which had the best army and navy, but by the power which was most successful in coordinating them, both in long-term planning and organisation and in actual operations. This maritime and amphibious character of eighteenth-century Baltic warfare has been underestimated or misunderstood by conventional histories of warfare. Such studies are divided into army and navy operations and often fail to see opportunities and problems which are not part of these organisations’ established doctrines and habits of decisionmaking. Lack of amphibious capability is not identified as a serious problem and a high degree of amphibious capability is not appreciated as a complex and advanced form of naval–military competence. Such studies have also until recently suffered from an obsession with ‘decisive’ battles and a neglect of logistical aspects of warfare which always were important and often dependent on close army–navy cooperation. Interaction between land and sea ought to be placed at the centre of any analysis of Baltic warfare.9 For example, the later period of the Great Nordic War (1709–21) was essentially a maritime war in the Baltic Sea and the Kattegat/Skagerrak where control of various sea lines of communication determined nearly all military operations. It is normally not seen as such, and it has been overshadowed by the continental phase of the war (1700–09). The experiences from the later war period were, however, very important for the development of military, naval and amphibious doctrines among the Baltic powers for the rest of the eighteenth century. The Baltic has unusual geographic conditions for naval operations and amphibious warfare. Coastal areas with shallow water and archipelagos with many small islands and narrow passages are common and often strategically important. The southern entrances to the Sound (the Drogden and Flintrännan passages) are open but limited in depth, while Danish waters in general are open, relatively deep but often also Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

sheltered. The coasts along the southern and eastern parts of the Baltic Sea are open and have several good harbours but important areas, such as the innermost parts of the Gulf of Finland and the waters around Stralsund, are shallow. Sailing ships with deep draught might blockade these areas, but if they were to be attacked or defended in combined amphibious operations, special shallow-draught vessels – oared or sailing – were required. The coasts of western Pomerania and Prussia are covered with islands or long sandbanks, which create inland waterways of strategic importance. Finally, the waters around several major ports and cities which were likely to be attacked were often too shallow for unhindered operations by major sailing warships. These variations in depth and in the potential for manoeuvre caused problems and opportunities for those who had to take decisions about warship design and the development of naval and amphibious doctrines. Archipelagos, inland waterways and open waters of limited depth were of varying importance for different states, and the same state might choose one or other solution depending on its foreign policy and the most likely enemy. Certain important areas were not suitable for operations involving the largest type of warship in the broadside-armed sailing navy, the battleship (the ship-of-the-line). Sailing ships had to have deep draught in order to be weatherly and in narrow passages they could not always turn their broadside towards the enemy. Consequently, they could not operate in archipelagos of the type common along the Swedish and Finnish coasts, and in these areas oared warfare was supreme until the nineteenth century. Along the coast in the Gothenburg–Oslo area, large sailing ships were at a disadvantage unless they could cooperate with oared craft. In the more or less sheltered waters around the Danish isles both sailing and oared craft might operate and their relative advantages might depend on the weather. In shallow areas with open water, such as the southern entrance to the Sound and in several ports, battleships of limited draught were at a premium. In the case of the Swedish Navy the strategy for a war with Denmark had to be decided at the stage when battleships were designed. Should they be built shallow enough (less than 6 metres draught) to enter the Sound under combat conditions or should they stay outside the Sound and threaten Zealand and Copenhagen with a sea-borne invasion from the south? During the Swedish–Russian wars between 1700 and 1809 the Gulf of Finland became an important area for naval operations. It is partly shallow and remained to a considerable extent uncharted even in the eighteenth century. This reinforced the need for shallow-draught battleships already created by the conditions in the southern section of the Sound. The climate in the Baltic divided naval operations into distinct seasons, since little could be done in wintertime. The northern Baltic Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Sea – the Gulf of Finland and the waters around Stockholm, for example – is normally icebound from December to April, and longer in severe winters. In the southern Baltic, ports like Karlskrona and Copenhagen are only ice-bound during severe winters, but cold and stormy weather made it difficult for large square-rigged ships to operate there during the winter months (November/December to March/April). Only light vessels on reconnaissance tasks or carrying dispatches used to sail in the southern Baltic in wintertime. In the northern Baltic Sea, short hours of daylight, gales and low temperatures made November and December into difficult months for sailing, even if the waters were not ice-bound. Offensive oared warfare in open light craft was only possible from May to September, if the crews were not to be exposed to illness arising from the cold and wet weather. For defensive warfare, oared craft might be efficient for longer, if the crews could be provided with shelter ashore.

NAVAL BASES AND NAVAL STRATEGY

The main naval bases and the capitals of the three Baltic powers had a special relationship. Denmark–Norway had its main naval base in Copenhagen, the capital and the commercial centre of the kingdom. The naval administration and the dominating centre of naval shipbuilding was thus very close to the absolute king and his ministers and it was also a technological centre in the Danish–Norwegian state. Sweden had moved its main naval base from Stockholm to Karlskrona in the 1680s in order to place it in a normally ice-free port in the centre of the Baltic empire it had conquered in the seventeenth century. One consequence of this was that the naval leadership moved out of Stockholm and got less political leverage among central decisionmakers. Karlskrona admirals also tended to take the threat from Denmark–Norway very seriously and underestimate the importance of Russia, the Gulf of Finland and oared flotilla craft. The development of the Swedish oared flotilla was politically and technically to a large extent the result of activities in Stockholm and Finland and the tension between Karlskrona and Stockholm/Finland resulted in a heated debate, which still is reflected in Swedish naval historiography.10 Russia established its maritime and naval centre in St Petersburg/Kronstadt and, somewhat remarkably, Czar Peter I also moved the central government from Moscow to his new window to the west. This probably increased the political leverage of the navy which was placed in the administrative centre of the vast Russian empire. Rulers and ministers lived close to the navy and may have tended to regard it primarily as an essential defence force for the capital city. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

The three navies also used other ports as secondary bases. Sweden traditionally used its major west coast port Gothenburg as a base for a squadron operating against the lines of communication between Denmark and Norway. The Danish–Norwegian Navy built a small base in Frederiksvern in southern Norway in the 1750s. The appearance of a Russian Navy in the Baltic made it necessary for Sweden to re-establish a naval base in Stockholm where an oared squadron became permanently based. One of its main tasks was to provide the Swedish Army with a rapid sealift capacity between Sweden and Finland during conflicts with Russia. Russia early began to use Reval as a forward base for the battle fleet and a squadron was permanently based here. During the late eighteenth century, considerable investment was made in a new naval base in Baltischport (Paldiski), close to Reval. After the experiences of the war of 1788–90 the Russians fortified Svensksund (Kotka) close to the border, in order to prevent the Swedish oared flotilla from using it again as a forward base area. The largest investments in a new naval base after the foundation of St Petersburg/Kronstadt was made outside Helsinki where Sweden from 1748 on built the huge fortress Sveaborg (Suomenlinna) as a permanent base and dockyard for the archipelago fleet. An archipelago flotilla was based there from 1762. Sveaborg could also be used as an operational forward base for a Swedish battle fleet operating in the Gulf of Finland. At the same time Sweden started to build a fortified galley base in Landskrona, opposite Copenhagen. It would have provided Sweden with an increased ability to launch surprise attacks against Denmark but it was never completed. After 1790 a Swedish flotilla of gunboats was based in the Sound. The main naval bases where the battle fleets were laid up in times of peace were important determinants of naval strategy. The theatres where the Danish–Norwegian and Swedish navies would operate in the event of war were in practice divided into two by the Danish straits. The opportunities for moving Swedish naval forces between the Baltic Sea and the Skagerrak–Kattegat area were limited unless effective command of the sea had been gained. The Danish Navy had its base in a favourable central position between these two theatres of operation but its freedom of action was limited by the overriding demand of securing the interior lines of communication between the Danish–Norwegian territories. Denmark–Norway was especially vulnerable to an enemy which controlled the sea as the kingdom consisted of a peninsula (Jutland), several islands and mountainous Norway, where the sea provided the main line of communication along the coast. If these areas were isolated from each other by superior naval forces, the Danish– Norwegian Navy could not be mobilised as the seamen were spread around the country (many in Norway) and the ships were laid up in Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Copenhagen. The army might be mobilised but not concentrated. If it was concentrated in one area the enemy might strike in another, undefended area to which the army could not be transferred. More than any other state in Europe, Denmark–Norway was dependent on its navy for survival but the problem of how the fleet should be mobilised if Copenhagen and Zealand were isolated from the rest of the monarchy was never solved. It had rapidly forced Denmark–Norway out of war in 1700 and it proved fatal in 1801 and 1807. The Swedish Navy was concentrated in the Baltic Sea, usually with a small squadron based on the western coast to harass the Danish– Norwegian lines of communication and to force the Danes to detach superior forces from the Baltic Sea in order to protect them. In view of the increasing difficulties associated with moving Swedish battleships from the Baltic Sea into the Sound it was rather easy for the Copenhagen-based Danish Navy to protect a sea-borne invasion across the Sound into Scania but such an operation might expose Zealand and Copenhagen to a Swedish counter-invasion which could land south of the city under the protection of the Swedish battle fleet guarding the southern entrance to the Sound. In wars between Sweden and Russia, a Swedish fleet of sufficient strength could cut most Russian lines of communication by blockading the Russian fleet in the Gulf of Finland. If the Russians were concentrated at Kronstadt, this could be achieved by a close blockade of that base. If the Russians had forces at Reval or if they enjoyed superior strength, a cruising position at Hangö or Porkkala (two capes in southern Finland) could be adopted by the Swedish fleet. At these places, the archipelago route along the Finnish coast crosses open water, a fact which gives sailing ships an opportunity of halting oared forces. From here, a Swedish battle fleet could also maintain a defensive but forward fleet-in-being strategy against superior Russian forces, since the latter could hardly leave the Gulf of Finland, their capital and their main base without driving a Swedish battle fleet away from southern Finland. The Russian battle fleet might have been in a better position for offensive operations in the Baltic if Reval/Baltischport had been developed as its main base but this was never fulfilled. This is one of several indications that its main task was the defence of the Gulf of Finland and St Petersburg. Russia’s opportunities for offensive operations in the Baltic depended very much on its naval capability. A superior oared flotilla could support army offensives in Finland up to Porkkala or Hangö, east of Helsinki. Further offensives to the west depended on the sailing battle fleet being of superior strength to the enemy, normally the Swedish fleet or that fleet combined with an allied squadron. Contrary to an often repeated misunderstanding, the Russian oared flotilla could Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

not on its own attack or invade central Sweden, even if Finland had been occupied by Russia, as in 1714 –21, 1742– 43 and 1808–09. Galleys could form a useful amphibious force but they (and even more so oared gunboats) were defenceless against sailing warships in the open waters between Finland and Sweden and required protection by battleships.11 Calms – which had provided the Russian galleys with an opportunity to move around the immobilised Swedish battle fleet at Hangö in 1714 – were unusual in the Baltic and no Russian commander could take the risk of moving an army to central Sweden in the hope that the sea would remain calm. Galley raids could be made against the coasts of northern Sweden and Finland but these areas were of little economic importance for Sweden in the eighteenth century. From 1809, a Russian sea-borne invasion of central Sweden became the main threat which determined Swedish defence policy, but the operation remained difficult. Russian war planning in this region remained essentially defensive with Finland and the Gulf of Finland as a defensive zone for St Petersburg.12 In this period, moving the Swedish battle fleet back to Stockholm from Karlskrona to counter the threat from Russia was not seriously discussed. Stockholm could be adequately defended by an oared flotilla and fortifications in the broad archipelago belt east of the city. During most of the eighteenth century Denmark–Norway was regarded as the most serious opponent to the Swedish battle fleet and, due to the prevailing wind and ice conditions in the Baltic, Karlskrona was favourably placed for a battle fleet which could rapidly be deployed to the Gulf of Finland. Naval operations in the 1710s had also shown that Karlskrona was a useful position for a Swedish battle fleet when Denmark–Norway and Russia were allies. Neither of the two allied fleets wanted to move beyond Karlskrona in order to join each other and did not do so until 1716, when they were covered by a British fleet. Trade warfare or guerre de course in its classical form – cruisers sent out in order to attack enemy trade while battle fleet actions were avoided – was not important in the Baltic and privateering was unusual in this period. Much of the trade in the Baltic Sea was carried by ships that were neutral in the wars fought in the region and they seldom carried contraband of war to belligerents in the region. In the Baltic Sea, the main lines of Swedish and Danish maritime trade were covered by the battle fleets while Russia simply had no significant merchant marine which could be attacked during a trade war.

THE DANISH–NORWEGIAN NAVY

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Danish–Norwegian Navy was competing with the Swedish Navy for the position as the fourth Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

largest navy in Europe, after the three great sea powers England, France and the Netherlands. The navy of the Danish monarchy was a well established and professional service but during the seventeenth century it had been occupied largely with defensive wars against Sweden. Even the very successful naval war of 1675–79 had mainly been fought in the southern Baltic with few attempts to attack Swedish positions in the northern Baltic. During the Great Nordic War (1700–21), Danish admirals and captains were often instructed to avoid combat unless they were superior in strength. This cautious attitude is easy to understand if the important defensive role of the navy is considered. The Danish– Norwegian monarchy could not afford a serious defeat at sea as that might mean a catastrophe. It might risk its army in an invasion of Sweden, as it did in 1709–10 with a serious defeat as a consequence, but the navy was vital for the survival of a state whose territories were connected by water. But in small-scale offensive actions and cautiously planned major operations the Danish Navy often showed its professional skill.13 Denmark–Norway made its last attempt to recover territories earlier lost to Sweden in the years 1709–16. The results of various exhausting naval and military operations in cooperation with Russia, Prussia, Saxony–Poland, Hanover and England were disappointing and after the peace of 1720 the Danish monarchy settled for a defensive foreign policy. The navy, weakened during the war, was rebuilt and maintained as a guarantee against Swedish plans of expansion. Denmark had only one territorial aim left, to strengthen control over the earlier semisovereign duchies in southern Jutland (Holstein and Slesvig). From the 1720s this repeatedly caused conflicts with Russia, where the rulers often protected the interests of the Dukes of Holstein, partly for dynastic reasons and partly to gain political leverage. Czar Peter III, who was also the Duke of Holstein, tried to settle the account by an attack on Denmark during the brief period in 1762 when he ruled Russia. As Denmark had the superior battle fleet the outcome of such a war would have been uncertain. The deposition and death of the czar largely solved the problem as Catherine II made friendly relations and an alliance with Denmark–Norway into a cornerstone of her Baltic policy. Maritime trade flourished and the Danish–Norwegian mercantile marine grew to become one of the largest in Europe. It benefited as a neutral cargo carrier during the great wars between Great Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands. Periodically, the navy provided the mercantile marine with convoy escorts during wars in western Europe. The increasingly severe British attitude towards neutral ships carrying goods to Britain’s enemy became a serious problem in Danish foreign policy as the British government increasingly regarded Denmark– Norway as a silent ally of these enemies and the large Danish battle fleet Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

as a potential threat to British access to the Baltic with its vital export of naval stores. The strategic importance of the navy is reflected in the great efforts that were made throughout the eighteenth century in maintaining it as a strong and creditable force. The battleship force was the centre-piece of Danish naval strategy and its manning was ensured by permanently employed seamen living in Copenhagen and a conscription system which aimed at mobilising the mercantile seamen for the navy. The seafaring population was especially large in Norway and this pool of trained men was the backbone of Danish naval policy. In a defensive foreign policy, reliance upon mercantile seamen normally found in foreign waters or in their homes far from Copenhagen was a structural weakness. A navy organised in that way would take time to mobilise and if attacked by an already mobilised and combat-ready fleet it might be vulnerable. This vulnerability was increased as the naval base in Copenhagen was exposed to bombardment if an enemy was able to occupy the roads outside the city. Swedish offensive planning against Denmark in the latter part of the century was based on a surprise attack with a limited force which should occupy the roadstead and cut off the communications between Norway, Jutland and Copenhagen before the Danish–Norwegian fleet had mobilised. This type of attack was executed with great expertise by the seasoned and well-trained British Navy, first in 1801 (the battle on the roadstead of Copenhagen) and again in 1807 (the capture of the entire Danish–Norwegian fleet). The final catastrophes during the Napoleonic Wars should not hide the fact that the Danish–Norwegian Navy throughout the eighteenth century had been an important part of power politics on the Baltic. During the Great Nordic War it had given a rather small power a considerable leverage in a coalition with several continental powers and the Russian government respected Denmark primarily as a sea power with which it normally preferred to be allied in order to secure its Baltic empire against Sweden. The battle fleet might have played a part in maritime alliances with the great sea powers which fought large wars about the control of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean during the eighteenth century but the Danish government consistently maintained a neutral attitude. Ironically, it was in the end partly the battle fleet that brought war on Denmark–Norway. The British attack on Copenhagen aimed at eliminating it as a potential ally to France. With the battle fleet captured by the British, Denmark and Norway became effectively separated and by 1814 Sweden, as a member of the victorious coalition against Napoleon, could finally implement the old plans of conquering Norway. Unlike Sweden and Russia, Denmark–Norway did not maintain large oared forces in peacetime. During the Great Nordic War such forces Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

were created and used with skill in operations around Pomerania and on the Swedish west coast. During the Napoleonic Wars, when the continental powers began to operate close to the Danish isles, Denmark became interested in creating a large gunboat flotilla for coastal defence. The British capture of the battle fleet in 1807 left the navy with no choice. Only a gunboat force could be built rapidly and the war with England and Sweden in 1807–14 became a gunboat war. Primarily, the gunboats served as deterrents against minor enemy forces which could not operate at will in Danish and Norwegian waters. They could not seriously threaten British trade, nor could they break seriously enforced blockades and major enemy operations. The gunboats did, however, serve a moral purpose as they at least marked a will to resist.14

THE SWEDISH NAVY

The Swedish Navy had been created in the sixteenth century as a defensive force against invasion and blockade and as an offensive force for power projection in the Baltic. From the late seventeenth century it was primarily seen as a defence of the Swedish empire. It had to be able to control the sea lines of communication within the Baltic empire in order to provide quick reinforcements and supply to Swedish provinces and garrisons threatened by sudden attack. One cornerstone of this mobilisation system was the unusual way of manning the navy which remained unchanged up to the advent of steam. Apart from a permanent core of experienced seamen and trained gunners, most of the naval manpower was recruited from the coastal provinces close to Karlskrona. They had to provide the navy with (voluntarily recruited) men who might turn up at short notice in case of an emergency. Most of these men were not experienced seamen (although the navy gave them some training) and they were probably better gun-crews than top-sail men but they gave the Swedish Navy the most rapid mobilisation system in Europe. The same system was used for the oared flotillas based in Stockholm and Sveaborg. There was no system for recruiting or conscripting seamen from the mercantile marine. In spite of that it grew into one of the largest in Europe during the eighteenth century.15 The Swedish Navy emerged from the Great War of 1700–21 seriously weakened. Materially, it recovered in the 1730s, but the Swedish government and armed forces failed to readjust to the new strategic conditions. The navy still regarded Denmark–Norway as the main enemy and plans for army–navy cooperation were inadequate. A considerable galley fleet had been created in the 1710s and it was maintained in Stockholm and Gothenburg after the war but, mentally, the navy had not adapted to the fact that it had an important role to Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

play in amphibious warfare. The war with Russia of 1741–43 revealed these weaknesses. Close strategic and even tactical coordination of the battle fleet, the archipelago fleet and the army had again proved to be the key to Russian victory in Finland. The lesson was there to be learned by Sweden. After the war a determined effort was made to create a large oared flotilla. During the political crisis around Sweden in the late 1740s no fewer than 44 galleys were built and the fortress base of Sveaborg (Suomenlinna) was founded outside Helsinki. Sweden now had enough oared craft to equal the Russians in archipelagic warfare, even when the eastern neighbour was at a high degree of readiness. In practice, the new large oared force meant that a considerable part of the Swedish Army should serve at sea and in the archipelagos during wars. Gradually innovative efforts, from 1760 led by the naval architect Frederick Henrik af Chapman, created new and more efficient types of oared vessels, primarily gunboats. The archipelago fleet was formally transferred to the army from 1756 but in practice it became a third armed force. The development of Sveaborg provided it with an adequate base close to the main operational area. The war of 1788–90 showed that the reforms had worked. The Swedish battle fleet was maintained at a very even level (23–25 battleships) from the 1730s to 1790. Most battleships were built with well-seasoned timber and high-quality iron and enjoyed very long lives, usually with a mid-life great repair. The high age of many ships has often been misinterpreted as a sign of neglect. Actually, the battle fleet was kept in a high or at least adequate state of readiness during most of the eighteenth century.16 Together with the archipelago fleet and the Sveaborg fortress it was also regarded as an important asset in Sweden’s efforts to get foreign subsidies to its armed forces, forces which were very large for a small and not very rich nation. During the eighteenth century, France became the most important supplier of finance and, at least in the 1770s and 1780s, this was primarily spent on the navy. After the severe losses against Russia in 1790 it was planned to rebuild the navy to a force of around 20 battleships with the help of new subsidies, but the times had changed and no Great Power had any interest in creating a strong Swedish battle fleet. During the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain paid subsidies to Sweden but the British were mainly interested in keeping the Swedish Army in shape for Continental warfare. The Swedish battle fleet had to be maintained at a level of around a dozen units and the oared flotilla (cheap to maintain in peacetime) became a relatively more important part of the naval forces. The two navies had by now begun to fight about limited resources, a fight that would be an important part of Swedish naval policy-making for much of the nineteenth century. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

The loss of Finland during the war of 1808–09 again changed the Swedish naval strategy. Sweden had now to cope with a situation where defence against sea-borne invasion from a power with a superior battle fleet was the most likely threat. The union with Norway did not change the basic strategic situation as the Norwegian parliament was not willing to recreate even a small part of the powerful battle fleet which Norway until recently had shared with Denmark.17 Gradually, Sweden– Norway opted for a cautious policy of non-alignment and neutrality. As events during the war period 1801–14 had shown, Scandinavia was now placed between the two superpowers Great Britain and Russia, and this was to mould strategic thinking in the Baltic for much of the nineteenth century.

THE RUSSIAN NAVY

The Russian Navy was a surprising newcomer on the European naval scene in the eighteenth century. Russia had inherently greater resources than the two Nordic states but it had also a wide territory and military commitments and opportunities in several areas. It was far from selfevident that the Baltic navy should have a high priority. After a dramatic growth under Czar Peter I, the Russian battle fleet in the 1720s was of the same size as the French, Dutch, Spanish and Ottoman fleets, partly because the Western navies were unusually small in this period. Only the British Navy was much larger. After the death of the naval-minded czar in 1725 the Russian Navy declined but it recovered as an important force in a Baltic context from the 1740s. From around 1780, Catherine II developed the Russian battle fleet in both the Baltic and the Black Sea into a major European navy, not far below the strength of the French and Spanish battle fleets. In the early nineteenth century, the decline of Spanish sea power made Russia into the third largest naval power in Europe, a position it would hold until the 1860s.18 The first appearance of Russia as a naval power in the Baltic during the Great Nordic War (1700–21) was primarily that of an amphibious galley fleet which made the army mobile in confined waters. Large numbers of oared craft were built quickly when major campaigns were prepared. These vessels were often short-lived and regarded as expendable. The galleys gave the Russian Army a considerable offensive capability in the Baltic. Oared warships could dominate the strategically important archipelago in Finland and if properly protected by sailing warships they could also act as troop carriers across the open sea. Against powers without fleets they could act with considerable freedom. They were used in this way both during the Great Nordic War and the war against Prussia in 1757–62. One large galley could transport Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

200–250 soldiers and some galleys were fitted for the transport of cavalry horses. The nominal strength of the Russian galley fleet allowed it to transport an army of 10,000 to 25,000 men but we do not know if this was its real capability throughout the eighteenth century. Very little research has been done on the eighteenth-century administration of the Russian oared fleet and we know little about its normal degree of readiness. It is clear that the Russian oared flotilla was unprepared for action when Sweden attacked in 1741 and 1788 but in both wars energetic efforts were made to reorganise it as an efficient force. During the war of 1788–90, most of the existing galleys were never used. An entirely new archipelago flotilla with oared frigates and gunboats was built in less than two years to counter similar vessels built by the Swedish Navy. The size and efficiency of the Russian battle fleet very much depended on the extent to which Russian short- and medium-term foreign policy required it. Russia had great resources but no maritime tradition and no mercantile fleet to defend. Originally created as a part of Peter I’s Westernisation project, the battle fleet’s future was in question during the 1730s when the future of Russian policy was uncertain. The battle fleet finally survived as a useful defence force for the new capital St Petersburg and the coast of the new empire in the Baltic (Estonia-Livonia) taken from Sweden in the Great Nordic War. It was successful in this role when Sweden attempted a war of revenge in 1741–43. During the war against Prussia of 1757–62, the Russian battle fleet was almost totally mobilised with 16 to 21 battleships in commission every year. The operations were cautious, with long periods spent in Swedish and Russian ports even during the summers, but the Russians seem to have improved their operational capability during the war. When Russia became involved in war with the Ottoman empire in 1768 a sizeable squadron was sent to the Mediterranean, where it won a victory at the battle of Tchesma in 1770. Around 1780, Catherine II (reigned 1762–96) began a rapid expansion of her battle fleets in the Baltic and the Black Sea. As far as her foreign policy is known, this expansive naval policy was part of its ambitions to dominate the Balkans (the ‘Greek project’) and share the spoils of a supposedly dying Ottoman empire with Austria. The Baltic fleet should primarily act to project power into the Mediterranean or as a deterrent against other Great Powers which might oppose Russian power. The war with Sweden in 1788–90, which was the most spectacular event in the Baltic in the late eighteenth century, was an unintended and irritating sideshow from Catherine’s perspective. From 1793 to 1807, the large Russian battle fleet was used in the Great Power game of Europe. It was mobilised to cover the final division of Poland in 1792–95 and to demonstrate Russian determination to fight the spread Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

of French revolutionary ideas. Deployed to the North Sea and the Mediterranean, it acted as part of the coalition forces against France and at least during certain periods it was a welcome addition to the strength of the British Navy. Lack of bases and experience of longdistance warfare limited its efficiency but the operations showed Russia’s ambitions and organisational capability.19 Russian warships were normally well designed but short lived and often in need of repair. Many of them seem to have been built of pine, fir and larch rather than of oak. A large number of the battleships and frigates of the Baltic navy were actually built at Archangel in the Arctic and it often took years to bring them into the Baltic Sea. Russian gun production seems to have been of good quality and Russia had a very good supply of essential naval stores: masts, spars, hemp and flax. The manning system of the Russian battle fleet was unusual. Officers were to a considerable extent recruited abroad, in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark–Norway, and foreigners often reached flag rank. Most of these foreigners came to Russia as young men and made the Russian Navy their career but during wars experienced foreign officers might also be hired temporarily. The seamen were to a large extent recruited as conscripts from the Russian serfs. As they lacked seagoing experience the Russian Navy had a regular training programme with a yearly training squadron of battleships and frigates. Both the recruitment of foreigners as officers and the use of a peacetime training squadron were almost unique in the eighteenth-century European navies. It was a practical way to overcome the lack of maritime traditions and native sailors and it seems to have created a battle fleet which was adequate for defensive tasks as well as deployments to foreign waters.

THE SWEDISH–RUSSIAN WAR, 1741–43

This war was an ill-prepared Swedish war of revenge against Russia. There has been very little research done on the naval operations but it is fairly obvious that the Swedish naval leadership showed little enthusiasm for a war that was planned by a political faction dominated by younger army officers. Most sea officers were uninterested in a war of revenge or opposed it. The basic Swedish plan of operation was to concentrate the battle fleet, the archipelago fleet and the army in the interior part of the Gulf of Finland for an attack against St Petersburg. Much hope was placed on the domestic political crisis in Russia. The first months of operations in 1741 were inconclusive but Russian naval resistance appeared weak. In St Petersburg, Czar Peter I’s daughter Elisabeth (reigned 1741–62) Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

used the war to seize power and make herself empress. During 1742, the Swedish battle fleet was equal or superior in quantity to the Russian fleet but lacked the will to fight and was severely weakened by illness. The combination of low morale among officers and sickness caused it to retreat from a position close to Kronstadt where it protected the flank of the army. This retreat was not provoked by offensive Russian actions and it was followed by a similar retreat of the army which finally capitulated at Helsinki. The Russian galley fleet was first unprepared for action but it gradually built up considerable strength and could support the advance of the Russian Army. During 1743 the war was mainly naval. The Russian battle fleet avoided action with the Swedish battle fleet but was able to lure it away from Hangö. This enabled the Russian galley fleet to pass this strategically important cape and deploy its strength to western Finland, thus threatening the Stockholm area. The Russian battle fleet was, however, not strong enough to protect it during an offensive in that direction. The main lesson of the war was that Sweden had to re-evaluate its strategy and seriously consider how a war against Russia should be fought. The essentially maritime and amphibious character of such a war was demonstrated for Baltic policy-makers.

THE SEVEN YEARS WAR IN THE BALTIC, 1757–62

This war was unusual as the Russian and Swedish navies cooperated against Prussia, a power that only had an improvised naval force for defence of the Oder estuary and Stettin. Both states joined France, Austria and Saxony in the great coalition against Prussia in 1757. During the war Russia kept a large part of its battle fleet and galley fleet in commission while Sweden limited its naval participation to six battleships and a small oared flotilla. The latter fought the only naval battle during the war when it defeated and captured a Prussian flotilla in 1759, during Sweden’s offensive against the Oder estuary in that year. The main roles of the two allied fleets were to blockade the Prussian coast, support amphibious operations and guard against a possible intervention in the Baltic by the British fleet. That threat was taken seriously as the British Navy gained an increasing superiority in the Atlantic but it never materialised. Great Britain and Prussia were allied against France but Russia, Sweden and Great Britain had no interest in becoming involved in a war with each other and refrained from it. An attempt in early 1759 by French Foreign Minister Choiseul to induce Russia and Sweden to send naval and army forces to take part in the planned French invasion of Great Britain was rejected by both Baltic powers.20 In 1757 the Russian battle fleet and galley fleet took part in the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

conquest of Memel (Klaipeda). During 1759, the Swedish Army and Navy, supported by a part of the Russian fleet, occupied the islands of Usedom and Wollin and took control of the Oder estuary. During 1760 and 1761, the Russian Army and Navy, supported by the Swedish battle squadron attempted to take Kolberg by amphibious landings but both these operations failed. On the Swedish side, the war was fought without enthusiasm and with deliberately limited forces and, while the Russian Army often was successful against its Prussian adversary, the Russian armed forces showed little ability to cooperate in combined operations. Both Russia and Sweden made peace with Prussia in 1762.21

THE SWEDISH–RUSSIAN WAR, 1788–90

This war was unexpected. Russia had grown considerably in strength since the 1740s and was now one of Europe’s leading Great Powers. The Russian battle fleet had grown in experience and size and during the 1780s it had gained a clear numerical superiority over the Swedish fleet. Swedish policy had for a decade been guided by King Gustav III’s interest in conquering Norway by a surprise naval attack on Copenhagen. He had made considerable diplomatic efforts to gain Russian consent to such an action. This type of war had also guided Swedish naval construction policy which had produced a large number of shallow-draught battleships (to attack Copenhagen from the road) and several large frigates (to isolate Denmark from Norway and Zealand from Jutland). A Swedish attack on Russia looked most unlikely both from a political and a military point of view. But Gustav III regarded a successful war as a necessity for his prestige and political power in Sweden and he hoped that Great Britain or Prussia or both would support him if he attacked the growing power of his cousin Catherine. He was very much alone in his willingness to start a war against Russia and during 1788 a large part of the noble army officers openly disobeyed him. They suffered political defeat at a session with the Swedish parliament in early 1789 and the king could continue the war with increased power. In 1787 the Ottoman empire declared war on Russia. Catherine II decided to repeat the deployment of a battle squadron from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, which had been an important part of Russian strategy in the previous Russian–Ottoman war (1768–74). Gustav III decided to use the Russian preoccupation in the south, not for an attack against Denmark–Norway (which had been a realistic if hazardous undertaking), but for an attack against St Petersburg/Kronstadt. Most surprisingly, he did not wait until the well-prepared Russian battle fleet had left for the Mediterranean. He mobilised the Swedish Army, battle Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

fleet and archipelago fleet for a surprise attack. As a surprise, his action was successful. Russia was totally unprepared for a Swedish war, but the Swedish battle fleet ran into the Russian battle fleet in the Gulf of Finland where it was being prepared for the Mediterranean expedition. The two fleets met in a battle which ended in a tactical draw. Strategically, it was a Swedish defeat, as the army could not be landed close to St Petersburg. During 1789 the war went on at a slow pace. The Russian battle fleet controlled the Gulf of Finland as the Swedish fleet was struck by a disastrous epidemic illness. A long-distance battle was fought between the two fleets close to Öland where one of the Swedish squadron commanders showed a lack of willingness to fight. The Russian archipelago fleet gradually built up its strength and was able to defeat its Swedish equivalent at Svensksund (the present-day town of Kotka) but no strategic consequences followed, partly because the Russian army in the area was insufficient for an offensive. In 1790, Gustav III hoped to achieve success by early offensive actions and personally took command of a much strengthened archipelago fleet in which the gunboats were now the main force. He was initially successful, with an attack against a Russian flotilla base at Fredrikshamn (Hamina). He continued eastward to Viborg in the hope of forcing the Russian Army to retreat to St Petersburg, thus leaving the Swedish Army the opportunity to reconquer Finnish territory lost in earlier wars. However, a Swedish battle fleet attack against the Reval squadron in harbour was repulsed with Swedish losses and an attempt to defeat the Russian Kronstadt squadron ended in stalemate. Gustav now ordered the battle fleet to protect the archipelago fleet during its attack on Viborg but this led to a blockade in the Gulf of Viborg of both Swedish fleets by the now concentrated Russian battle fleet and the oared flotilla. After a month, the Swedish battle fleet broke the blockade through a narrow passage but it lost seven battleships during this operation. Both at Reval and at Viborg, the Russian battle fleet had secured victories by forcing the Swedish fleet to fight in confined waters with the Russian fleet at anchor. The Swedish fleet had to pay the price for being used in complicated offensive actions against Russian bases, which was beyond its tactical capability. The Swedish archipelago fleet also retreated from Viborg but took up a defensive position at Svensksund (Kotka). Gustav III was determined to fight a decisive battle and so was the Russian commander. The latter launched a large but badly coordinated attack with exhausted crews and the battle (the second battle of Svensksund on 9 July 1790) ended with catastrophic Russian losses. At least half of the Russian crews were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. After the two battles of Viborg and Svensksund, both sides had expended their resources for offensive actions and were ready for a quick peace. The war had been Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

predominantly maritime and the two archipelago fleets had been built up to major forces of decisive importance. Wars in the Baltic had acquired a special profile in European perspectives.22

THE REVOLUTIONARY AND NAPOLEONIC WARS IN THE BALTIC

The early years of the Revolutionary war did not touch the Baltic. The two Nordic powers created an armed neutrality alliance in 1794 while Russia deployed its battle fleet in the North Sea and the Mediterranean to support coalition operations against France. By 1800, Great Britain had become increasingly annoyed with Danish and Swedish convoys which denied British warships the right of search for contraband of war. A few serious conflicts arose, and in 1800 Britain sent a battle squadron to the Sound which threatened Copenhagen with bombardment. The Danes made certain concessions but at the same time, Russia withdrew from the alliance with Great Britain. Russia declared its willingness to form an armed neutrality alliance with Denmark–Norway and Sweden, similar to that which had been successful from 1780 to 1783.23 But Russia was now actually moving from a neutral position to friendship with France, partly because of the Anglo-Russian conflict about Malta. Potentially, Russian foreign policy might drag the two smaller powers into an anti-British alliance. Great Britain had, after decisive defeats of the French, Spanish and Dutch navies during 1796–98, much greater freedom to act in the Baltic than during the earlier War of American Independence. The British government decided to act immediately before the three Baltic navies had prepared and concentrated a battle fleet. In early spring 1801, a British battle fleet was sent to the Baltic. The three Baltic powers had an agreement to mobilise at least 30 battleships but only Sweden had been able to mobilise its part of this fleet (seven battleships) in time. The Danish fleet had only had time to mobilise its harbour defence forces and the Russian fleet was icebound. Winds hindered the Swedish fleet from leaving Karlskrona in time to support the Danish forces when the British fleet struck its blow on 2 April 1801. After a fierce battle outside Copenhagen the Danish blockships and batteries were eliminated by Nelson’s force and the Danish capital and main naval base were threatened with bombardment. The Danish government signed an armistice. After that Karlskrona was blockaded but not attacked by the British. As Czar Paul I, the driving force behind the pro-French Russian policy, by that time actually had been murdered, the Baltic alliance rapidly disintegrated.24 By 1805, Russia and Sweden were members of a new alliance against France while Denmark–Norway remained neutral. During 1806–07, Austria, Prussia and Russia were forced out of the war by Napoleon’s Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

victories on land while Great Britain had secured firm control of the sea through the victory at Trafalgar in 1805. Great Britain blockaded the French, Spanish and Dutch naval forces while France closed continental ports to British trade. Russia’s withdrawal from the war caused Britain to sequester Russian warships operating outside the Baltic, thus seriously reducing the Russian Baltic fleet. Great Britain was suspicious of Denmark–Norway which was regarded as too weak to resist French pressure – three Great Powers had recently yielded to it. At the same time, Denmark–Norway had a substantial battle fleet with many experienced seamen, which might be of great value to Napoleon. Great Britain could under no circumstances allow this to happen as it might close the Baltic to British trade and the supply of naval stores. The British government decided to make a pre-emptive strike. The Danish Army was concentrated in Jutland to defend the peninsula against France, and the bulk of the fleet was not mobilised as no sea-borne threat was expected. A British battle fleet and an army were sent to Zealand and Copenhagen. The island was isolated and the city was exposed to a disastrous bombardment. The Danes had to surrender the bulk of their fleet to the English in order to secure a temporary armistice and save the capital. Denmark–Norway could no longer control the sea lines of communication between the various parts of the monarchy.25 Some months later, during the winter of 1808, Russia suddenly attacked its former ally Sweden.26 The attack was a part of a French– Russian plan to close the Baltic to the British. For Russia it was also an attempt to secure its northern frontier, which had proven vulnerable in the last war with Sweden. Southern Finland was rapidly overrun by a Russian Army. Swedish defence plans were centred on the Sveaborg fortress and the archipelago fleet which were key instruments in a counter-attack from Sweden when the ice disappeared. Owing to something which may be described as moral exhaustion the commander of the fortress decided to capitulate before help arrived.27 The capitulation also provided the Russians with a substantial oared force. Without a bridgehead in Finland and with a sudden inferiority in archipelago warfare, the Swedish efforts to send help to Finland failed. The Russian battle fleet was seriously decimated by the British sequester of several ships during 1807 but a squadron was sent out from Kronstadt, only to be promptly blockaded in Baltischport by a combined Anglo-Swedish fleet. Its appearance at sea may, however, have made operations for the Russian oared flotilla in Finland easier as the Swedish battle fleet had to be withdrawn from that area in order to blockade Baltischport. In 1809, Sweden made an attempt to gain some last minute advantages at the peace conference by a sea-borne deployment of an army to northern Sweden to cut off a Russian Army which had appeared there. The operation was not successful although the Russian force decided to Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

retreat. A peace was concluded in which Sweden had to accept the loss of Finland which became an autonomous Grand Duchy under the Russian czar. Sweden nominally joined France but trade with Great Britain went on unhindered and Sweden did not interfere with the British naval forces which protected trade in the Baltic. In 1812, Sweden joined Russia and Great Britain in an alliance against France. Naval operations in 1812–14 were uneventful, as the three allied powers had complete control of the Baltic. The chief victim in the area was Denmark–Norway. After the defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig in 1813, Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden. The Norwegians declared independence in 1814 and Sweden invaded Norway over land and in a naval operation along the coast. Peace was rapidly made when the Swedish Crown Prince Karl (XIV) Johan (the former French marshal Bernadotte) agreed to make Norway into a separate kingdom in union with Sweden. NOTES 1. Of recent general works on naval history Richard Harding, Seapower and Naval Warfare, 1650–1830 (London: UCL Press, 1999) treats the Baltic briefly and the Levant hardly at all while Peter Padfield, Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World, 1588–1782 (London: John Murray, 1999) are entirely concentrated on the Atlantic. Clark G. Reynolds, Navies in History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998) has brief but uneven essays about the Baltic. 2. Stewart P. Oakley, War and the Peace in the Baltic, 1560–1790 (London: Routledge, 1992), is a general account of politics and actions with only brief texts about warfare at sea. Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721 (Harlow: Longman, 1999) is a modern study of warfare on land but it is brief and not always reliable about warfare at sea. R. C. Anderson, Naval Wars in the Baltic, 1522–1850 (London: Francis Edwards, 1910, 1969) is strictly limited to events and lacks strategic analysis but it is accurate and reliable about facts. 3. On the Baltic navies in a European perspective, see Jan Glete, Navies and Nations: Warships, Navies and State Building in Europe and America, 1500–1860, 2 vols (Stockholm: AWI, 1993). Information about naval strength in this chapter is drawn from that book. Baltic maritime and political history: Göran Rystad et al. (eds), In Quest of Trade and Security: The Baltic in Power Politics, 1500–1890. I: 1500–1890 (Lund: Lund University Press, 1994), David Kirby and Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen, The Baltic and the North Seas (London: Routledge, 2000). 4. On international politics, see Derek McKay and H. M. Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, 1648–1815 (Harlow: Longman, 1983), Jeremy Black, The Rise of the European Powers, 1679–1793 (London: Edward Arnold, 1990). On Swedish foreign policy, see Olof Jägerskiöld, Den svenska utrikespolitikens historia, II:2, 1721–1792 (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1957), Sten Carlsson and Torvald Höjer, Den svenska utrikespolitikens historia, III:1–2, 1792–1844 (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1954). On Danish foreign policy, see Ole Feldbaek, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

‘Tiden 1720-1814’, in Carsten Due-Nielsen et al. (eds), Dansk Udenrigspolitiks Historie, 2 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2002). Erik Lönnroth, Den stora rollen: Kung Gustaf III spelad av honom själv (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1986). Jan Glete, Kustförsvar och teknisk omvandling: Teknik, doktriner och organisation inom svenskt kustförsvar, 1850–1880 (Stockholm: Militärhistoriska förlaget, 1985). On Baltic strategic condition, see Jan Glete, ‘Bridge and Bulwark: The Swedish Navy and the Baltic, 1500–1809’, in Rystad, In Quest of Trade snd Security, esp. pp. 11–18. Christer Kuvaja, Försörjning av en ockupationsarmé: Den ryska arméns underhållssystem i Finland, 1713–1721 (Åbo: Åbo Akademis förlag, 1999), Martin Hårdstedt, Om krigets förutsättningar: Den militära underhållsproblematiken och det civila samhället i norra Sverige och Finland under finska kriget, 1808–09 (Umeå: Institutionen för historiska studier, Umeå universitet, 2002). Jan Glete, ‘Östersjön som maritimt operationsområde – ett historiskt perspektiv’, Tidskrift i Sjöväsendet (1999), pp. 272–80. An analysis of Baltic amphibious warfare in an earlier period: Jan Glete, ‘Amphibious Warfare in the Baltic, 1550–1700’, in Mark C. Fissel and David Trim (eds), Amphibious Warfare, c. 1050–1725 (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). Jan Glete, ‘1700-talets svenska linjeflotta – en offentlig institution med omställningsproblem’, Historielärarnas Förenings Årsskrift (1990–91), pp. 41–51. The ability of the Russian galley fleet to attack the Swedish coast without support of a superior battle fleet is often misunderstood and overestimated: see for example, Oakley, War and the Peace, p. 125; Frost, The Northern Wars, p. 317 and Edward J. Phillips, The Founding of Russia’s Navy: Peter the Great and the Azov Fleet, 1688–1714 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), p. 124. The only successful galley raid against central Sweden occurred during a few weeks in 1719 when the Swedish battle fleet was at Karlskrona, observing the Danish and British battle fleets, whose intentions were uncertain and mistakenly regarded as more threatening than the Russian fleet. The British fleet had been openly hostile to Sweden since 1716 and was regarded as the main naval threat, while the Russians had been largely inactive in the war after 1716. Pertti Luntinen, The Imperial Russian Army and Navy in Finland, 1808–1918 (Helsinki: SHS, 1997). On the Danish–Norwegian navy, see source publication and fleet list: H. G. Garde, Efterretninger om den danske og norske sømagt, 4 vols (Copenhagen: 1832–35). General: R. Steen Steensen (ed.), Flåden gennem 475 år, 2 vols (Copenhagen: Martin, 1974), Ole L. Frantzen, Truslen fra øst: Dansk-norsk flådepolitik, 1769–1807 (Copenhagen: Marinehistorisk Selskab, 1980), Olav Bergersen, Nøytralitet og krig: Fra Nordens væpnede nøytralitets saga, 2 vols (Oslo: Tveitan, 1966). On the navy in Norway, see Fredrik Beutlich, Norges sjøvæbning, 1750–1814 (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1935–40). On warships, artillery and the naval dockyard, see Hans Chr. Bjerg and John Eriksen, Danske orlogsskibe, 1690–1860: Konstruktion og dekoration (Copenhagen: Lademann, 1977), Egon Eriksen and Ole L. Frantzen, Dansk artilleri i Napoleonstiden: Forudsætninger og udvikling, 1766–1814 (Copenhagen: Töjhusmuseet, 1988), Skipsbygning og Maskinvæsen ved Orlogsværftet på Nyholm, Frederiksholm og Dokøen gennem 250 år, 1692–1942 (Copenhagen: Centraltrykkeriet, 1942). Birger E. Thomsen, ‘De Dansk-Norske kanonbåde, 1780–1850’, Marinehistorisk Tidskrift, 8 (1975), pp. 56–83, 10 (1977), pp. 98–115.

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15. On the Swedish navy, see Svenska flottans historia, vol. 2, 1680–1814 (Malmö: Allhem, 1943). Naval administration: Amiralitetskollegiets historia, vols 2–3, 1696–1877 (Malmö: Allhem, 1974–77). On the archipelago flotilla, see Oscar Nikula, Svenska skärgårdsflottan, 1756–1791 (Helsingfors: Samfundet Ehrensvärd Seura, 1933), Hans Norman (ed.), Skärgårdsflottan: Uppbygnad, militär användning och förankring i det svenska samhället, 1700–1814 (Lund: Historiska Media, 2000). On the navy on the west coast, see Ernst Bergman, Göteborgs eskader och örlogsstation, 1523–1870 (Gothenburg: Försvarstaben, Krigshistoriska avdelningen, 1949). On warships and shipbuilding, see G. Halldin (ed.), Svenskt skeppsbyggeri: En översikt av utvecklingen genom tiderna (Malmö: Allhem, 1963), Daniel Harris, Fredrik Henrik af Chapman: The First Naval Architect and his Work (London: Conway, 1989), Erik Norberg (ed.), Karlskronavarvets historia, vol. 1, 1680–1866 (by Lars Ericson, Lars O. Berg and Jan Glete) (Karlskrona: Karlskronavarvet, 1993). On defence policy, see Jean Häggman, Studier i Frihetstidens försvarspolitik: Ett bidrag till Sveriges inre historia, 1721–1727 (Stockholm: Nordiska Bokhandeln, 1922), Leif Dannert, Svensk försvarspolitik, 1743–1757 (Uppsala: Appelberg, 1943). The present author has attempted to give new perspectives in Jan Glete, ‘En styrka mest på papperet? Historiografiska synpunkter på 1700-talets svenska linjeflotta’, in Studier i modern historia tillägnade Jarl Torbacke den 18 augusti 1990 (Stockholm: Militärhistorska förlaget, 1990), pp. 97–112. 16. Jan Glete, ‘Den svenska linjeflottan, 1721–1860: En översikt av dess struktur och storlek samt några synpunkter på behovet av ytterligare forskning’, Forum navale, 45 (1990), pp. 9–68. 17. Roald Berg, Profesjon–union–nasjon, 1814–1905, vol. II of Norsk forsvarshistorie, (Bergen: Eide, 2001). 18. On the Russian navy, see published sources: Materialy dlja istorii russkago flota, 17 vols (St Petersburg: Morskago Ministerstva, 1865–1904). For the ship-list, see Feodor F. Veselago, Spisok russkich voennych sudov, 1668–1860 (St Petersburg: Morskago Ministerstva, 1872). In general, see Feodor F. Veselago, Kratkaja istoria russkogo flota, 2 vols (St Petersburg, Morskago Ministerstva, 1893–95), L. G. Beskrovnyj, Russkaja armija i flot v XVIII veke (ocherki) (Moscow: Voennoe Izdatelstvo Ministerstva Oborony SSSR, 1958) and L. G. Beskrovnyj, Russkaja armija i flot v XIX veke: voennoekonomicheskij potentsial Rossii (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Nauk, 1973), Norman E. Saul, ‘The Russian Navy 1682–1854: Some Suggestions for Future Study’, in Craig L. Symonds (ed.), New Aspects on Naval History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1981). On British officers and shipbuilders in Russia, see Anthony Cross, By the Banks of the Neva: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in EighteenthCentury Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 159–223. On policy and naval operations: Andreas Bode, Die Flottenpolitik Katharinas II und die Konflikte mit Schweden und der Türkei (1768–1792) (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1979). 19. Norman E. Saul, Russia and the Mediterranean, 1797–1807 (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1970). 20. Jägerskiöld, Den svenska utrikespolitikens historia, pp. 207–09. 21. Anderson, Naval Wars in the Baltic, pp. 222–33. 22. On the Swedish–Russian war of 1788–90, see V. F. Golovatjev, Dejstvija russkago flota vo vremja vojny Rossii so Sjvetsiej v 1788–1790 godach, 2 vols (St Petersburg: 1871–73), Arnold Munthe, Svenska sjöhjältar VI: Henrik af Trolle, Fredrik af Chapman, Otto Henrik Nordenskjöld, Gustaf III, politiken och flottan, 1772–1784 (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1911), Arnold Munthe, Svenska Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

sjöhjältar VII, vols 1–6: Flottan och ryska kriget 1788–1790. Otto Henrik Nordenskjöld (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1914–23), Svensksund 1790–1940 (Stockholm: Sveriges Flotta, 1940), Jan Glete, ‘Kriget till sjöss 1788–1790’, Gunnar Artéus (ed.), Gustav III:s ryska krig (Stockholm: Probus, 1992), pp. 110–74, Stig Jägerskiöld, Svensksund: Gustaf III:s krig och skärgårdsflottan, 1788–1790 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1990). For texts in English about this war, see The War of King Gustavus III and Naval Battles of Ruotsinsalmi: VIII International Baltic Seminar, 5–7 July 1990 (Kotka: Provincial Museum of Kymenlaakso, 1993). Isabel de Madariaga, Britain, Russia and the Armed Neutrality of 1780 (London: Hollis & Carter, 1963). Ole Feldbæk, Denmark and the Armed Neutrality, 1800–1801: Small Power Policy in a World War (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1980), Ole Feldbæk, The Battle of Copenhagen 1801: Nelson and the Danes (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2002). For the Swedish navy in 1801, see Wilhelm Odelberg, Viceamiral Carl Olof Cronstedt (Södertälje: Söderströms, 1954). Anthony N. Ryan, ‘The Causes of the British Attack upon Copenhagen in 1807’, English Historical Review, 68 (1953), pp. 36–55. Generalstaben, Sveriges krig åren 1808 och 1809, 9 vols (Stockholm: Generalstaben. Krigshistoriska avdelningen, 1890–1922) is a detailed study of the war of 1808–09. Odelberg, Viceamiral Carl Olof Cronstedt.

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Part III: Secondary Navies with Potential and Aspirations, 1850–1918

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5

Prussia, Germany and Maritime Law from Armed Neutrality to Unlimited Submarine Warfare, 1780–1917 ROLF HOBSON

The most interesting fact about the history of Prussia’s and the other German states’ attitude to maritime law is that so little has been written about it. That is to say, there was a certain amount of interest in the subject during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century – a topical, public debate which also generated some good historical studies based on archival material – but after the founding of the German empire in 1871, scholarly interest waned, and for the past 100 years hardly anything has been published on the subject.1 There is one simple explanation for this historiographical fact. It could be called the ‘disinvention of tradition’ and is a by-product of the navalist propaganda of the Tirpitz era. The navalist interpretation of history, which served the Reichsmarineamt in its campaigns to further the construction of a modern battle fleet after 1897, made frequent reference to the ‘lessons of history’ and was quite inventive in rediscovering those maritime aspects of Prussian and German history which underlined the need for Seegeltung. The decline of the German Hanse was bemoaned, and Prussia’s fitful attempts to create a navy and an overseas colonial empire in the early eighteenth century were portrayed as bold initiatives which could have turned it into a world power. But Wilhelmine navalism had no interest in reviving the traditions associated with Prussia’s participation in the League of Armed Neutrality, its treaty of 1785 with the United States and the diplomatic line in relation to maritime law that was consistently followed by Prussia and its successor states until the early twentieth century.2 Indeed, it was Alfred Tirpitz himself who against the opposition of all other Reich offices brought about the decisive breach with traditional policy on maritime law Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

during the first decade of the twentieth century. The reason for this disinvention of tradition can be found in the difference of world view between, on the one hand, a continental state weak at sea, and, on the other, an aspiring imperialist power seeking to become one of the leading global power-brokers. To put it at its simplest, the lesson that could be drawn from Prussia’s and Germany’s traditional maritime policy was that a weak naval power could protect its trading interests by cooperating with other powers in a similar situation. The new principle that Tirpitz wanted to impress on the public mind, and read into history, was that only the naval force at the individual state’s disposal could protect its interests; his planned ‘risk fleet’ was to provide security for German overseas interests by itself, not as a partner in a maritime coalition, by deterring even Britain from seeking to eliminate its rival in a preventive mercantilistic war.3 Navalist propaganda deliberately ignored those aspects of Prussia’s maritime history which did not suit its agenda, and as a consequence historians have since lost sight of them. As a result, no modern studies based on archival sources exist, which makes it a daunting task to recreate the long-term continuities in the policies of Prussia, Hamburg, Bremen, the German Confederation, the empire, Bismarck and the Foreign Office – to name but some of the most important influences. A second reason for the lack of interest in the topic after 1871 has to do with the evolution of German liberalism. Prior to the founding of the empire a number of well-researched historical studies with a topical approach were published in Germany. Several of the authors were based in Hamburg and Bremen and were active in the liberal movement for national unification. They proudly identified Prussia’s attitude to maritime law, and its cooperation in this field with the United States, with the forward march of progress and humanity, and they advocated policies which would continue these traditions.4 The liberal and Prussian traditions first fused in 1848 when the Frankfurt Parliament decided to create the first German Navy and charged Prince Adalbert of Prussia with outlining its possible tasks and composition. Despite the setbacks and restarts that followed, a case can be made for seeing an underlying continuity in the objectives of German naval policy over the following 50 years: a respectable, secondary navy would cooperate with other, similarly placed maritime states in maintaining a balance of power to protect against the abuse of predominant sea power, and as a corollary, diplomacy should work to strengthen maritime law, extending neutral and curtailing belligerent rights such as the rights of search and capture, blockade and contraband. Resurrecting that tradition, however, implies clearing away the superimposed interpretations of navalist propaganda. When German national liberalism from the 1880s onwards actively supported Bismarck’s more oppressive policies, and Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

especially his imperialism, it became more susceptible to navalist arguments and lost sight of its own traditions.5 Because of the lack of modern studies the first half of this story can be covered only patchily, and I can present at best some hypotheses to test in broader-based archival research. It may well be that the most important step towards identifying and reevaluating these topics is to shift perspectives away from the legacy of Tirpitz and to study the period from Frederick the Great to Reich Chancellor Caprivi without reference to what followed.

MARITIME WEAKNESS AND COOPERATIVE SECURITY

How does a state with no navy protect its exposed maritime interests, especially when as a neutral its merchants seek to profit from other states’ wars? This was a question with which Frederick the Great was well acquainted almost from the beginning of his reign.6 During the 1740s Stettin merchants and ship-owners suffered heavy losses as a result of the Royal Navy’s interference with their trade that, it was claimed, was benefiting Britain’s enemies. The protests of the Prussian ambassador to London did not bring redress and a public controversy ensued in which both sides published their arguments and appealed to international opinion. Frederick backed up his argument by retaliating in the only manner he could. He refused, until the matter was resolved, to honour the debt of Silesia to British financiers, a commitment he had accepted after conquering the province in 1740. An arrangement was eventually arrived at in 1753. Soon after he became Britain’s subsidised ally during the Seven Years War, but London’s abandonment of Prussia towards the end of that conflict increased the king’s resentment of British high-handedness. He was also aware over the following years that enlightened opinion across the Continent supported the demand for ‘freedom of the seas’, which in effect meant revising centuries-old principles of maritime law and curtailing Britain’s predominant sea power. The opportunity to do so arrived some 15 years later during the American War of Independence.7 Surprisingly for an absolutist monarch, Frederick sympathised with the rebel colonies – at least to the extent of not calling them rebels, although he did not grant them the diplomatic recognition that their emissaries in Europe hoped for.8 The most important and novel aspect of this conflict arose when France intervened on the side of the colonists and declared war on Britain. The French Navy had been considerably strengthened since the Seven Years War, whereas the Royal Navy was relatively weaker. But it was not this shift in the balance of power at sea so much as the fact that France for Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the first time was not involved in a simultaneous war on the Continent that opened up new possibilities for the secondary maritime powers. With the danger of a French hegemony removed they could concentrate on defending their own interests against British pretensions, and they were actively encouraged to do so. Frederick believed that the British government had lately taken leave of its senses. He resented, among other things, Britain’s ‘sotte vanité, ignorance des intérêts et des forces des puissances de l’Europe, orgeuil de porter seule le trident de Neptune, mépris des autres nations’.9 Who had given Britain the right to prey on neutral commerce, he demanded: ‘C’est comme si une bande de voleurs se croyait autorisée de dépouiller et d’assassiner impunément tous ceux qui voyagent sur les grands chemins.’10 He early recognised that Britain’s attempt to erect a maritime despotism would cause powers like Holland and Denmark to combine to command respect for their commerce.11 The general association proposed by Russia, he rejoiced, would finally establish justice on the oceans.12 The events leading up to Catherine the Great’s call for a League of Armed Neutrality in 1780 have been covered in many studies,13 so for present purposes it might be interesting to add a footnote regarding the provenance of the scheme. In nineteenth-century German literature it is claimed that Russian policy was influenced by projects being discussed in the Patriotische Gesellschaft in Hamburg – a gathering of liberals and republicans sympathetic to the colonists’ cause and well informed about American affairs because of trading links across the Atlantic. They were apparently brought to the attention of the Czarina by the Russian representative to the Hanseatic cities who had connections in high places in St Petersburg.14 This may be a flattering legend of German liberalism, but it does say something about the traditions that it sought to uphold. Despite not having a navy, Prussia was eventually invited to join the league.15 The prestige of Frederick’s Prussia was regarded as an asset by the other members, and they were willing to extend the protection of their naval forces to vessels flying its flag. Frederick’s initial reserve was due to his unwillingness to pay any kind of subsidy to support the scheme, but when it became clear that Prussian merchants would benefit from protection without the Prussian state having to incur any obligations beyond diplomatic support, he gave his assent. He was interested also in strengthening his ties to St Petersburg to prevent it moving closer to Austria, but it is clear that his long-held support for ‘free ships, free goods’ and resentment over British maritime dominance were important motives. Prussia’s participation was so successful that Dutch merchants applied for citizenship in Prussian ports so as to avoid confiscation by the Royal Navy after war broke out between Britain and the United Provinces. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Faced with a strong French Navy and the resolution of the members of the League of Armed Neutrality, Britain for the first time had been forced to concede the principle of ‘free ships, free goods’. Enlightened opinion celebrated the event as a further step towards emancipation from tyranny at home and on the high seas. But the principle was not to survive the French Revolutionary wars. In 1793 Jacobin France reversed its traditional policy of encouraging neutrals to pick up the trade it did not have the naval force to protect. And it was the threat of French expansionism on the Continent which finally made it impossible for the neutrals to cooperate in the defence of their interests. Neutrality ceased to be a viable option in the struggle between Napoleon’s hegemony on the Continent and Britain’s command of the seas. Prussia tried to stay neutral in the decade after 1795 but was eventually crushed by Napoleon in 1806. It ceased in effect to be an independent great power and its trade policy was integrated into the Continental System. From late 1800 Prussia did take part in the efforts to organise the second, short-lived League of Armed Neutrality together with Sweden, Denmark and Russia.16 Continental considerations, especially relations with France and Russia, were important to Berlin, but the protection of Prussian commerce also carried much weight. Since it had no warships to add to the League’s combined force, Prussia’s means of exerting pressure on Britain was to close the mouths of the Ems, the Oder and the Vistula to trade with Britain. Furthermore, by threatening to occupy Hanover (the elector of which was King George III of Britain), it could hold out the prospect of controlling access to trade with Germany on the two remaining major rivers, the Elbe and the Weser. The Armed Neutrality itself fell apart in March/April 1801 after the assassination of Czar Paul I and the Royal Navy’s attack on Copenhagen; but at the same time Prussia carried out its threat and occupied Hanover. After the preliminary peace between Britain and France six months later, however, the occupation lost much of its leverage and Prussia decided to withdraw.

WORKING TOWARDS IMMUNITY

All this occurred long after Frederick’s death in 1786. But the year before he had restated his support for the principle of freedom of the seas in its most radical formulation. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1785 between His Majesty the King of Prussia and the United States of America was the first treaty entered into by the newly independent United States in peacetime and defined relations between the two countries for decades. It was renewed in 1799 (with modifications) and in 1828.17 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

When it was first signed it was regarded as a momentous event by contemporaries: enlightened absolutism and republicanism had together taken the first step towards the humanisation of war at sea. Prussia was the only state fully to support the American demand for what was in effect the immunity of private property at sea, as it was defined in Article 23, written by Benjamin Franklin. It also abolished privateering (the only eighteenth-century treaty to do so) although this provision was not renewed in 1799. In 1786 George Washington wrote that the Treaty of Amity marks a new era in negotiation. It is perfectly original in many of its articles. It is the most liberal treaty which has ever been entered into between independent Powers; and should its principles be considered hereafter as the basis of connection between nations, it will operate more fully to produce a general pacification than any measure hitherto attempted amongst mankind.18

The renewed treaty of 1828 with Prussia was the last containing provisions relating to neutral commerce to be concluded by the United States with a European power for 28 years.19 (The provisional central government of Germany did propose, in October 1848, to replace the existing bilateral trade treaties between the United States and individual German states with one for the prospective national state; the draft stated that the two powers would work together to extend the protection of neutral and belligerent commerce, but this treaty could not be signed once the provisional government had collapsed).20 During the 1850s and 1860s, though, several initiatives on the part of the US government and various German states sought further to limit belligerent rights in different ways which reflected the economic and strategic interests of the individual states. The task was to get a principle which was unproblematic in a bilateral treaty accepted in a multilateral treaty that must include Britain if it was to become a reality in international law. The ideological climate was very different to that of the turn of the century. Even in Britain free trade doctrinaires were challenging the traditional claim that naval supremacy and extensive belligerent rights were the best guarantees of national security.21 Liberal public opinion was also a force to be reckoned with within Germany, and pressure groups such as chambers of commerce organised effective campaigns to influence government policy. Since these forces were very much involved in the revived movement for national unification which became a focus for bourgeois political attention from the late 1850s, demands for the liberalisation of maritime law and a national navy became part of the broad movement for progressive reform.22 One influential publicist who had touched on these subjects a decade Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

earlier was the economist Friedrich List, who knew the United States better than most Germans of the day.23 He died in 1846, so his projects can be seen as an illustration of the terms in which the debate was couched before the Revolution of 1848 and the Crimean War made the redrawing of the map of central Europe a matter of immediate, practical politics. In his influential study of The National System of Political Economy, List wanted to see the Hanseatic states join the German customs union as a further step towards national unity, the creation of a confederate fleet to protect trade and the acquisition of overseas colonies to absorb Germany’s excess population and provide it with outlets for its trade. He even proposed to integrate Holland and Belgium into a German state so as to increase the weight of its sea power vis-à-vis Britain. These demands have been interpreted as a first step towards Greater German annexationism, imperialism, navalism and neo-mercantilism.24 However, the second half of List’s programme shows how different it was from Tirpitz’s navalism half a century later. He wanted a strong German Navy to protect exposed national trading interests against the abuse of Britain’s predominant sea power. But, crucially, this was to be achieved by creating a balance of power in cooperation with other secondary maritime powers: ‘the maintenance of the European balance has always been nothing other than the attempt by the less powerful to oppose the abuse [Umgriffen] of the too-powerful’.25 Napoleon had failed in his attempt to unite Europe against Britain because the fear of being conquered by the predominant land power far outweighed the inconveniences the other states experienced at the hands of the predominant sea power. All smaller sea powers shared an interest in creating a countervailing power to that of Britain and hence also in the maintenance and prosperity of each others’ sea power. A continental alliance of smaller sea powers would share common interests with the United States in keeping open access to markets outside Europe, in promoting the fundamental principle that ‘free ships make free goods’ and in sharply limiting the legality of blockade.26 Towards the end of his life List changed the anti-British orientation of this programme. He predicted that the growing power of the United States would eventually force Britain into coalition with a united Europe to protect its security. More immediate concern over the prospect of war in Europe led him to promote an Anglo-German alliance.27 His suicide in 1846 may have been related to the failure of this, his new-found mission. In any case, when German liberalism was first confronted with the practicalities of national unification two years later, the establishment of a German navy was high on its agenda, and not merely because of the humiliating superiority of the Danish fleet during the Schleswig-Holstein conflict. Rather than interpreting this Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

aspiration as a first step on the road to world power, it should be seen in the context of List’s programme as a desire to become ‘alliance worthy’ within a coalition of secondary maritime powers committed to upholding ‘freedom of the seas’ against overweening British pretensions. The United States was seen as a natural ally in the attempts further to liberalize the laws of war at sea, both before and after the Declaration of Paris in 1856. In Germany the independent Hanseatic states Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen were especially active, from the late 1850s, in trying to mobilise opinion, and for obvious reasons: they depended to a very great extent on commerce, yet had no naval force of their own to protect it. It is not clear to what extent individual states sought to coordinate these aspects of national defence policy within the institutions of the German Confederation.28 It seems unlikely that it played much of a role: it was a weak vessel in foreign policy due to the conflicting interests of the various (German and non-German) rulers represented within its organs: Austro-Prussian rivalry over the national question was making cooperation increasingly difficult, and in any case it had no navy to back up its diplomatic position – if it could arrive at one. It did, however, accede to the Declaration of Paris as a legal subject in its own right. Therefore the Hanseatic states and liberal opinion concentrated on mobilising Prussia’s support for further limitations on belligerent rights. Its agreement with the radical American position since 1785 was well known and repeatedly referred to as a first important step in the progression from barbarism to humanity. The Declaration of Paris in 1856 was hailed as a further step down that road, and publicists believed that the time had now come for Prussia and the United States to combine in one further effort to secure the immunity of private property, at least on the high seas. In 1854 the US government proposed that the rules guiding the Western powers’ war at sea against Russia should be turned into a principle of international law equally binding in future conflicts, i.e. that in addition to the neutral flag covering the goods carried in a vessel, neutral goods on enemy ships should be immune from capture (excepting contraband).29 Prussia replied approvingly, but suggested that privateering should also be abolished.30 The United States would only agree to this in exchange for the complete immunity of private property on the high seas: enemy goods on enemy ships would also become immune, with the exception of tightly defined contraband (thus effectively leaving blockade as the only important belligerent right). When invited to accede to the Declaration of Paris two years later, the United States responded with the so-called Marcy amendment, restating its position on privateering, and held aloof.31 The Prussian plenipotentiary who signed the Declaration stated that these principles ‘ont toujours été Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

professés par la Prusse’;32 but Russia, Prussia and Bremen supported the Marcy amendment on condition that it be adopted by all the major sea powers. This was to prove the diplomatic sticking point, and a concerted campaign mounted by chambers of commerce in innumerable states, including Britain, sought to create a groundswell in public opinion which could overcome resistance to this important extension of liberal and humanitarian principles. The smaller German states put their hopes in a Prussian initiative. The resident minister of the Hanseatic cities in Berlin wrote a memorandum for the Prussian Foreign Ministry outlining the common interests of the German and other secondary maritime powers. After discussing the Declaration of Paris and the Marcy amendment, Dr Geffken asked whether it would be to the advantage of the German states to support the American demand for the immunity of private property at sea: il s’agit de savoir si l’adoption de leur amendment ne serait pas infiniment avantageux surtout pour les nations qui ont de grands intérêts commerciaux sans être à-même de les protéger par une puissante marine, et nous croyons que la réponse doit être affirmative. Dans ce cas se trouve avant tous l’Allemagne, notamment la Prusse et les Villes Anseatiques dont les bâtiments nombreux seraient sans défense dans une guerre avec une puissance maritime.33

Britain was the only major power opposed to this reform, he went on to say, but even it must soon realise that it must choose between being mistress of the seas, as it had been during the Napoleonic Wars, or desiring the immunity of private property in its own interest. The first option was no longer possible given that the Royal Navy might well be faced by an equal, or even superior, coalition of Russia and France, perhaps joined by the United States or Spain. And the second was much more necessary, given the vastly increased dependence of the British Isles on overseas trade. In addition, railways were diminishing the effect that offensive commercial warfare by predominant sea power could have on continental states. Foreign Minister Schleinitz did not want Prussia to take the diplomatic initiative, but quietly asked Holland to propose that maritime law should be among the subjects to be discussed at a congress which was expected to convene in 1860 over the Italian question. The congress did not come about, and there was hence no opportunity for the secondary maritime powers to coordinate demands for further reform. Public opinion kept up pressure on governments, but from the German point of view it became problematic that the United States moved further away from a common position. In 1860 President Buchanan would only Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

contemplate the abolition of privateering in exchange for, not merely the abolition of the right of capture, but also the limitation of blockade to fortified cities and the restriction of its remit to the confiscation of contraband, or even the abolition of blockade itself.34 This position was not maintained for long. During the Civil War the Union government, much to Prussia’s satisfaction, accepted the Declaration of Paris (so as to legitimise its blockade of southern ports and outlaw Confederate commerce raiding).35 However, the possibility of a future conflict with Britain held Washington back from officially giving up privateering. It never signed the Declaration, and the hopedfor immunity of private property on the high seas never came about. Yet the positions of Prussia, subsequently the North German Confederation, and then the German empire, remained the same: close enough to the American for bilateral agreement but not close enough for a coordinated diplomatic effort to change international law. In 1870, as war with France loomed, the North German Confederation restated the principle ‘that private property on the high seas will be exempt from seizure by the ships of His Majesty the King of Prussia, without regard to reciprocity’. And Berlin took its commitments seriously, as is illustrated by the fact that very restrictive definitions of belligerent rights were written into the Prussian Landrecht. The German position so pleased the US government that it proposed to write the principle of freedom from capture (even by privateers) into a treaty then being discussed between Washington and newly formed German Confederation.36 Shortly after, the Confederation became the empire, and these principles were to remain in force between the two countries until 1917.

CREATING A NAVY TO SUIT THE TASK

The German Confederation had no naval element in its military institutions. The small Prussian Navy founded in 1814 was the only force in northern waters during the first half of the nineteenth century. The provisional government that was formed by the Paulskirche Parliament in Frankfurt after the 1848 Revolution set up a committee charged with creating a federal fleet. The Prussian Prince Adalbert drew up a memorandum outlining the necessary size of a German navy depending on which tasks it was to be assigned. Of the third, most ambitious option – an independent, sea-going fleet of 20 ships-of-the-line – he wrote that it would make Germany the fourth largest sea power in Europe. It could hence play a role worthy of its position; by throwing its weight into the scales it could tip them decisively in favour of the alliance it chose to join. This would make its sea power as attractive an alliance partner as its land power.37 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

This attempt to build a national fleet for Germany disappeared with the Frankfurt Parliament. There was a short-lived initiative which aimed to provide the revived Confederation with a naval element, but by 1852 it had fallen apart.38 Germany did not have a national navy until the Prussian fleet became the foundation of the unitary navy written into the constitution of the North German Federation in 1867. It and the Reichstag were the only truly national institutions of the empire founded in 1871. Nevertheless, there was a continuity and a coherence in naval efforts subsequent to 1848 which ran through Prussia’s various programmes and on into the empire. The objective of constructing a respectable secondary navy and thus becoming ‘alliance-worthy’ with other powers was to remain a constant over the following half century. It was in tune with the diplomatic position these states held on maritime law. The search for security for exposed economic interests within the maritime balance and the complementary efforts to strengthen neutral rights and limit those of belligerents was a tradition which ran back to Frederick the Great and had culminated in the reform movement of the 1860s. Subsequently, for most of the empire’s history, diplomacy remained wedded to upholding the Declaration of Paris. When the opportunity arose to discuss maritime law in the run-up to the second Hague Peace Conference in 1907, several Reich ministries were in favour of further reform in line with this tradition, but at this point their efforts were torpedoed by Tirpitz who sought to maintain extensive belligerent rights. What was new in the second half of the nineteenth century was the recognition of the need for a measure of sea power sufficient to back up diplomacy. The various federal, Prussian, North German and Imperial naval programmes presented between 1848 and Tirpitz’s first naval law of 1898 can be seen as attempts to provide a force which could play an active role within the maritime balance and thus underpin the diplomatic position on maritime law. This coherence was broken from the turn of the century when Tirpitz reoriented naval policy towards the creation of a deterrent ‘risk fleet’ exclusively directed against Britain and adopted a position on maritime law more suited to a superior than a secondary sea power. It is not necessary here to go into the details of German naval policy during these decades as it has been covered in several studies based on extensive archival research.39 Rather, I shall try to delineate the elements of diplomatic continuity in Germany’s position on maritime law and the understanding of the role of the navy within the maritime balance with which it was linked. It seems likely that one element of continuity could be found in the collective memory of the bureaucracies involved, but they have not left much of a paper trail, and there are no historical Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

studies of the subject.40 For the first quarter-century of the empire’s existence, however, there did exist a degree of relative coherence in national security policy due to the clear priorities set by its first two chancellors, Otto von Bismarck and Leo von Caprivi. Both had an understanding of the navy’s limited but necessary role in national defence in a war with continental enemies. The former understood very well the traditional role of secondary navies within the maritime balance and the need for cooperation against overweening British pretensions. The latter was aware that industrialisation and economic specialisation had made Germany more vulnerable to the interdiction of strategic raw materials during a long-drawn-out war and he sought to develop a blockade-breaking battle fleet to counter this threat. He also understood the importance of the Declaration of Paris to German national security, though he was exceedingly pessimistic as to whether it would be upheld in future wars. Bismarck regarded continuity in the Prussian tradition as directly relevant to the national security problems facing the German empire a century later. In a conversation with the French ambassador in 1884 he referred to the eighteenth-century League of Armed Neutrality as a relevant precedent and proposed to establish a maritime equilibrium with France. He wanted Britain to understand that if the navies of the other nations joined forces, they would present a counterweight to it on the ocean and force it to take account of the interests of others … this cooperation among the secondary navies, grouped around France to resist the preponderance of the British navy, is a traditional part of your policy.41

A few months later he told the Reichstag that it was the maritime balance which would protect exposed German interests overseas against attack by Britain – and not a giant German fleet.42 His successor Caprivi took greater account of Germany’s new economic vulnerability and was concerned as to whether a German battle fleet or the Declaration of Paris could provide protection against the threat of blockade. Both were necessary, but he doubted whether they would provide sufficient security, and the eventual solution he found to this dilemma was to seek a close diplomatic relationship with Britain, which he recognised would provide the key to holding open sea lanes in a protracted war.43 A third representative of this traditional, Prussian, conservative approach to the dilemmas of maritime security can be found in Germany’s leading naval theorist and publicist during the first quartercentury of the Reich’s existence, Kapitän zur See Alfred Stenzel – the ‘German Mahan’ as he was admiringly referred to by later generations. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Less pessimistic than Caprivi, he believed that the neutral maritime powers, especially Britain and the United States would share an important interest in upholding the Declaration of Paris and keeping open trading links with Germany if it were involved in a continental war.44 It must be stressed that no reference to Prussia’s historical experience in this area was ever made by anyone in the succeeding generation of Wilhelmine decision-makers, and the understanding of maritime security being linked to the maritime balance was to disappear with the rise of Weltpolitik and German navalism in the second half of the 1890s. With regard to the size of the projected battle fleet, Tirpitz’s first Navy Law of 1898 stayed within the objectives of the Prusso-German tradition. Officially the Reichsmarineamt restated the traditional aim of naval policy – to recreate a secondary navy that would make Germany ‘alliance worthy’ with other similar powers, without being able to take on a great naval force on its own. What did change radically with the advent of Tirpitz, however, were the intentions behind the naval buildup and the strategic rationale upon which it was based.45 Tirpitz developed an understanding of sea power, or Seegeltung, that effectively removed it from the workings of the maritime balance. He believed that a battle fleet exerted a deterrent force on its own which could, in effect, provide absolute protection for exposed overseas interests. In his calculation, a ‘risk fleet’ two-thirds the size of the Royal Navy would be sufficiently strong to deter the latter from launching a mercantilistic, preventive war on its rival across the North Sea. Upon this secure deterrent foundation the world empire of Greater Germany could rise to become one of the four global powers of the twentieth century. Tirpitz had no use for ‘alliance-worthiness’ with other powers and ignored the workings of the maritime balance of power. His second Navy Law of 1900 doubled the size of the projected fleet to around 60 capital ships; this growing force was to underpin Chancellor Bülow’s diplomatic policy of the ‘free hand’ with regard to all other Great Powers. Despite his abiding interest in Fredrick the Great and Prussian history, Tirpitz never referred to the precedent of the League of Armed Neutrality and he put no faith in the notion that extensive neutral and restricted belligerent rights could represent an important element in German national security. During the discussions between Reich offices prior to the second Hague Conference of 1907 he set about to reverse single-handedly Prussia-Germany’s traditional attitude to maritime law.46 As in so much of what Tirpitz did, the justification for this new departure in German diplomacy that he derived from his expansionist ideology of sea power, dovetailed neatly with the institutional interest of the Reichsmarineamt in securing as large a share of armaments spending as possible. Captain Siegel, a close collaborator, wrote from the Hague Conference that if the immunity of private property on the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

ocean were to be accepted, there would be voices in Germany calling for a reduction in spending on a fleet which defined the protection of trade as its raison d’être.47 All the other ministries involved wanted to retain strong neutral rights and curtail belligerent rights because they believed this would be in Germany’s interest as a weaker naval power in a war with Britain. Tirpitz wanted to retain the belligerent right of capture at sea because, he claimed, the threat of German attacks on merchant shipping on Britain’s east coast would act as a powerful deterrent to ‘the City’ (of London), preventing Britain from going to war in the first place. He enlisted the support of the Kaiser and was successful in facing down opposition from the other ministries, but the issue was immaterial because the matter did not come up for discussion at The Hague after all.48 Despite having reached the strength ratio that was supposed to deter Britain from declaring war on Germany, the ‘risk fleet’ failed to deter in the summer of 1914. The High Seas Fleet skulked in port, incapable of preventing the British blockade from cutting off supplies of strategic raw materials, above all food. Tirpitz claimed in his post-war propaganda campaign that he had consistently demanded that the fleet be used offensively to break the blockade, destroy Britain’s protective screen and win the war for Germany. In fact he did no such thing and was just as terrified of losing the battle fleet as the politicians he accused of cowardice. The only effective naval measure Germany could adopt during the war was unrestricted submarine warfare. In effect, the weaker naval power arrogated to itself belligerent rights with no historical precedent. There was some justification in the claim that the allied blockade itself represented a breach of the Declaration of Paris, but the retaliation was self-defeating, in the literal sense of the term. It ignored the historical lesson of French experience – that it is in the interest of the weaker belligerent to uphold maritime law and thus obtain the indirect support of the neutral powers. When it went beyond those limits, it raised up enemies against itself and hastened its own defeat. The Schlieffen Plan had already done this in 1914 by ignoring the constraints on German power represented by the continental balance. The Tirpitz Plan compounded the error by ignoring the relative security that was available to German overseas interests within the workings of the maritime balance. It was the search for absolute, deterrent security which began in 1898 that represented the decisive breach with the Prusso-German tradition.

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NOTES 1. J. G. Büsch, Bestreben der Völker sich im Seehandel recht wehe zu thun, 2nd edn (Hamburg: 1800). C. F. Wurm, Über die Neutralität des deutschen Seehandels in Kriegszeiten (Hamburg: J. A. Meissner, 1841). C. F. Wurm, ‘Blockaderecht’, Tübinger Zeitschrift für Staatswissenschaften (1852), pp. 47ff. C. F. Wurm, ‘Die Politik der Seemächte und der Fortschritt des Völkerrechts’, Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift, 3 (1855), pp. 293–373. L. Gessner, Das Recht des neutralen Seehandels und eine Revision der darüber geltenden Grundsätze des Völkerrechts (Bremen: 1855). L. Gessner, Le droit des neutres sur mer (Berlin: Stilke et van Muyden, 1865). A. Trendelenburg, Friedrich des Großen Verdienst um das Völkerrecht im Seekriege. Vortrag gehalten am 25. Januar 1866 in der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: 1866). L. K. Aegedi and A. Klauhold, Frei Schiff unter Feindes Flagge. Urkundliche Darstellung der Bestrebungen zur Fortbildung des Seerechts seit 1856. Beilage zum Staatsarchiv (Hamburg: Otto Meissner, 1866). F. Kapp. Friedrich der Große und die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Leipzig: Quandt und Händel, 1871). C. Bergbohm, Die Bewaffnete Neutralität 1780–1783 (Berlin: Dorpat, 1884). H. Ulmann, ‘Preußen, die bewaffnete Meeresneutralität und die Besitznahme Hannovers im Jahre 1801’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, Vol. II (1897/98), pp. 245–68. R. Krauel: ‘Preußen und die Bewaffnete Neutralität von 1780’, Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preußischen Geschichte, 21 (1908), pp. 99–163. R. Krauel, ‘Die Beteiligung Preußens an der zweiten bewaffneten Neutralität’, ibid., pp. 435–99. The only recent studies are O. Feldbæk, Denmark and the Armed Neutrality, 1800–1801. Small Power Policy in a World War (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1980). J. Dülffer, Regeln gegen den Krieg? Die Haager Friedenskonferenzen von 1899 und 1907 in der internationalen Politik (Berlin: Ullstein, 1981). J. Dülffer, ‘Limitations on naval warfare and Germany’s future as a world power: a German debate 1904–1906’, War & Society, 3 (1985), pp. 23–43. A. Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989). P. G. Dwyer, ‘Prussia and the Armed Neutrality: the invasion of Hanover in 1801’, International History Review, 15 (1993), pp. 661–87. Cf. P. G. Dwyer, ‘Two definitions of neutrality: Prussia, the European states-system, and the French invasion of Hanover in 1803’, International History Review, 19 (1997), pp. 521–40. 2. The disinvention of tradition becomes evident in the manner in which three generations of German naval historians interpreted some of the major topics treated below. The oldest of them, Alfred Stenzel, wrote in the 1870s what became Vol. IV of his Seekriegsgeschichte … von 1720 bis 1850 (Hanover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1911), series editor H. Kirchhoff, pp. 71–9 cover the armed neutrality of 1780 and the Prusso-American treaty of 1785. This chapter is generally favourable towards Frederick the Great’s naval policy, relates the salient aspects of the history of armed neutralities and does mention the ‘astounding degree of freedom’ for neutrals and private property which the king had ‘decided’ in his treaty with the United States. The criticism levelled at Prussia’s participation in the armed neutrality is suspiciously close to that of Kirchhoff in Seemacht in der Ostsee (see below). Some phrases are identical and may well have been inserted by this pupil and editor of Stenzel’s posthumous papers. This interpretation is strengthened by comparison with the treatment of the Declaration of Paris in Vol. V (1911), also edited by Kirchhoff, and Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

3. 4.

5.

6. 7.

Vol. VI (1921), entirely written by him. In Vol. V, pp. 47–9, the treatment of the Declaration of Paris is a complete disavowal of the attempts to extend international law, the better to protect private property at sea. These principles were incompatible with the nature of naval warfare, claimed the author. There is no similar condemnation of the Declaration in any of Stenzel’s other works. It was repeated in Vol. VI, pp. 218–35. The reinterpretation of German naval history from the Mahanian perspective of the second generation is early evident in G. Wislicenus, Deutschlands Seemacht sonst und jetzt. Nebst einem Überblick über die Geschichte der Seefahrt aller Völker (Leipzig: F. W. Grunow, 1896), pp. 45–53. See also G. Wislicenus, Prinzadmiral Adalbert ein Vorkämpfer für Deutschlands Seemacht (Leipzig: Voigtländer, 1899). Kirchhoff criticised Frederick’s naval policy and described his adherence to the armed neutrality as ‘mistaken’. He had nothing to say on the king’s support for neutral immunity or Prussia’s treaty with the United States, cf. Seemacht in der Ostsee. Ihre Einwirkung auf die Geschichte der Ostseeländer im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Kiel: R. Cordes, 1907–08), pp. 311–21. R. Rittmeyer, another pupil of Stenzel’s, gave only a passing mention to the armed neutrality of 1780, in what is otherwise a massive work, Seekriege und Seekriegswesen in ihrer weltgeschichtlichen Entwicklung. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der großen Seekriege des XVII und XVIII Jahrhunderts, 2 vols (Berlin: 1907, 1911), pp. 218–19. In the third, interwar generation the two following authors each quote Frederick the Great to the effect that Prussian commerce was dangerously exposed as long as it had no naval protection, but do not mention the armed neutralities, the treaty with the United States, maritime law or the Declaration of Paris, cf. E. von Mantey, Histoire de la marine allemande (Paris: Payot, 1930), pp. 53–4. R. Gadow, Geschichte der deutschen Marine (Frankfurt: M. Diesterweg, 1943), p. 23. Rolf Hobson, Imperialism at Sea. Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875–1914 (Boston, MA: Brill Academic Press, 2001), pp. 260–73. See especially Aegidi and Klauhold, Frei Schiff. This compilation of sources charting the recent diplomatic history of the movement for the immunity of private property at sea was commissioned by the Bremen senate to further the cause. Aegidi was a professor of law at, in succession, Erlangen, Hamburg and Berlin, a member of the Prussian Landtag, then the North German Reichstag, a publisher of the influential Hamburg Staatsarchiv (to which Frei Schiff was a supplement) and went on to become an advisor (Vortragender Rat) in the Foreign Ministry of the Reich from 1871 to 1877. I am grateful to Andreas Biefang for providing this biographical information. See Kapp, Friedrich der Große, for an early example of nationalist resentment against Britain and the United States. Kapp was a leading expert on the United States with a string of publications to his name (and the father of the Wolfgang who led the abortive, right-wing Kapp Putsch in 1920). Johann Eustachius Freiherr von Schlitz, comte de Goertz, Mémoire sur la neutralité armée maritime pour la liberté des mers et la sûreté du commerce, suivi de pièces justificatives (Paris: Levrault, Scoell et Cie., 1805). The original documents to which Krauel referred in his study ‘Preußen’ (1907), can be consulted at the Geheimes Preußisches Staatsarchiv (GPStA) in BerlinDahlem under the following signatures: Rep. XI Auswärtige Beziehungen, Nr. 171–5 Russland Nr. 118 A–D; Rotes Buch, Bd. 4, Rep. 69 Seeneutralitäts-

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8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

(Schiffahrts-) Sachen 1781– (currently being reclassified); Rep. 69 Seeneutralitätssachen. Since Krauel wrote, most of the important documents (but not all) covering these years were published in the final four volumes of Politische Correspondenz Friedrichs des Großen, herausgegeben von der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Gustav Berthold Volz (ed.), Vols XLIII–XLVI (Berlin: 1935, 1937, 1938, 1939), hereafter cited as PC. H. M. Adams, Prussian–American Relations 1775–1871 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), pp. 11–22. PC 44, No. 27809, p. 65, Fredrick to Goertz, 5 February 1780. ‘Britain’s imbecile vanity, its disregard of the interests and strengths of the European powers, its haughty claim to sole possession of Neptune’s trident and disdaine for other nations.’ PC 44, No. 27811, p. 67, Frederick to Princess of Orange, 7 February 1780. ‘It is as if a band of thieves believed itself authorised to rob and murder all those travelling on the highways with impunity.’ PC 44, No. 27988, p. 245, Frederick to Dowager Queen of Denmark, 9 May 1780. PC 44, No. 27838, p. 93, Frederick to Dowager Queen of Denmark, 23 February 1780. Cf. No. 27913, p. 170, Frederick to Finckenstein, 2 April 1780. PC 44, No. 28018, p. 273, Frederick to Dowager Queen of Denmark, 28 May 1780. P. Fauchille, La diplomatie française et la ligue des neutres de 1780 (1776–1783) (Paris: G. Pedone-Lauriel, 1893). Th. Boye, De væbnede neutralitetsforbund: Et avsnit av folkerettens historie (Kristiania: Grondahl, 1912). C. J. Kulsrud, Maritime Neutrality to 1780. A History of the Main Principles Governing Neutrality and Belligerency to 1780 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1936). O. Feldbæk, Dansk neutralitetspolitik under krigen 1778–1783. Studier i regeringens prioritering af politiske og økonomiske interesser (Copenhagen: Københavns Universitets Fond, 1971). Wurm, ‘Die Politik der Seemächte’, p. 311. Bergbohm, Bewaffnete Neutralität, pp. 188–93; Krauel, ‘Preußen’, pp. 119–35. Cf. Ulmann, ‘Preußen’, Krauel, ‘Die Beteiligung’, Feldbæk, Denmark, Dwyer, ‘Prussia’; A. D. Harvey, Collision of Empires. Britain in Three World Wars 1793–1945 (London: Phoenix, 1992), pp. 90–7. C. Savage, Policy of the United States toward Maritime Commerce in War, Volume I, 1776–1914 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1934), pp. 9, 20–1, 53–4, 160–2, 225–6, 332–3. Washington to the comte de Rochambeau, 31 July 1786. Quoted in K. J. R. Arndt, Der Freundschafts- und Handelsvertrag von 1785 zwischen Seiner Majestät dem König von Preußen und den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Munich: Heinz Moos, 1977), p. 7. This bilingual study is probably the only one on the subject. Savage, Policy, p. 54. Aegidi and Klauhold, Frei Schiff, pp. 163–5. B. Semmel, Liberalism and Naval Strategy. Ideology, Interest and Sea Power during the Pax Britannica (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986). A. Biefang, Politisches Bürgertum in Deutschland 1857–1868. Nationale Organisationen und Eliten (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1994), pp. 185–91. E. Wendler, Friedrich List: Eine historische Gestalt im deutsch-amerikanischen Verhältnis (Munich: Moos, 1989). E. M. Earle, ‘Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List: The Economic Foundations of Military Power’, in P. Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy

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25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 217–61, 258–61. F. List, Schriften, Reden, Briefe, ed. E. von Beckerath, K. Goeser, F. Lenz, W. Nolz, E. Salin, A. Sommer (Berlin: R. Hobbing, 1928–35), Vol. VI, Das Nationale System der Politischen Oekonomie, ed. Sommer, p. 407. Ibid., p. 415. ‘Über den Wert und die Bedingungen einer Allianz zwischen Großbritannien und Deutschland’ (1846), List, Schriften, Reden, Briefe, Vol. VII. Die politischökonomische Nationaleinheit der Deutschen. Aufsätze aus dem Zollvereinsblatt und andere Schriften der Spätzeit, ed. F. Lenz and E. Wiskemann, pp. 267–96. Cf. A. J. Ravizza, Friedrich List und England. Ein Beitrag zur Analyse der politischen Haltung Friedrich Lists (Basle: Mels, 1948), pp. 129–45. E. Wendler, Friedrich List. Politische Wirkungsgeschichte des Vordenkers der europäischen Integration (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), pp. 213–21. For the military framework of the Confederation, see H. Seier, ‘Zur Frage der militärischen Exekutive in der Konzeption des Deutschen Bundes’, in J. Kunisch (ed.), Staatsverfassung und Heeresverfassung in der europäischen Geschichte der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: Duncke und Humblot, 1986), pp. 397–446. L. Höbelt, ‘Zur Militärpolitik des Deutschen Bundes. Corpseinteilung und Aufmarsch im Vormärz’ and W. D. Gruner, ‘Der Deutsche Bund und die europäische Friedensordnung’, both in H. Rumpler (ed.), Deutscher Bund und deutsche Frage (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1990), pp. 114–35, 235–63. J. Angelow, Von Wien nach Königgrätz. Die Sicherheitspolitik des Deutschen Bundes im europäischen Gleichgewicht 1815–1866 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996). Savage, Policy, docs. 100–7, pp. 367–78. Ibid., doc. 108, message of President Pierce to Congress, 4 December 1854, pp. 378–81, also published in Aegidi and Klauhold, pp. 161–3. Savage, Policy, doc. 109, Secretary of State Marcy to French Minister Satiges, 28 July 1856, pp. 381–92, also published in Aegidi and Klauhold, Frei Schiff, pp. 9–18. ‘have always been professed by Prussia’, ibid., p. 2. ‘The question is whether the adoption of their amendment would not be infinitely advantageous to those nations which possess important maritime interests without themselves being able to protect them by means of a powerful navy, and we believe the answer to be affirmative. This is above all the case of Germany, especially Prussia and the Hanseatic cities, whose numerous vessels would be defenceless in a war with a martime power.’ Ibid., pp. 53–6, memorandum by Dr Geffken on the further evolution of the laws of war at sea, confidentially conveyed to Prussian Foreign Minister von Schleinitz on 15 November 1859. Savage, Policy, doc. 115, Secretary of State Cass to Minister in France, 27 June 1859, pp. 402–12, also published in Aegidi and Klauhold, Frei Schiff, pp. 63, 83. J. W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights 1899–1915 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 22–4. Savage, Policy, doc. 141, Secretary of State Seward to Minister in North German Union (Bancroft), 25 February 1868, doc. 142, Secretary of State Fish to North German Union Minister, 22 July 1870, doc. 143, Fish to Bancroft, 28 October 1870, pp. 99–100, 479–82. Adalbert, Prinz von Preussen. Denkschrift über die Bildung einer deutschen

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38.

39.

40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

Kriegsflotte (Potsdam: 1848), p. 27. See also J. Duppler, Prinz Adalbert von Preussen: Gründer der deutschen Marine (Hereford: E. S. Mittler, 1986). E. R. Huber, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte seit 1789, Vol. II, Der Kampf um Einheit und Freiheit 1830 bis 1850, 3rd edn (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1988), pp. 655–9; E. R. Huber, Vol. III, Bismarck und das Reich, 3rd edn (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1988), pp. 138–43, 1004–6. W. Petter, Deutsche Flottenrüstung von Wallenstein bis Tirpitz, in Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt: Handbuch zur Deutschen Militärgeschichte, 1648–1939, Vol. IV, Part VIII (Munich: Bernard und Graefe, 1977). I. N. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, 1862–1914 (Boston, MA: 1984). L. Sondhaus, Preparing for Weltpolitik. German Sea Power before the Tirpitz Era (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997). For an extensive survey which also covers the older literature, see K. W. Bird, German Naval History: A Guide to the Literature (New York, NY: Garland Pub., 1985). On a first visit to the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts in Berlin I was unable to identify any collection of documents covering these topics (the same goes for Prussian Foreign Ministry files before 1866 in the Geheimes Preußisches Staatsarchiv). A more thorough search may turn up something, but there is also the possibility that the principles of maritime law were not discussed in these decades as they were taken to have been established once and for all by the Declaration of Paris. The large amount of position papers generated by the various ministries in the run-up to the second Hague conference would seem to support such an interpretation. Ministère des affaires étrangères, Documents diplomatiques français (1871–1914), 1re série (1871–1900) (Paris: 1929–59), Vol. V, Nos 246, 247, 249, 404, 405, 407. Quote from No. 249, 25 April 1884, p. 268, No. 407, 23 September 1884, p. 424. See also Bismarck’s letters to the German ambassador in St Petersburg in 1885 and 1887 in J. Lepsius, A. Mendelsohn-Bartholdy and F. Thimme (eds), Die Große Politik der europäischen Kabinette 1871–1914, 40 vols (Berlin: 1922–27), Vol. XIV, p. 416, VI, No. 1253, hereafter GP. 10 January 1885, quoted in Hans Hallmann, Der Weg zum deutschen Schlachtflottenbau (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1933), p. 31. Caprivi’s ideas must be seen within a broader context, see Hobson, Imperialism, pp. 64–5, 115–31. A. Stenzel, Die deutsche Flotte und der Reichstag. Ein Wort zu Gunsten der Deutschen Wehrkraft zur See (Berlin: 1892), pp. 13ff., and ‘Brauchen wir Panzerkreuzer?’, Militär Wochenblatt (1895), pp. 307–14, 309–10. See J. Steinberg, Yesterday’s Deterrent. Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet (London: Macdonald, 1965). P. M. Kennedy, ‘Strategic Aspects of the Anglo-German Naval Race’, in P. M. Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870–1914 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), pp. 127–60. V. Berghahn, Der Tirpitz-Plan. Genesis und Verfall einer innenpolitischen Krisenstrategie unter Wilhelm II (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1971). C.-A. Gemzell, Organization, Conflict, and Innovation: A Study in German Naval Strategic Planning, 1888–1940 (Lund: Esselte studium, 1973). Lambi, The Navy and German Power; Hobson, Imperialism. The majority of the original documents to be found in the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts in Berlin have been published in GP, Vol. XXIII/1, 2. Important extra material can be found in Reichsarchiv: Der Weltkrieg, 1914–1918, Vol. I, Kriegsrüstung und Kriegswirtschaft (Anlageband) (Berlin: 1930). More on the navy’s perspective can be found in the Bundesarchiv–

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Militärarchiv in Freiburg, especially in RM 2/1760, RM 3/3897, 3898, RM 8/82, RM 8/138. 47. GP, Vol. XV, No. 4274, quoted in B. Tuchman, The Proud Tower (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p. 304. 48. Dülffer, ‘A German Debate’; Hobson, Imperialism, pp. 273–84. For the broader economic and strategic context of this debate, L. Burchardt, Friedenswirtschaft und Kriegsvorsorge. Deutschlands wirtschaftliche Rüstungsbestrebungen vor 1914 (Boppard: Harald Boldt, 1968) is indispensable.

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6

The Jeune École: The Strategy of the Weak ARNE RØKSUND

INTRODUCTION

France’s defeat in the war against the North German Confederation in 1871 crushed its naval ambitions. The country was severely weakened economically and demographically as a consequence of the war. There was also an increasing awareness of Great Britain’s enormous lead in industry, trade and colonisation. To continue the naval arms race that had been going on between France and Great Britain from the 1840s to the late 1860s was thus seen as impossible. The most immediate threat against France was in any case perceived to be that of the German Army. There was, therefore, a general understanding that the army should be given priority. In 1872 the minister of the marine declared that the time had come for the navy ‘to sacrifice itself on the altar of the nation’.1 The budget was cut by 25 per cent and the total number of vessels was reduced from 439 to 137.2 This difficult period provoked new ideas on how the navy should organise itself. French naval thinkers had to consider what they could achieve in a situation of inferiority, with limited resources at hand. The recognition of the fact that France probably would remain inferior to the British was a fundamental starting point for modern French naval thought. The French traditionalists argued for a gradual adaptation of the strategy of the era of sail with its blockades and focus on naval battles between main battle ships. This strategy required a fleet consisting of battle ships, cruisers and coastal defence units.3 The proponents of the jeune école argued against such a view and claimed that historical experience with naval warfare had shown that encounters between Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

battleship fleets represented a great danger for the inferior power. They argued that even in the era of sail it had been common for the weaker side not to risk destruction of a valuable fleet in battle, but rather to seek refuge in port and maintain its presence as a fleet-in-being. The introduction of steam propulsion had eliminated the element of chance that was present in the era of sailing ships.4 Numerical superiority would henceforth almost guarantee victory in an engagement. The jeune école was therefore critical of what they saw as the French naval traditionalists’ devotion to a battleship navy, and their disregard of the problems raised by challenging the stronger on his own terms. To put most of the French Navy’s effort into building a battleship navy contradicted one of the fundamental ideas in the jeune école’s naval theory: the weaker side should resort to alternative strategies and tactics, taking advantage of the possibilities opened up by technological progress. It was only the introduction of steam and later the self-propelled torpedo that were viewed as technological leaps opening new possibilities for an inferior navy. Cannons and rams should, however, still play their part in naval warfare. The jeune école applied the principle of division of labour and split up the battleship navy into a number of smaller vessels, some with torpedoes, some with guns and the remaining ones with rams. Torpedo boats and gunboats, augmented by fast rams and a system of telegraphs, semaphores and light scouts to ensure their ability to concentrate against the enemy, would be the principal coast defences. The proposal that broke most radically with prevailing naval thought was, however, the idea of the offensive use of these small boats. Most naval thinkers agreed that the advent of steam had made blockades difficult to impose. The introduction of small torpedo boats armed with self-propelled torpedoes was seen to make a blockade not only ineffective, but also dangerous. In the minds of the jeune école this opened up possibilities for offensive warfare against the enemy’s seaborne trade, and for attacking enemy coasts. In this chapter the focus will be on the jeune école’s ideas on offensive maritime warfare. Firstly, I will discuss the strategic reasoning leading to the jeune école’s view on commercial warfare, and how they thought this warfare should be conducted. Secondly, the incompatibility between the jeune école’s theory on commercial warfare and contemporary international maritime law will be discussed, and the objections this provoked among contemporary French naval officers. Finally, the jeune école’s ideas of unrestricted guerre de course will be discussed against the background of the concepts of total war and limited war. The presentation of the jeune école’s naval theory is based mainly on the writings of its two most prominent advocates, Admiral Théophile Aube and the journalist Gabriel Charmes.

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STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT

In the strategic analysis of the jeune école, the United Kingdom emerged as the main rival. This assumption was based on the traditional rivalry between France and Britain, but also on what they thought would be the origin of future conflicts. Gabriel Charmes claimed that the European countries would continue to look overseas to secure prosperity for their own nation: ‘This drive towards the unoccupied territories, the noncivilised areas, under the banner of colonial politics seems to be the main preoccupation of almost all European nations.’5 Charmes agreed that it would be quite rash to assume that the European powers would stop disputing hegemony over the continent. Nevertheless, he maintained that what would be disputed primarily was the commercial hegemony of the seas. Théophile Aube argued along the same lines. He was an ardent supporter of colonialism. In it he saw the solution to many of the social problems of capitalism in Europe: on the condition that products of industry find remunerative prices on the world market … labour and capital … are in accord, in harmony. But … by the law today incontestable, which is that of the forward march of humanity, the struggle for life … these markets are rapidly glutted. … Labour and capital … become antagonistic, and the question of labour, exacerbated by misery and hunger, … transforms itself into a social question, whose solution appears possible only by the advent of absolute justice in our societies, which are oriented, alas, toward the contingent and the relative. This is essentially the French solution. Wholly different is the solution sought and found by other nations, more fortunate and of more practical spirit. … One must create and invent new markets, production will revive, and the menace of poverty will be averted. … And what are these new markets? They are the colonies with which England covers and transforms the world. … Thanks to these colonies … the question of labour has not become, will not become for a long time in England, a social question.6

Colonialism was, however, a double-edged undertaking. It could relieve the social problems of modern capitalism, but the national economy’s dependence on colonies made this economy at the same time very vulnerable. The colonial power and its colonies were knitted together by sea lines of communication. It was these sea lines of communication that the jeune école defined as the industrialised and trade-dependent Britain’s Achilles heel, and they argued that one had to attack private property in order to destroy a modern capitalist economy: Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

And as the public wealth is nothing more than the accumulation of individual wealth, it is clear that in future wars, in order to stop a country’s main commercial flow, in order to snatch from it its monopoly, one must hit private property without mercy and seek by a series of individual catastrophes to destroy general prosperity.7

The most effective way to make the British economy collapse would therefore be by aggressive and merciless raids against Britain’s sea-borne trade. The jeune école argued that this should be done on all trade routes feeding Great Britain. Charmes reminded his readers that attacks on the trade route from India would pose a serious threat to the British economy, but he underlined that other trade routes were as important as that from India: Doubtlessly India is one of the most precious elements of [England’s] prosperity, but, if cruisers were to interrupt for many months the arrival of American cotton that flows incessantly into her innumerable factories that produce the textiles that are then spread over all the markets of the universe, could one believe that she would not suffer as much as from the interruption of her relations with India? As soon as her factories stop, thousands of workers will be plunged into misery, and terrible economic crises will break out. Little by little, even famine will make itself felt with all its horrors, for the grain of America is no less necessary than the products of India for feeding England.8

The jeune école’s assessment of the increased importance of world trade and Britain’s pivotal role in it was well founded. Before the 1840s the size and scale of international economic operations were comparatively modest. This was partly due to the absence of adequate surpluses of production for export (except in Britain), and because of the technical or social difficulty of transporting men and goods in sufficient bulk or quantity, and because of the relatively modest balances for investment abroad accumulated up to this point, even in Britain. Between 1800 and 1830, total international trade increased by a modest 30 per cent from about £300 million to about £400 million, but between 1840 and 1870 it multiplied five times over, and by the latter date had passed £2,000 million. The increase in world trade continued until the First World War.9 US-owned shipping had seriously contested British domination in the 1840s and 1850s. Britain, however, shook off the American challenge during the transition to the iron and then the steel ship, and US shipping fell seriously behind during the American Civil War in the 1860s, and subsequently never recovered its place in the general expansion of world shipping. By 1890 Britain had more registered tonnage Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

than the rest of the world put together. In 1910 over 40 per cent of tonnage entered and cleared in world trade was still British. British ships were also carriers of the world – not only with their own trade, but also in the tramp markets carrying the trade of third parties not touching at British ports. The shipping sector was one of the only sectors in the economy where Britain kept the world dominance after 1870 that it had enjoyed over a wide industrial field in 1850.10 Social and political unrest would be the most important strategic consequence of raiding the enormous British sea-borne trade, according to the jeune école. This effect could be achieved by seriously disturbing the vulnerable financial system attached to shipping and by preventing essential commodities for British industry and the population from reaching the ports of Britain. The jeune école were well aware that shipping was very important in relation to the balance-of-payments position. Where trade was carried in British ships it usually meant that all the financial and commercial services associated with it flowed to Britain. The evolution of London as the world’s main centre of international banking, finance and insurance was a function of the dominance of British shipping in world trade. Commerce raiding would consequently severely affect both the ship-owners and the financial system connected to the shipping activity. The jeune école made references to the Civil War and the consequences of the Confederacy’s commerce raiding on insurance rates. They argued that in a future war, as soon as hostilities broke out, insurance rates would rise to a level that would make sea-borne trade impossible due to the financial consequences. The ship-owners would therefore be forced to sell their ships to foreign powers, the jeune école argued.11 Imported raw materials were crucial for much of British industry, and an interruption in the flow of these materials would surely have a great impact on industry and consequently on the British economy and the welfare of its citizens. The import of food had also increased throughout the nineteenth century, and, in contrast with previous decades, the prime imports of the nineteenth century were no longer luxuries, but bread and meat, the necessities of daily existence. The imported luxuries of the past, sugar, tea, tobacco, coffee and cocoa, had, however, also turned out to be addictive necessities.12 It was very much the international specialisation in agriculture that generated these new problems of British national strategy. At the end of the Napoleonic wars the British Parliament passed the Corn Laws that erected a barrier against foreign grain. The arguments in favour of the law were several: in wartime the nation would have to be fed from domestic resources, and agriculture also had the task of preserving a social balance between the deferential countryside and the restless towns. It should further form a bulwark against foreign dangers and Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

domestic discontent. When the Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, it became even more vital for Britain to dominate the seas. Agrarian protection was sacrificed in order to make cheap food available, but this carried an obligation to make the oceans safe. The problem was that not even a large preponderance of warships could guarantee the safe arrival of cargoes in wartime. Gabriel Charmes evoked this with a rhetorical question: England imported last year 75 million hectolitres of grain – requiring about a thousand cargo ships – necessary for her domestic consumption; she imports immense quantities of cattle, especially from the United States and Canada, and in addition to alimentary products, cotton, wool, alfalfa, minerals etc., which her industry cannot do without. How many squadrons will she need to escort these immense convoys, in order to protect them against attacks from cruisers? Whether she triples or quadruples her navy, she will not be able to protect these ships …13

British admirals awoke to this problem in the late 1870s, about the same time as foreign grain began to dominate domestic markets. In order to bring superior firepower and armour to bear, fleets had to be concentrated, but the merchant marine was very widely scattered. From the 1870s onwards the Admiralty constructed large numbers of cruisers for trade protection and asked for many more. But this was not viewed as a satisfactory solution. On the outbreak of war and possibly for many months afterwards, cargo vessels would be exposed to the menace of enemy cruisers.14 On the whole, the jeune école’s analysis of some of the preconditions for the British industrial and economical miracle, and what they perceived as the vulnerable parts of this system, was very much in accordance with concerns raised in Britain at the time.15 But not only was there agreement regarding the vulnerability of the British economy, but, as Avner Offer’s summary of contemporary British worries illustrates, also concerning the probable social and political implications of a possible disruption of British trade: The navy promised that shipping losses would not be large, while ship owners, merchants and underwriters were more pessimistic. Some risk to sea borne trade in wartime was conceded on all sides, while the remedies remained on paper. Even if actual losses at sea were small, underwriters and ship owners were likely to panic and push up insurance and freights. This was certain to jack up food prices and cripple the export industries, where millions would be thrown out of work. Those who kept their jobs could never afford to pay double or triple prices. It was not the hardship itself that gave cause for concern, or not any more than the poverty Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

already existing. What counted was the political threat posed by the working classes. If their misery was prolonged, or if resolve and loyalty weakened, they might force governments to make a compromise peace before the danger period was over. Poverty had become a key issue of strategy and of national survival. In the minds of those who feared it, the menace combined the traditional violence of the bread riot with the modern one of political revolution.16

The major objective of commercial warfare, as propagated by the jeune école, was not ‘to starve out England’ or to stop the raw materials and food necessary to carry on a war, but to produce an economic panic that would bring about a social and political collapse. During the American Civil War the French had seen the panic that swept away American shipping, as well as the sufferings of the British cotton workers. The leaders of the jeune école had themselves experienced the consequences of the German siege against Paris in 1870–71 and the suppression of the Paris Commune. They had lived through a period of extreme social turmoil, and had been able to study closely some of the preconditions that could ignite a social revolution. At the time that Charmes and Aube wrote the above-quoted articles, in the mid-1880s, Britain and the world at large were in the depths of a great depression. A social revolution in England did not appear out of the question. In 1885, after a bomb plot and explosions in Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow, and in London at the Local Government Board, Victoria Railway Station, the Tower, Westminster Hall and the House of Commons, the government passed an Explosives Bill.17 These events probably further convinced the jeune école that commercial warfare could destabilise Britain, and force it to the negotiating table.

COMMERCIAL WARFARE

Raiding the enemy’s sea lines of communication Great Britain’s command of the sea had in past wars assured the defence of British soil and of its colonies while at the same time making it possible to attack the French coast and French colonies. Shrinking from a head-on collision with the stronger British Navy, the French looked for other ways of waging naval war. For a century and a half, from the days of Louis XIV to Napoleon, from the legendary corsair Jean Bart to the equally legendary Robert Surcouf, French frigates and privateers, operating from Brest and Toulon as well as from Dunkirk, St Malo, Dieppe and a host of other small ports, raided and harassed British trade. The abandonment by Louis XIV of a battle fleet strategy during Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the Nine Years War signalled that even greater effort was going to be put into commerce raiding. The motive behind Louis’s decision to encourage it, apart from the obvious wish on his part to dispute British and Dutch command of the sea without risk to his battle fleet, was very much the same as that promoted by the jeune école almost 200 years later. Both sides in the war were locked in a prolonged struggle across western Europe, and victory would go to the one which lasted the longest. France depended upon its large internal resources; the Allies, if not exclusively, then to a very considerable extent, upon the riches that accrued from the profits of English and Dutch foreign trade. If the latter were cut off, France’s opponents would probably soon sue for peace. As Vauban, the great military expert, put it in 1695 when advocating a naval campaign against Britain and Holland: Brest is so placed as though God had made it expressly for the purpose of the destruction of the commerce of these two nations. The most skilful policy is the shaking of the buttresses of the League by means of a subtle and widespread form of war [i.e. guerre de course].18

British losses in each of the great wars against France – the Nine Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years War and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars – amounted to thousands of vessels, with hundreds of ships being captured every year. The destruction of commerce by France was particularly effective during the zeniths of French power under Louis XIV and during the Revolution and Empire. During the latter conflicts the running down of the French main fleets and of the merchant marine freed thousands of Frenchmen for privateering. In addition, raiding squadrons of four or six naval vessels were sent out to scour the trade routes. The majority of attacks took place in the Channel, Bay of Biscay, North Sea, Baltic and Mediterranean, but the larger and more powerful privateers joined the raiding squadrons in commerce-raiding operations all over the globe. The bases at Martinique, Guadeloupe and Mauritius, for example, were used to attack the valuable West and East Indies trade. London, which carried on more than half of the commerce of the country, recorded entries and departures averaging between 13,000 and 14,000 each year. To protect all these ships was clearly beyond the bounds of possibility. According to contemporary lists, 11,000 British merchant vessels were captured by the enemy in the years 1793–1815. Although this represented a small percentage of the total number of ships and tonnage involved, the French campaign to disrupt British seaborne trade had severe economic consequences and marine insurance rates rose dramatically.19 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

In arguing for a guerre de course the jeune école was very conscious that this fitted into a proud French practice. Aube portrayed this tradition as almost a genetic virtue of the French: this warfare is the one that is most in accordance with our traditions, it best matches the spirit of our race. What personalities do foreign navies have, even the most proud, of a glorious past that can match those of Jean-Bart, Dugay Trouin, Bouvet, Surcouf, Duperré, whom la course has immortalised?20

Since the days of these corsairs Great Britain had become increasingly dependent on its sea-borne trade. Furthermore, the jeune école argued, the command of the seas that had helped protect British trade would be impossible to achieve after the advent of steam and more effective weapons. They claimed that a combination of technological progress and adapted French strategy and tactics would create a new situation that ‘[would make] command of the sea nothing more than an expression devoid of any meaning’.21 One of the barriers against French offensive maritime warfare in the days of sail had been the Royal Navy’s ability to impose an effective blockade of the French coast. Commerce raiding and privateering had indeed flourished, but, as Aube put it, ‘only when the wind calmed for some moments and forced them [the blockading ships] to turn to the open sea, could our cruisers take advantage of the short, but long awaited runaway moments to escape …’.22 The advent of steam made an effective blockade difficult to uphold. Steamships could not remain at sea for weeks at a time in the manner that blockading fleets under sail could and repeatedly did. Owing to the frequent need for coal, the mere maintenance of a close blockade in the days of steam was attended by far greater difficulties than hitherto. While making the vessels independent of the wind, the steam engine tied them to the depot and the collier.23 While the steam engine complicated the mission of the blockading forces, the jeune école seemed convinced that it would give French cruisers the upper hand both as blockade-runners and on the high seas: That an absolute blockade, effective on all spots of an extensive coast like that of France, will from now on be impossible – that cruisers with a higher speed, commanded by captains that are real sailors, can always get through the most tight blockade, and in high seas challenge any pursuit, that is what the incidents of the latest maritime wars have highlighted, [this is obvious] without having to go into the technical considerations.24

The assumption that the inferior sea power should have the fastest ships was one of the more curious hypotheses of the jeune école, but it Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

reflected a rather preponderant belief in French skill and talent that characterised much of the jeune école’s thinking.25 Their argument that a number of naval ports, dispersed along the coast, would complicate the mission of the blockading fleet was, however, part of a more coherent reasoning that built on two arguments. Firstly, the blockading fleet would have to be divided into several smaller groups in order to blockade each port. This could easily lead to an overstretch of the blockaders’ resources, and thus make it easier to challenge the enemy. Secondly, it would open up possibilities for what was a cornerstone in the jeune école’s defensive strategy: the concentration of forces from several centres in order to make a fast and coordinated attack on the enemy.26 The widespread adoption of the self-propelled torpedo in the early 1870s had made such tactics more credible, and the torpedo was generally perceived to be a direct threat to the blockading ships. No longer could the blockading ships cruise safely off the enemy’s ports and coasts. That the Whitehead was, for at least a decade after its commercial introduction in 1870, a primitive and limited weapon, both in terms of range and of speed, was irrelevant; its mere existence created a huge risk that had not previously existed.27 The more successful trials with torpedoes in the 1880s made this tactic more realistic, and the torpedo and the torpedo boat became a central element in both the defensive and offensive warfare propagated by the jeune école. They described enthusiastically how the torpedo boats would break up enemy blockades. The torpedo boats would approach the battleships at the speed of lightning. If the battleships did not detect the torpedo boats at a distance of more than some 100 metres, or even 1,000 metres, there would be no hope for the battleship. The battleships would be utterly exposed at night-time, when several torpedo boats in a coordinated attack would easily saturate the battleships’ ability to detect the attacking boats and fight back.28 The introduction of steamships and self-propelled torpedoes, and the strategic and tactical adaptation to this new technology had not only made the blockade less feasible and thus opened up for the commerce raiders to put out to sea. Steam power favoured the commerce raiders as they operated on the high seas too. The majority of the merchant vessels, transoceanic as well as coastal traders, were still sail-powered in the 1880s. A becalmed merchantman in the days of sail was relatively safe; any pursuing commerce-raider would be becalmed as well. Such was not the case after the advent of steam. The jeune école was eager to emphasise that the feasibility and the effectiveness of commerce warfare was more than a theoretical assumption. Both Aube and Charmes stressed that this was very well documented, especially by the Confederate commerce raiders during Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the American Civil War. The most striking example was the Confederate steam-powered commerce raider Alabama. In 20 months a steamship – not an especially well-armed or seaworthy one – captured 71 Union ships. Although the Confederate commerce raiders’ exploits did not alter the outcome of the war, they diverted numerous Union Navy ships from the blockade, drove insurance rates for American vessels to astronomical heights, forced these vessels to remain in port or convert to foreign registry, and helped topple the American merchant marine from its once-dominant position, which it never regained.29 Aube claimed that the Confederate raiders had proved that ‘the sceptre of the sea had become worm-eaten, more than half broken’.30 He concluded that this had marked the beginning of future maritime warfare where fast cruisers with courageous captains could be everywhere and easily escape any pursuit. The case of the German naval vessel Augusta was another example used by Aube to illustrate how a lone commerce raider could upset a superior naval power. The Augusta was a fast steam corvette built originally for the Confederacy (CSS Mississippi) but brought into Prussian service after the end of the American Civil War. Almost at the close of the Franco-Prussian War, at a time when the German ports were closely invested by the French, it suddenly appeared off Rochefort and captured a little government dispatch boat; a few hours later it was off the mouth of the Gironde and captured a couple of merchant ships. Then the Augusta disappeared, but was later found in the port of Vigo, short of coal. There, French warships blockaded it until the armistice.31 The result in numbers of captured ships was rather meagre during the Augusta’s brief sortie. The emotions it provoked in France, however, were enormous. A lot of imaginary warships were reported off the coast off Ireland or at the entrance to the Channel. The chambers of commerce of the Atlantic ports demanded naval protection. The French Navy itself was upset. Five warships were set on high alert to guard the coast from Brest to Bayonne. The Mediterranean fleet established close surveillance of the strait of Gibraltar, and escorting the seaborne trade almost exhausted the navy’s resources.32 Aube stressed that the French Navy had done what it was supposed to do. French cruisers had been patrolling all the major trade routes, and the blockade of the German coast was as tight as it had been from the moment when the blockade was first imposed. Still the Augusta was able to escape the blockade and attack sea-borne commerce off the French coast. What had happened, explained Aube, was that caution and lack of confidence among some German naval officers had been replaced with boldness and confidence. Aube viewed the Augusta’s endeavours as a convincing example of what skilled, experienced and determined commanding officers could achieve. Luckily, French Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

warships were able to lock the Augusta up in a neutral port, but an example had been given, Aube argued. Had the war lasted longer, others would have followed in the wake of the Augusta, because from the moment of its escape the incapacity of the French Navy to impose a blockade of the German coast had been revealed.33 In the proposals of the jeune école, cruisers were soon to be supplemented by small torpedo boats and gunboats as preferred vessels for commerce warfare. Charmes dated this change to April 1884. While it had been generally accepted that small boats armed with torpedoes could be effective in the littorals, where the sea was relatively calm, their capacity on the high seas was very much disputed. Charmes, who was a writer and student of foreign affairs but no sailor, claimed that the torpedo boats No. 63 and No. 64 that sailed from Brest to Toulon in April 1884 faced the roughest seas without any problems. These two 33-metre torpedo boats of 45 tons had also participated in exercises outside the littorals in the Mediterranean. Charmes maintained that while two armoured coastal defence ships were unable to follow the battle fleet’s speed of advance due to the weather, the small torpedo boats allegedly faced no difficulties. Charmes concluded that ‘from now on there is no more doubt that the problem of navigating relatively small boats at high speed is resolved’.34 Aube, too, who was a seasoned sailor and who in his articles in the 1870s and early 1880s had argued in favour of a fleet of specialised cruisers for commerce raiding, was now obviously convinced that these ‘autonomous torpedo-boats’ could also be used on the high seas to interrupt British trade routes.35 Bombardment of the enemy’s coast In his article ‘La guerre maritime et les ports militaires de la France’, published in 1882, Aube described bombardment primarily as a likely threat against French ports and coastal cities. He claimed that this threat had become more acute since command of the seas was no longer sufficient to protect either a nation’s coast or its sea trade, and, consequently, ‘… the masters of the sea will turn their power of attack and destruction … against all the cities of the coast, fortified or not, pacific or warlike; burn them, ruin them or at least ransom them mercilessly’.36 Aube argued that bombardment had also become a more realistic option since technological progress had made modern battleships less exposed when confronted with coastal artillery. Steam propulsion and armour would reduce the effect of coastal batteries. He concluded that battleships attacking with high speed and under cover of smoke, could bombard and set fire to any coastal city within range of its artillery, with little risk of being seriously endangered by the coastal batteries defending the cities. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Aube’s agenda when writing this article was very much to advance arguments against plans to close the military port of Rochefort. To have a number of military ports dispersed along the French coastline was part of the jeune école’s offensive and defensive strategy. Aube, however, did emphasise that bombarding coastal cities was not only a venture the enemy would undertake. It should also be an integral part of French commercial warfare. He emphasised that since money was the nerve of war, everything that might deprive the enemy of its wealth would not only be a legitimate target, but it would be imperative to destroy it. Aube predicted on the basis of this reasoning that a new system of maritime warfare was beginning: that of attacks on the enemy coasts, and consequently defence of one’s own coasts.37 In an article published three years later, Charmes was more explicit than Aube in describing naval bombardment of enemy ports as a logical part of the overall idea of commercial warfare: And what will happen on the high seas will also happen on the coast, for a logical consequence of commerce warfare is attacks on open harbours, defended cities, and industrial and commercial warehouses that are not fortified … There will be no more reason to respect an ordinary city, and even less a prosperous city, than for respecting a commercial fleet. Whether one sets fire to a nation’s products on board a vessel or in its docks or warehouses does not make any difference. Or rather the second operation would give material and moral advantages that would be more decisive than the first operation. It is certain that one will bring a people to peace as effectively by depriving it of one of its commercial ports as by depriving it of one of its military ports, likewise one will just as surely reach the same result by dispersing its merchant navy as by blowing up its battle fleet.38

Charmes’ more persistent argumentation in favour of including bombardment as part of the jeune école’s offensive strategy was very much due to the euphoria raised by the sea trials of the torpedo boats in 1884. Charmes viewed these small boats as a kind of cheap, universal hull that could be fitted either with torpedoes or guns. If small torpedo boats could cross the high seas, so could small gunboats. Although he argued primarily in favour of attacking open ports and cities, he stressed that small gunboats would be better suited than battleships for attacking fortified ports and cities. He claimed that not even the heavy artillery of big battleships would be able to break the fortifications protecting the enemy’s guns, and he mentioned the bombardment of the forts of Alexandria by the Royal Navy as an example of the limitations of battleships in such a role. But small gunboats with their limited draught and armed with mitrailleuse would Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

be able to close the forts and hit through the crenels. To sail close to the fortresses in order to try to get a lucky shot through the crenels was of course dangerous, but using battleships to bring down a fortress would be more dangerous. They would have to position themselves further out at sea due to their draught, and would thus be exposed to attacks from torpedo boats; a threat that Charmes naturally regarded as far more dangerous than artillery fire from the fortresses.39 Charmes noted that ‘All nations are indeed preparing to defend their coasts with torpedo boats.’ He claimed that Germany and Austria were building a substantial number of torpedo boats for this use. So if one planned operations against enemy coasts one should be prepared to meet armadas of these boats. This, according to Charmes’ logic, would be a suicidal mission for battleships.40 Small gunboats would be less vulnerable confronted with enemy torpedo boats. For Charmes this was a matter of calculated risk. The artillery of the fortresses could certainly sink some of the gunboats: but what would that matter if some succeeded? One does not fight wars without losing ships and men, and it would certainly be better to loose some small gunboats with their small crews than one third of a battle fleet.41

The difference in view between Aube and Charmes should not be overstated. Aube was trying to convince public opinion and the political and military decision-makers that Rochefort should be maintained as a naval base. In order to convince them, he would have to depict the Royal Navy’s main battleships as a threat to French coastal cities. Charmes’s article was written three years after that of Aube. In the time between these two articles, the jeune école’s confidence in the small boats’ quality had been strengthened. Charmes’s agenda was therefore to convince public opinion and the decision-makers of the excellence of small boats. For Charmes, these gunboats, as with the torpedo boats, announced a new era in naval warfare, an era where the poorer could fight the richer on equal terms. Even the poorest country could afford a gunboat with a 14-cm gun, he claimed, and he predicted that: ‘The time of the big ships hammering on the big fortresses is over, while the time of the small, deadly boats attacking what constitutes the life and wealth of nations will begin.’42

THE JEUNE ÉCOLE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

The critics of the jeune école Commerce warfare, as it was advocated by the jeune école, raised difficult strategic, moral, legal and practical questions that were tightly Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

interlocked. The Declaration of Paris of 1856 had changed profoundly the legal basis for commerce raiding. The signing states had agreed that blockades had to be effective in order to be binding and neutral ships could carry enemy property as long as it was not contraband, while neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, were not liable to capture under enemy flag.43 Privateering, which had been a proud French tradition, was also outlawed. Every major European power save Spain subscribed to the Declaration. The United States of America would not sign the declaration since privateering was the basis of its national strategy.44 The critics of the jeune école argued that commerce warfare would be almost impossible to carry out within the bounds of the Declaration of Paris. One of the ablest critics of the jeune école was Vice-Admiral Bourgois. He was one of the greatest French students of international maritime law, and he was also one of the most quoted authorities on torpedo work in France. Bourgois designed, along with the naval constructor Charles-Marie Brun, the French Navy’s first submarine, the Plongeur. Admiral Bourgois was also president of the commission that had recommended the adoption of the Whitehead torpedo, and chairman of the Commission on Submarine Defences for several years after the war of 1870.45 Admiral Bourgois was especially shocked by the jeune école’s idea that commerce warfare should be conducted using the torpedo as the primary or only weapon. He claimed that this would inevitably result in violations of international law. Bourgois knew that the torpedo was not a very flexible weapon. It was a weapon that was primarily suited to sink ships, and not for firing warning shots. The recommended tactics advocated by the jeune école also confirmed this. Aube depicted a scenario where torpedo boats should follow passenger liners from afar during daytime, in order to remain invisible, and then close in once night had fallen and attack the liner with torpedoes.46 The torpedo would most certainly send the liner with cargo, crew and passengers into the abyss. Bourgois questioned how a torpedo boat, if it kept at a distance during daytime in order to avoid being discovered by a liner, could recognise the nationality of the boat it intended to sink. He reminded his readers that in such a situation it would be easy to make a mistake, but impossible to rectify it. The sunken vessel could be an enemy, but it could also be a neutral or French ship.47 Admiral Ernest du Pin de Saint-André, who had produced much of the new defensive system of Toulon against torpedo attacks, argued along the same lines as Bourgois. He warned about the problem of distinguishing enemy, neutral and friend, and accused the proponents of the jeune école of not having considered possible countermeasures in commerce warfare. He argued that in times of war the crews of the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

merchants ships would do their utmost to remove any overt sign of their nationality, and their first precaution would be to carry the flag of a neutral nation.48 This was seen in the early stages of the Crimean War when there were some hasty transfers from the Russian to the Danish and Tuscan flags,49 and during the American Civil War when the Confederacy’s commerce raiders forced American merchant ships to take refuge under foreign flags.50 Admiral du Pin de Saint-André argued that these countermeasures would force the torpedo boat, in order to rule out that the merchant vessel encountered was neutral or friendly, to approach the merchantman. Well aware of the risk of being sunk without warning by a torpedo, merchant ships would be defensively armed to fight torpedo boats. The torpedo boat would thus be confronted with an impossible situation: it could either sink the merchant ships encountered without identifying them, running the risk that that they were neutral or friendly, or it could approach them for identification and risk being sunk by the merchant ships’ guns.51 Such a disadvantageous situation, from the commerce raiders’ point of view, could be avoided by using cruisers armed with guns. Bourgois argued, however, that the Declaration of Paris had made commerce raiding with cruisers almost impossible as well. It was the fact that neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, were not liable to capture under an enemy flag, which also made commerce raiding with cruisers both difficult and dangerous for the cruiser. Bourgois claimed that merchant ships from an enemy state very often carried neutral merchandise. To act in accordance with the Declaration of Paris, one would have to sail the prize to a French or allied port. To do this the commerce raider would have to put a prize crew on it. If the cruiser met an enemy warship, it would have to fight with a reduced crew, i.e. under very disadvantageous circumstances. The other option, in order to avoid such a danger, would be to sink the prize after having taken the crew aboard. This was what the Confederate cruisers did during the American Civil War. To act in accordance with the Declaration of Paris, however, one would be obliged to offer compensation to the owners of the neutral merchandise. Bourgois drew the conclusion that commerce warfare, if one obeyed international law, had lost all its efficacy. But for Bourgois there was only one alternative to obeying the Declaration of Paris, and that was to abandon guerre de course altogether.52 Bourgois also criticised the jeune école for having ignored the obvious strategic consequences of throwing the Declaration of Paris overboard. He pointed to the fact that international maritime law was upheld because it was in somebody’s interest to do so, in this case the neutral powers’ interest. Bourgois argued that if the sunken ship was neutral, or carried passengers from neutral states, one could not count on the patience or tolerance of the powers where the ship or the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

passengers had their origin. On the contrary, one could expect them to protest energetically and even combine against the offending nation in order to make it comply with international law. Bourgois even claimed that the neutrals probably would define the navy’s commerce raiders as pirates, and treat them accordingly. They would simply be sent to the bottom to join their victims.53 To create a situation where the neutrals rallied against France would be just the opposite of what would seem logical for an inferior navy, and of what had been a cardinal objective for the French Navy during the Second Empire: that even if the French Navy was not equal to the Royal Navy, it could act as the core of an alliance of lesser navies that could, if necessary, overwhelm the Royal Navy.54 The warfare proposed by the jeune école could repulse possible allies, and thus undermine such an approach. International law incompatible with war It seems that the advocates of the jeune école were not very concerned with the possible negative consequences of breaking international law. On the contrary, their prime concern was the constraints international maritime law placed on what they defined as their most effective way of fighting Great Britain. Therefore they advocated that in wartime the French Navy should disregard the restraints placed on commerce warfare by maritime law. This rejection of the Declaration of Paris was founded on two arguments. Firstly, the jeune école perceived the Declaration of Paris as an arrangement freezing the imbalance between the strong and the weak, i.e. it favoured Great Britain. Secondly, they disputed the very idea that international law was valid in war. The jeune école’s interpretation of the consequences of the Declaration was quite different from that of British opinion. Opinion in Britain had been predominantly hostile to the signing of the Declaration of Paris. Most considered that the Declaration removed the most formidable element of sea power from Britain’s arsenal.55 It was seen as an incredible gesture by the strongest sea power in favour of the continental states’ view that the nationality of any merchant vessel should cover its cargo – at one stroke the weapon of blockade had been neutralised. The British government, however, felt that it would be unwise to defy world opinion on this heated issue, and hoped in any case to have achieved a fair solution by the agreement to abolish privateering. The British acceptance of these clauses also symbolised a high point in the power and influence of the Manchester school, and in the idea of ‘the freedom of the seas’.56 Aube, on his side, warned that if war were conducted according to the humanistic ideas advocated by the Declaration of Paris, it would be Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

fatal to France’s national security interests.57 He was convinced that commerce raiding had been, and would be to an even greater extent, the most effective way to fight Britain. Aube was equally convinced that it would be impossible to impose a blockade in the era of steam propulsion and torpedoes. He argued thus, that the declaration had deprived France of one of its traditional advantages, la guerre de course, while Britain by adhering to the same declaration had given up a traditional advantage that had now become illusory, the blockade.58 The Declaration of Paris had thus frozen the imbalance between the stronger and the weaker navy. To abolish the possibility of waging commerce warfare was for all other navies than the British to abandon the most legitimate and precious right, that of national defence.59 Aube’s criticism of the Declaration of Paris was founded on the fundamental view that international law was irreconcilable with war. He admitted the value of international law in peacetime and agreed that it could contribute to avoid or postpone war, but when war had broken out it was in itself contrary to law: [Defenders of] Humanity may protest and claim that [la guerre de course] is the return of barbarism; these protests miss the point, and besides it is not the consequences of war one should prevent, but the war itself.60 War is the negation of law. It … is the recourse to force – the ruler of the world – of an entire people in the incessant and universal struggle for existence. Everything is therefore not only permissible but legitimate against the enemy.61

Aube, from his early writings in 1871 and onwards, was consistent in his view that international law must be subordinated to the demands of war. He argued that war was a necessity imposed on man; it was a last resort for defending a legitimate and ultimate right, that of self-defence. This precious right ‘takes precedence over the laws of justice’. The aim of warfare is thus to weaken the enemy by all possible means. The choice between different ways of waging war is not a question of justice or humanity, it depends on considerations of a totally different order. International treaties and conventions cannot be more than a compromise between these demands of a higher order and the sentiments of justice and humanity, Aube argued.62 The jeune école agreed with their critics’ conclusion that commerce warfare would be very difficult to conduct within the limits set by the Declaration of Paris, and that it would be impossible to do it with torpedo boats. Aube was himself very explicit in describing the incompatibility between international law and commerce warfare with torpedo boats, and he was equally clear in his recommendations: Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

In the days when … in theory the laws of war were accepted by even the most rebellious spirits … how was maritime war practised? … A captured ship was taken to the nearest port if it was worth it, otherwise the captor took aboard its crew and the prize was sunk. Humanity was saved – and also safe were the laws of war. Tomorrow, war breaks out; an autonomous torpedo boat – two officers, a dozen men – meets one of these liners carrying a cargo richer than that of the richest galleons of Spain and a crew and passengers of many hundreds; will the torpedo boat signify to the captain of the liner that it is there, that it is watching him, that it could sink him, and that consequently it makes him prisoner – him, his crew, his passengers – in a word that he has platonically been made a prize and should proceed to the nearest French port? To this declaration … the captain of the liner would respond with a well-aimed shell that would send to the bottom the torpedo boat, its crew, and its chivalrous captain, and tranquilly he would continue on his momentarily interrupted voyage. Therefore the torpedo boat will follow from afar, invisible, the liner it has met; and, once night has fallen, perfectly silently and tranquilly it will send into the abyss liner, cargo, crew, passengers; and his soul not only at rest but fully satisfied, the captain of the torpedo boat will continue his cruise.63

Charmes wholeheartedly supported Aube’s view that commerce warfare had to be conducted without mercy: ‘Commerce warfare has its rules that one should have the courage to clearly express: attack the weak without mercy and sail away at full speed from the stronger without shame, that is the formula.’64 Like Aube, he argued that the overall aim of this warfare was morally good, and that it therefore legitimised the brutality: Although the means to achieve this end are brutal and savage, it is certainly not against the progress of civilised societies that this new power in the hands of the weak one day will ensure the total liberty of the seas, and that it will snatch the command from some nations more lucky than others, that it will break the sceptre in their helpless hands and distribute the fragments to everyone. It might be necessary to live through this cruel revolution in order to achieve this new arrangement that one really could regard as a triumph for equality.65

Aube and Charmes depicted a scenario where what was perceived as a threat against a nation or a people’s existence justified and legitimised indiscriminate and very brutal commerce raiding as a way of fighting war. This assumption was strongly criticised by Admiral Bourgois. He not only strongly disagreed with the moral thinking behind the reasoning of the jeune école, but he also questioned their underlying strategic Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

analysis. He did not question the assumption that Great Britain was a rival to France, but he stressed that a war with Great Britain would be a strictly maritime war. Consequently, the existence of the nation would not be at stake, Bourgois argued. Nothing would then excuse a war conducted with merciless means. Bourgois claimed that Germany was the only nation that could represent an existential threat to France, and he pointed to the fact that the commerce warfare against the North German Federation during the war in 1870–71 had no impact on the German offensive into the heart of France or the overall war.66 Neither Aube nor Charmes explicitly addressed the alleged lack of logic in portraying Great Britain as the potential enemy to be met with measures breaking international law, while Germany was the only obvious possible enemy that could pose an existential threat to France, and thus legitimise the use of such measures. The main reason for this is most certainly that they did perceive Great Britain as an existential threat, and this was probably very much due to the rather broad definition they gave of the concept of existential threat. It was not restricted to a threat of a possible occupation of France. A threat to the economic prosperity of France fell well within their definition of an existential threat. They postulated that economic prosperity was the blood of the nation, and the sea lanes or trade routes were the veins. Any threat against the sea lanes would thus be a threat against the nation, and they were convinced that the Royal Navy would be used to interrupt French trade.

LIMITED WAR OR TOTAL WAR – IMPACT ON MILITARY THINKING

One of the fundamental points in the thinking of the jeune école is that war is an existential threat that relieves the belligerents from all restraints imposed by international law. The jeune école’s arguments for an unrestricted guerre de course have led some historians and officers to label Aube and his followers as advocates of total war. Rémi Monaque, for example, summarised as one of the fundamental ideas of Aube that: ‘Future conflicts will be total wars in which economical factors will play a dominant role’,67 while Philip Masson discussed the jeune école’s ideas of commercial warfare under the title L’idée de la guerre totale.68 These authors, however, have limited themselves to stating that Aube’s idea of commercial warfare resembles the concept of total war. Although they have not defined what they mean by total war, the idea of using this concept to describe the strategy of the jeune école is obviously founded on its proposal to wage unlimited economical warfare, without pity, against the enemy, and in a manner in which the distinction between combatants and non-combatants was consciously ignored. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Total war is a twentieth-century term. Like many parts of everyday vocabulary, total war is a loose term with several meanings. It was first coined by French civilian leaders, when, during the late phase of the First World War, they used the terms guerre intégrale and guerre totale in announcing their ambitions to mobilise all the country’s resources.69 The pioneering Italian advocate of air power, Giulio Douhet, further elaborated the term in 1921 when he wrote: The prevailing forms of social organization have given war a character of national totality – that is, the entire population and all the resources of a nation are sucked into the maw of war. And, since society is now definitely evolving along this line, it is within the power of human foresight to see now that future wars will be total in character and scope.70

Such ideas were common in the 1920s among military thinkers who had witnessed the appalling slaughter on the Western Front in the First World War, and who imagined how much better it would be to vault over stalemated trenches and attack the enemy’s industries and centres of population far from their armies. General Erich Ludendorff, in his book Der totale Krieg, published in Munich in 1935, was perhaps among the first to attempt something like a systematic definition. To him, total war meant the total mobilisation of all material resources for the purpose of fighting a war for the life or death of a nation. But it also included complete control by a (military) government over every aspect of social, political and economic life. Such a radical system was to prepare the nation single-mindedly for the ultimate war well before its outbreak.71 The complete economic mobilisation of a society, and waging war on the economic resources of the enemy rather than on its armed forces alone, are central parts of any definition of total war.72 Both total mobilisation and economic warfare against the enemy lead to unclear distinctions between combatants and non-combatants. The New Oxford Dictionary of English and E. Luttwak and S. L. Koehl, in their Dictionary of Modern War, stressed that total war implies the use of all available resources and weapons in war, and the elimination of all distinctions between military and civilian targets.73 James Turner Johnson in his attempt to define total war claimed there must be disregard of restraints imposed by customs, law and morality on the prosecution of the war. Especially … total war bears hardest on non-combatants, whose traditional protection from harm according to the traditions of just and limited warfare appears to evaporate here.74

In an article summing up some of the deliberations made at a series of Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

five conferences on the topic of total war and where some of the most prominent scholars in the field were gathered, Roger Chickering mentioned as general ingredients in total war the commitment of massive armed forces to battle, the thoroughgoing mobilisation of industrial economies in the war effort, and hence the disciplined organisation of civilians no less than warriors. He also noted that several of the lecturers underlined as one of the most characteristic features of total war the systematic erasure of basic distinctions between soldiers and civilians: ‘Because civilians, regardless of gender, are no less significant to the war effort than the soldiers, they themselves become legitimate if not preferred targets of military violence.’75 Total war is one extreme in military thinking and conduct. On the same axis, but at the other extreme, we find cabinet war or limited war. Although the terminology is not clear, the concepts of cabinet war and total war are fruitful in describing the influences on the thinking of the jeune école and its strongest contemporary opponents, and for understanding the significance of the theoretical contributions of the jeune école. The concepts of cabinet war or total war are what the sociologist Max Weber called ‘ideal types’ – a theoretical model used to measure a reality that never fully conforms to the model but that nevertheless remains a useful tool for analysing the reality. There is also an impression that the movement along the axis from cabinet war to total war has happened in a chronological manner. Cabinet war was typical for the wars of the eighteenth century, whereas the examples closest to the ‘ideal type’ of total war have been in the twentieth century. The transition from cabinet war to total war, however, has been neither sudden nor consistent. While we in the twentieth century have seen the two wars closest to the ‘ideal type’ of total war, i.e. the two world wars, the same century also saw numerous limited wars. Several wars in the nineteenth century contained total elements. Historians, who tried to come to terms with the modern aspects of the American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, two wars that influenced the thinking of the jeune école, have used labels like people’s war, industrialised war, citizen’s war, total war, or simply, modern war to describe them.76 Cabinet war The most important characteristic of cabinet war was that it was limited. War was conducted in order to take over control of a province of a neighbouring state, a colony from a commercial rival or to confirm the rules of succession of a dynasty. Seldom or never did one conduct war in the eighteenth century with the aim of crushing another state or presenting it with peace terms that would be totally unacceptable.77 The political objectives the war should achieve were limited, and one of the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

main reasons for this was precisely the fact that the cabinets controlled the war. After the war was lost, a province could be transferred to the conqueror without asking the inhabitants or public opinion to express their views. Neither the parliamentarians (where they existed) nor the press (where it existed) had any strong opinions concerning foreign policy. Later conceptions that states with the same political or social structure, or nations with related ethnic or cultural background, should be natural allies, were almost totally absent. Alliances were made and dissolved without the subjects being consulted. The cabinets, which were for the most part constituted by the monarch and his advisors, could govern without taking into consideration factors other than their own self-defined raison d’état. Another important factor limiting the war was the fact that the military capacity was not sufficient to subjugate another state to one’s will. The armies of the old regime were composed of officers from the aristocracy and longserving professional soldiers, of whom a high percentage were foreigners. In the Prussian Army, that had a well-organised system for compulsory recruitment of peasants for military service, at least onethird of the force was recruited from abroad. Fredrick the Great argued that the army ideally should be made up of two-thirds foreign professional soldiers. It was only in France and England that there was a mainly national based army. The French Army recruited mostly volunteers from within its own borders.78 The armies spent most of the time in profoundest peace. Even during wartime they campaigned for only four or five months of the year. On the Continent commerce, travel, cultural and learned intercourse went on in wartime almost unhindered. The wars were the king’s wars. The role of the good citizen was to pay his taxes, and sound political economy dictated that he should be left alone to make the money out of which to pay those taxes. He was required neither to participate in making the decisions out of which wars arose nor to take part in them once they broke out. These matters were the concern of the sovereign alone. Their mutual relations were conducted by a precise diplomatic protocol according to clear principles in international law.79 The Napoleonic heritage In the last decade of the eighteenth century the framework of European society, social, economic, political and military, was shaken to its foundations. A transformation occurred that was very largely the result of almost 25 years of uninterrupted warfare, from 1792 until 1815, between revolutionary France and its neighbours; warfare on a scale unprecedented since the barbarian invasions. The introduction of the levée en masse in August 1793 removed one of the most important Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

factors limiting the old regime’s warfare. Whereas the monarchies of the old regime had to calculate their military budgets very carefully (the upkeep of regular forces was a heavy charge on their treasuries), almost unlimited numbers of reserves were now at the French army’s disposal. By 1793 the supply of volunteers had run out, so the Law of 23 August decreed that ‘From this day until that when our enemies have been chased off the territories of the Republic, all Frenchmen are on permanent requisition for military service.’80 The enemy was repulsed from French territory within 12 months, but conscripts were enlisted with increasing ruthlessness for another 20 years. By the end of 1794 Lazare Carnot, the organiser of the French revolutionary armies, had over 1 million men under arms, and he used them to obtain a crushing numerical superiority on every battlefield. The element of sheer ferocity in war, almost lost sight of in the eighteenth century, now became dominant. ‘War is a violent condition’, wrote Carnot, ‘one should make it à outrance or go home. We must exterminate, exterminate to the bitter end!’, he urged.81 Wars were no longer to be either temperate or inconclusive. The most important strategic consequences of this mobilisation of national resources, was that the French generals now could force the enemy to fight battles that had a direct impact on the enemy state’s destiny. At the tactical level it was now possible to crush the enemy army’s morale on the battlefield and follow up with a pursuit designed to complete the destruction of the enemy forces and the enemy state; a deep penetration to spread panic among the enemy population and destroy all hope of recovery.82 Such an annihilating battle could dissolve a coalition or end a major power’s independence in a day or two.83 After 1814 the principal concern of the governing classes of Europe, settling uneasily back into the saddles from which 25 years of revolution and invasion had so nearly dislodged them, was to ensure that the Napoleonic experience should not be repeated; that the political or social balance which had kept eighteenth-century Europe in a state of stable equilibrium should be restored and maintained. The restoration of this balance was seen as a far more important objective than the exploitation of the new sources of political energy and military power which the French Revolution had revealed beneath the surface of European society. For half a century, therefore, armies reverted as far as they could to an eighteenth-century pattern of aristocratic officers and long-serving professional troops kept isolated from the rest of the community. The Napoleonic experience, however, could not be ignored by the armed forces whose formal raison d’être was the defence of their country and in consequence the waging, if necessary, of la grande guerre. There was an increase in military literature during and after the wars as Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

soldiers of every rank and every nation hastened to record their experiences and pontificate about the conclusions to be drawn from them. The most respected strategists were those who emphasised the continuity between the old form of war and the new. Carl von Clausewitz was also searching for fundamental strategic principles: but Clausewitz was even more concerned with analysing and explaining the differences between the wars of the Revolution and those of the old regimes than he was with stressing the similarities. War, he insisted, was at least as much a matter of moral and political factors as of military expertise, and it was the alteration of these factors brought about by the French Revolution that had apparently changed the nature of war and taken the armies of the old regime by surprise. Wars conducted with the full force of national energy in pursuit of total victory would always take a different form from those engaged with limited forces for limited objectives.84 Clausewitz asked rhetorically whether from ‘now on will every war in Europe be waged with the full resources of the state, and therefore have to be fought over major issues that affect the people? Or shall we again see a gradual separation taking place between government and people?’ Clausewitz warned that it would be rash to assert that ‘absolute wars’ would never recur: once barriers – which in a sense consist only in a man’s ignorance of what is possible – are torn down, they are not so easily set up again. At least when major interests are at stake, mutual hostility will express itself in the same manner as it has in our own day.85

The American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War The implications of the military revolution were not to be realised for several decades after Waterloo. The conservative regimes of Europe reintroduced professional armies (with the exception of Prussia) and avoided war altogether. The wars that took place in the 1850s, on the Crimea and in northern Italy, were in many respects reminiscent of cabinet wars. A turning point came in the 1860s as the American Civil War evolved into a kind of conflict that had several aspects of total war to it. What made the Civil War distinctive in the American experience was the overwhelming involvement of the whole population, the shocking loss of life and the wholesale devastation and radical social and political transformation that it wrought. The war accomplished the extinction of a nation state – the Confederacy. It also extinguished a social system of property relations – slavery. As James McPherson has noted: Few other wars in history have achieved such total results.86 In the Franco-Prussian war Bismarck was set against imposing any political or social change on France. German victory did not impose a Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

regime on the French. Here, German aims fell far short of total war.87 Yet the Germans were fighting a war with a basic feature of total war, politically motivated attacks on civilians. These attacks manifested themselves in three ways, by shooting franc-tireurs, by bombardment and by blockade. The bombardment of Paris was the most spectacular German reprisal against civilian involvement in the war, not directly as franc-tireurs, but as citizens demanding la guerre à outrance. The citizens of Paris were the ultimate target of the operations, which had no other aim but to intimidate them into political surrender. Although the bombardment was the most spectacular and controversial aspect of the German attack on Paris, it was the blockade that really counted. Food and fuel shortages greatly increased the death rate, especially among the very young and the old. Nearly 42,000 more people died during the siege than in the corresponding months of 1869–70. The intended message to the Parisians was that famine would be the consequence of intransigence. The imminent exhaustion of food stocks was what forced Paris to surrender at the end of January.88 Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler have summarised some aspects common to both the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War that illustrate these wars’ evolution from limited conflicts to wars of a more total character: [The two wars] both began as rather limited conflicts, fought for limited war aims: the prevention or fulfilment of German unification and the break-up or preservation of the United States. But as conflict continued on and grew even more bitter, the war aims, at least those of the stronger sides, became more and more radical: annexations, if not the total subjugation, of France and the destruction and revolutionizing of the South. Both wars started with regular armies: semi-professionals versus conscript armies in Europe and large-scale militias in North America. But as the wars became more intense, conscription became the basis for recruiting ever more troops. In addition, while the regular armies fought it out, civilians turned into guerrillas and took part too. In Germany, France and North America, public opinion not only played an important role in getting these wars started in the first place but also had a great impact on its conduct. Nationalism, racism, and particularism were among widespread public sentiments that helped to bring the wars about and contributed towards keeping them going. The populace on the whole participated as citizens in these wars, not only as subjects of authoritarian states. More than perhaps in any previous war, the ‘home front’ particularly in France and in the Confederacy, became the backbone of warfare, as civilians including women worked to supply the armies and as morale depended on public support. The civilian populations in the nations under attack were not only indispensable in keeping the war effort going Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

but themselves became the targets of enemy action, from Sherman’s march through Georgia and South Carolina to the shelling of Strasbourg and Paris. A strategy directed against civilians thus began to form an important part of modern warfare.89

As Clausewitz pointed out; for military thinkers and strategists from the Napoleonic wars and later the possibility that a war could develop into a war with a more total character than previous wars must have been present in their minds. The American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War were a reminder that limited wars could evolve into more total wars. For the strategists of the 1870s and 1880s, these two conflicts were recent and the leading representatives of the jeune école had themselves actively participated in the Franco-Prussian War. These wars were very much a frame of reference for the jeune école. Attacking the economic resources of the enemy rather than its armed forces alone, and carrying warfare straight to the enemy people so they would loose their zest for war were the lessons learned from these two wars. In an article written shortly after the end of the Franco-Prussian war, in 1871, Aube discussed the impact this conflict had on the French perception of laws of war and how it should be waged: the laws of war … as long as war will weigh upon humanity, this phrase will be nothing but vain words, a loaded expression, an ideal that may be impossible to reach. The Germans have shown us the reality of these laws. The mistake made by us, a generous mistake that is, has been to believe in these laws, to obey the obligations they imposed on us, failing to understand what war is, and when faced with war, as a logical consequence all considerations concerning justice, humanity and civilisation fall, since war is, as our enemies have convincingly demonstrated for us, the absolute negation of justice, humanity and civilisation. … Guerre de course – is a warfare where the property of the enemy, be it public or private should be annihilated by all possible means, warships or merchant vessels should be set afire and the sailors manning them made prisoners for the rest of the war. This should be done routinely, systematically, with a methodical precision, just like the German generals requisitioned, looted, devastated and exhausted our cities and the countryside. Eight months ago, experience tells us, every Frenchman would have protested against such a way of waging war; but today who would deny the adequacy of this kind of warfare? Moreover, this kind of warfare is the one best adapted to the conditions of modern societies; it attacks private property, the very foundations of those who wanted or provoked the hostilities. Finally, this warfare is imposed by the logics of history and of reality as well.90

Later, Aube stressed that bombarding, burning down and ruining cities Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

had been done and would be done in future wars. Strasbourg and Péronne were the proofs, he wrote.91 Charmes also referred to the Franco-Prussian War when he argued for bombarding cities: ‘one should throw trouble and disarray in to the city by bombarding from afar arsenals, warehouses and residential areas, following the example of the Prussians, who fired over the fortifications, and into Strasbourg and Paris, convinced that in a war one should always hit the weak points’.92 These experiences had formed the thinking of the jeune école on what future wars would be like. Some of the rethinking of what future wars would be like could also be seen within the German officers’ corps, and the German deliberations were followed with great attention by the jeune école. German officers started in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War to reconsider the Prussian industrialised cabinet war that had given such shining victories on the battlefield and that had proved sufficient to decide the outcome of wars until the French levée en masse in the autumn of 1870. The experience of the second half of the Franco-Prussian War had demonstrated to German officers that it was no longer sufficient to smash the enemy’s field army. In the age of people’s war, they would have to deal with whole nations that were ready to fight to the last. In his influential book Das Volk in Waffen, Helmuth von Moltke’s disciple, Colmar von der Goltz, argued that limited war had become impossible. In the age of a people’s war whole nations would fight to the very end, mobilising all their resources. The outcome would be decided by sheer exhaustion.93 In the introduction to Aube’s book A terre et à bord: Notes d’un marin, Charmes chose to quote the following passage of the ‘admirable book’ of Goltz: ‘The principle according to which one “conducts war these days” is to ignore if necessary all the ideas of law that prevail in times of peace.’94 Charmes described Aube’s book as the counterpart to Goltz’s work. He found that they were both filled with the same uncompromising love of one’s country, disdain of popular criticism and audacity in proclaiming the truth. Aube, in an article in 1885, also referred to the ‘admirable book’ of Goltz and boasted that the jeune école well before Goltz had pointed out that war was an existential struggle where everything was permitted and legitimate against the enemy.95 The perception of what character a future war would have can to a certain degree explain the different approaches concerning strategy and composition of the fleet between the traditionalists and the jeune école. Admiral Bourgois very clearly advocated the restraints inherent in cabinet war. He warned that brutal commerce raiding would give an enemy invading French territory a pretext for an abuse of force, and he claimed that the law of reprisals is the only one that subsists when human rights are violated. Bourgois also reminded people that in a Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

continental war, the winner of today could be tomorrow’s looser, and experience unjust violence on his territory corresponding to that which he had carried out on the enemy’s territory. He stressed that the warring parties should fight with such moral restraint that after the fighting was over, they could shake hands without any bitterness or hatred.96 Such an attitude would obviously be more consistent with a traditional navy composed of main battle ships preparing to fight regular battles between naval units, than with torpedo boats attacking defenceless merchantmen or gunboats bombarding prosperous cities.

CONCLUSION

In the strategic assessments of the jeune école, the United Kingdom appeared as the main rival. This was not only due to the traditional rivalry between the two countries, but also to the forward colonial policy that the jeune école advocated, ambitions they maintained would further intensify the rivalry between France and United Kingdom. The defeat in the Franco-Prussian War had, however, forced France to dramatically reduce its naval ambitions, and to accept that the French Navy would for the foreseeable future remain inferior to the Royal Navy. This situation prompted the jeune école to develop a naval theory that was a novel and audacious attempt to solve the historic problem of how best to use a selfevidently inferior navy against a predominant maritime power. The proposals that broke most radically with the prevailing naval thoughts were the jeune école’s ideas of offensive warfare. The jeune école proposed an asymmetric approach where one instead of challenging a superior Royal Navy on its own terms, should attack the foundation of British prosperity. They argued that Britain’s sea lines of communication were the weak link in an industrialised economy that was depending on a well-functioning trade with its colonies. Aggressive commercial warfare against British trade routes would therefore be the most effective way to bring about social collapse in Great Britain. The jeune école saw the guerre de course as a natural continuation of a proud French tradition of waging war at sea. The advent of the selfpropelled torpedo and an optimistic view of the seaworthiness of small and cheap torpedo boats and gunboats further convinced the proponents of the jeune école that commerce raiding would be the most economical form of warfare for the poorer fleet. These low-cost boats could be used for defensive purposes and to break possible enemy blockades, but they could also be used to attack enemy trade on the high seas or to bombard open cities and ports. Unlimited economic warfare, as advocated by the jeune école, conducted without pity and in a manner where the distinction between Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

combatants and non-combatants would be consciously ignored, would be a striking breach of international maritime law. The jeune école’s view of the character of future wars can probably best explain their rejection of international law in wartime. Since the Napoleonic Wars there had existed two fundamentally different perceptions of what form future wars would take. While earlier wars had been limited wars, the Napoleonic Wars were conducted with the full force of national energy in pursuit of total victory. Limited wars, however, remained the dominant form of war in the nineteenth century, but both the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War had elements of total war to them. These two wars strongly influenced the thinking of the jeune école and functioned very much as a frame of reference when they described the probable nature of future wars. They argued that future wars would be existential wars, where ‘everything is … not only permissible but legitimate against the enemy’.97 The jeune école’s rejection of international laws in wartime was also influenced by an understanding that existing international maritime law, represented by the Declaration of Paris of 1856, had frozen the imbalance between the strong and the weak. It had made guerre de course, which they saw as France’s most effective way of fighting Britain, almost impossible to conduct, while the restraints the Declaration had put on the blockade, a preferred Royal Navy way of fighting, had no consequences since blockade in any case had become illusory due to the advent of steam and the selfpropelled torpedo. It is often assumed that the jeune école’s thinking was primarily a result of or an adaptation to technological inventions. I would rather maintain that steam and the self-propelled torpedo fitted into an overall theory on how an inferior navy could fight its enemy and a perception that future wars would be more total in character and scope. The reasoning of the jeune école had as its logical consequence what the Conseil d’Amirauté in one of their meetings labelled guerre de course à outrance.98 NOTES 1. M.-R. Ceillier, ‘Les idées stratégiques en France de 1870 à 1914: La Jeune Ecole’ (1928), in H. Coutau-Bégarie, L’Évolution de la pensée navale (Paris: Economica, 1990), p. 197. 2. R. Hobson, Imperialism at Sea. Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875–1914 (Boston, MA: Brill Academic Press, 2001), p. 111. 3. V. Bueb, Die ‘Junge Schule’ der französischen Marine. Strategie und Politik 1875–1900 (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt, 1971), p. 5. 4. Th. Aube, ‘La guerre maritime et les ports militaires de la France’, Revue des deux mondes (1882), pp. 318–22. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

5. G. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II. La guerre maritime et l’organisation des forces navales’, Revues des deux mondes, 1 March (1885), pp. 139–40. 6. Th. Aube, ‘La pénétration dans l’Afrique centrale’, in A terre et à bord. Notes d’un marin (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1884), pp. 66–7. Quoted in Th. Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy. French Naval Policy 1871–1904 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institution Press, 1987), p. 163. 7. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, pp. 139–40. 8. Quoted in Ropp, The Development, p. 164. 9. In the years from 1875 to 1913 world trade had trebled. E. J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire. An Economic History of Britain since 1750 (London: Penguin, 1968), pp. 114–25. 10. P. Mathias, The First Industrial Nation. An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1914 (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 314. 11. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, p. 142. The interrelations between shipping and London’s financial institutions from Mathias, The First Industrial Nation, p. 314. 12. A. Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 81. 13. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, p. 141. 14. Offer, The First World War, pp. 217–23. 15. One interesting contemporary British comment on the jeune école’s theories and their arguments concerning the vulnerability of British sea-borne trade and consequently of the British economy, is Vice-Admiral P. H. Colomb’s review in 1887 of Gabriel Charmes’ book Naval Reform (it was published in English translation in 1887). Colomb was critical of most of the arguments and reasoning of the jeune école, but he shared their view on ‘how surprisingly open we now are to injury by well-directed efforts against our commerce, and our open towns and harbours.’ P. H. Colomb, ‘Naval Reform’, Occasional Papers. Journal of Royal United Service Institution (1887), p. 784. 16. Offer, The First World War, pp. 221–2. 17. Ropp, The Development, p. 163. 18. Quoted in Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Macmillan Educational, 1983), pp. 78–9. 19. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall, p. 131. Azar Gat, The Development of Military Thought. The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 193, 198. 20. Th. Aube, ‘L’avenir de la Marine française’, Revue des deux mondes, 1 July (1874), p. 191. All of these corsairs are still prominent in the gallery of French naval heroes and all of them have given names to numerous French naval vessels. Surcouf and Jean Bart are both frigates in active service in the French navy today. 21. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, p. 136. 22. Aube, ‘La guerre maritime’, p. 325. 23. J. F. Beeler, British Naval Policy in the Gladstone–Disraeli Era, 1866–1880 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 212. 24. Aube, ‘L’avenir de la Marine’, p. 180. 25. This was one of the arguments that Vice-Admiral P. H. Colomb forwarded against the theories of the jeune école. He commented rather ironically on Th. Aube’s a priori assumption that the French cruisers would be faster than the pursuers’ ships, that it was ‘not uncommon in speculations as to the future of naval war to see this attitude of mind assumed. One man will have for his plan the heaviest guns, another the thickest plating, another the hardest stem, and Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

M. Aube the fastest ships! It need hardly be said that superiority in any material entity cannot be assumed in naval strategy or tactics. The assumption must always be at least material equality, if it be not better and safer to assume a material inferiority for the study of a tactical of strategic problem. M. Aube cannot obtain the superior speed for his “corsairs”, though he may force his enemy to face the same difficulties as he will meet with himself in his efforts.’ Colomb, ‘Naval Reform’, p. 773. Aube, ‘La guerre maritime’, pp. 336, 344. Beeler, British Naval Policy, p. 212. G. Charmes, ‘La réforme de la Marine I. Torpilleurs et cannoniéres’, Revue des deux mondes, 15 December (1884), pp. 884–5. Beeler, British Naval Policy, p. 214. J. M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom. The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 547–8. Aube, ‘La guerre maritime’, pp. 325–6. See also Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, pp. 137–8. Colomb, ‘Naval Reform’, p. 774. J. Greene and A. Massignani, Ironclads at War: The Origin and Development of the Armored Warship, 1854–1891 (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Publishing, 1998), pp. 205, 244. P. Masson, Histoire de la Marine, Tome II. De la vapeur à l’atome (Paris: Charles Lavazelle, 1992), pp. 131–2. Masson, Histoire de la Marine, p. 132. Aube, ‘L’avenir de la Marine’, p. 182. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, pp. 883–4. Th. Aube, ‘Défense nationale – Défense des colonies’, in H. Mager (ed.), Atlas Colonial (Paris: Charles Bayle, 1885), pp. 11–12. Aube also referred to the deliberate bombardments of the civilian quarters in Strasbourg and Péronne during the Franco-Prussian War as an example of what one should expect in wars to come. Aube, ‘La guerre maritime’, pp. 331–2. Ibid. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, p. 149. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime I’, pp. 896–8. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, pp. 160–1. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime I’, p. 898. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, p. 149. The Declaration of Paris of 1856 stated that: 1. Privateering is, and remains, abolished. 2. The neutral flag covers enemy’s goods, with the exception of contraband of war. 3. Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under enemy’s flag. 4. Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective, that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy. A. Lambert, ‘Summary for the conference “Navies in Northern Waters” at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies’, Oslo, 9–12 August 2001. Ropp, The Development, pp. 168–9. This tactical approach was explicitly advocated by Aube in ‘Défense nationale – Défense des colonies’, pp. 11–12. Vice-Amiral Bourgois, Les torpilleurs, la guerre navale et la défense des côtes (Paris: Librarie de la Nouvelle Revenue, 1888), pp. 14–17. Ernest du Pin de Saint-André, ‘La question des Torpilleurs (II). Torpilleurs et batimens [sic] de guerre et de commerce’, Revue des deux mondes, 15 July (1886), pp. 344–6.

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49. C. I. Hamilton, ‘Anglo-French sea power and the Declaration of Paris’, International History Review, Vol. IV (2 May 1982), p. 177. 50. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 547. Ropp, The Development, p. 163. 51. de Saint-André, ‘La question des Torpilleurs’, pp. 344–6, 360. 52. Bourgois, Les torpilleurs, pp. 14–17, 92–4. 53. Ibid., pp. 18–19. 54. Hamilton, ‘Anglo-French Sea Power’, p. 170. By the same author, Anglo–French Naval Rivalry 1840–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 302. 55. A. D. Lambert: The Crimean War. British Grand Strategy, 1853–1856 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 334. 56. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall, p. 175. 57. Th. Aube, ‘Un nouveau droit maritime international’, Revue maritime et coloniale, January–March (1875), p. 11. 58. Ibid., p. 12. 59. Ibid., p. 23. 60. Aube, ‘L’avenir de la Marine’, p. 191. 61. Aube, ‘Un nouveau droit maritime’, pp. 11. 62. Ibid., pp. 14–23. Th. Aube (un officier de marine), ‘Les réformes de notre marine militaire’, Revue des deux mondes (April 1871), p. 544. The article is signed ‘Un officier de marine’. Aube referred to this article in ‘De la guerre maritime’ in Revue maritime et coloniale (April 1873), although he did not explicitly state that he wrote the article. The article of April 1871 has however a clear touch of Aube in its opinions, way of reasoning, and many of the arguments are identical to those put forward in his later writings. 63. Aube, ‘Défense nationale’, pp. 11–12. Quoted in Ropp, The Development, p. 165. 64. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, p. 141. 65. Ibid., p. 142. 66. Bourgois, Les torpilleurs, pp. 20–1. 67. R. Monaque, ‘L’amiral Aube, ses idées, son action’, in Hervé Coutau-Bégarie (ed.), L’évolution de la pensée navale, Vol. IV (Paris: Economica, 1994), p. 140. 68. P. Masson, ‘La Marine Française de 1871 à 1914’, in G. Pedroncini (ed.), Histoire militiare de la France, Vol. III, De 1871 à 1940 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), pp. 129–30. 69. R. Chickering, ‘Are We There Yet? World War II and the Theory of Total War’, paper presented at the International Conference at Hamburg, 29 August–1 September 2001: A World at Total War. Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction, 1937–1945. 70. M. E. Neely Jr, ‘Was the Civil War a Total War?’, in S. Förster and J. Nagler (eds), On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification 1861–1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 33–4. 71. Editors’ introduction to Förster and Nagler, On the Road to Total War, p. 10. 72. See the discussion of the term ‘total war’ in Neely, ‘Was the Civil War a Total War?’, p. 35. 73. The New Oxford Dictionary of English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 1958; E. Luttwak and S. L. Koehl, The Dictionary of Modern War (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 625. 74. J. T. Johnson, Just War Traditions and the Restraint of War. A Moral and Historical Inquiry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 229. 75. Chickering, ‘Are We There Yet?’. 76. Editors’ introduction to Förster and Nagler, On the Road to Total War, p. 8. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

77. The partition of Poland was an exception. 78. R. Hobson, Fra kabinettkrigen til den totale krigen. Clausewitz-tolkninger fra Moltke til Aron (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 1996), pp. 29–31. 79. M. Howard, War in European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 75. 80. Quoted in ibid., p. 80. 81. Quoted in ibid., pp. 80–1. 82. Ibid., p. 84. 83. Hobson, Fra kabinettkrigen, p. 34. 84. Howard, War in European History, p. 96. 85. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, eds M. Howard and P. Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 593. 86. J. M. McPherson, ‘From Limited War to Total War in America’, in Förster and Nagler, On the Road to Total War, p. 298. M. E. Neely has disputed the assumption that the Civil War was a total war. He claims that the essential aspect of any definition of total war asserts that it breaks down the distinction between soldiers and civilians, combatants and non-combatants. Neely claims that the Civil War ‘knew careful limitations and conscientious scruple’. He concludes by stating that ‘Any assessment of the Civil War’s nearness to being a total war can be no more than that: an assertion that it approached total war in some ways’, but ‘By no definition of the term can it be said to be a total war.’ Neely, ‘Was the Civil War a Total War?’, p. 35. Neely’s arguments are valid, but even if the distinction between the combatants and the non-combatants were upheld in the Civil War, it had so many aspects of total war to it, as Neely also implicitly admits in the sentences quoted above, that the term remains useful for understanding the American Civil War, and its influence on the thinking of the jeune école. 87. R. Tombs, ‘The Wars Against Paris’, in Förster and Nagler, On the Road to Total War, p. 563. 88. Tombs, ‘The Wars Against Paris’, pp. 549–50. 89. Editors’ introduction to Förster and Nagler, On the Road to Total War, pp. 2–3. 90. Aube, ‘Les réformes de notre marine militaire’, p. 544. 91. Aube, ‘La guerre maritime’, pp. 331–2. 92. Charmes, ‘La réforme maritime II’, p. 161. 93. S. Förster, ‘Dreams and Nightmares. German Military Leadership and the Images of Future Warfare, 1871–1914’, in M. F. Boemeke, R. Chickering and Stig Förster (eds), Anticipating Total War. The German and American Experiences 1871–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 348–56. 94. G. Charmes, ‘Préface’ in Aube, ‘La pénétration dans l’Afrique centrale’, p. xiii. 95. Aube, ‘Défense nationale’, p. 11. 96. Bourgois, Les torpilleurs, pp. 20–3. 97. Aube, ‘Défense nationale’, pp. 11. 98. Service historique de la Marine, BB8-914: Conseil d’Amirauté: Procés-Verbal de la séance du 21 Mai 1886.

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7

The US Navy and the ‘Freedom of the Seas’, 1775–1917 J O H N B . H AT T E N D O R F

In a famous novella, the late nineteenth-century Irish poet, playwright, and wit, Oscar Wilde wrote about a fictional American ambassador to the Court of St James, Mr Hiram B. Otis, who had purchased a haunted country house near Ascot, named ‘Canterville Chase’. When the ambassador’s daughter, Virginia, first met the Canterville ghost, the two had a long conversation in which Virginia suggested that the ghost should emigrate to America ‘to improve his mind’. The ghost immediately responded to this rude comment by retorting: ‘I don’t think I should like America.’ ‘I suppose because we have no ruins and no curiosities,’ said Virginia satirically. ‘No ruins! No curiosities!’ answered the Ghost; ‘you have your navy and your manners.’1 I won’t examine his point about American social graces, but when Oscar Wilde wrote the story, the US Navy was in a phase that the old naval writers once called its ‘dark age’, a time when the American Navy was not widely recognised in the global arena. The Canterville ghost’s view of the nineteenth-century American Navy is not an uncommon one and typifies not only what a great naval power has traditionally thought about a small naval power, but also the way that American naval historians have traditionally viewed the history of their own navy during the period when it had no pretensions to global power. Historians and naval thinkers have only slowly begun to understand that small navies Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

have distinctive purposes, functions and characteristics in and of their own, and that they are neither the remnants of a past great power nor a curious emblem created on the way to great power status. While either situation could be the case, there is also a rationale for establishing and maintaining a small navy as a small navy that intended to stay small. In examining American naval history on this issue, there are two separate, but interrelated, themes. The first is the slow and gradual development of a permanent naval force and the second is the new country’s policy towards merchant shipping in wartime and the navy’s role in relation to it.

CREATING A NAVY FOR THE NEW AMERICAN REPUBLIC

At the time of the American Revolution, the colonists were well aware of the sea as an important highway of communication, as a source of food and as a place for battle, if necessary.2 Because of this widespread understanding, many people shared in the natural impulse to arm ships at public expense to further their own protection and to promote their own cause in the face of British maritime power. Typical of this natural impulse, the first armed action at sea during the war for independence occurred in May 1775, when a local militiaman at Machias, Maine, Jeremiah O’Brien, with a group of his fellow militiamen, engaged and captured a small British armed vessel. Meanwhile American representatives from all the 13 colonies gathered in Congress. For a period of nearly 25 years, from 1775 through the 1790s, they examined and debated nearly every fundamental aspect of representative democracy and the institutions appropriate to a republic. At that period, the powers of Congress were limited and, at the outset, the Continental Congress had limited resources. In one of its very first discussions about naval affairs on 18 July 1775, the Continental Congress delegated the matter to each of the 13 individual colonies, asking That each colony, at their own expence make such provision by armed vessels or otherwise … for the protection of their harbours and navigation on their sea coasts, against all unlawful invasions, attacks and depredations, from cutters and ships of war.3

Shortly afterwards, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Virginia each had established a separate, tiny navy of their own, some comprising only a few flatboats and row galleys while others were made of up substantial, sea-going vessels. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

An additional need soon grew to have a naval force that could operate on broader terms than just the needs of an individual colony. This became apparent when George Washington’s Continental Army began to arm vessels at Beverley, Salem and Marblehead to support the land operations against British forces in Massachusetts in September 1775.

THE CONTINENTAL NAVY

Shortly after that, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed a resolution ‘that the building and equipping of an American fleet, as soon as possible, would greatly conduce to the preservation of lives, liberty and property of the good people of these colonies’.4 The Rhode Island delegation to the Continental Congress laid this resolution before Congress and it was debated on 3 October 1775, without any specific result, as some delegates felt that establishment of a navy would preclude the possibility of reconciliation with Britain. Two days later, Congress received intelligence that two unarmed English brigs carrying supplies to the British Army had set sail from England for Quebec without any convoy protection. Hearing this news, Congress appointed a committee to consider how they could best take advantage of this opportunity. The committee immediately recommended that Congress equip two armed vessels and order them to cruise to the east to intercept any such supply ships. Congress delayed action on the committee’s report until 13 October, when a letter from General Washington was read in Congress, reporting that he had already acquired three schooners at continental expense to cruise off the Massachusetts coast and to capture any British supply ships that approached those waters. By taking this initiative and fitting out ships at continental authority and expense, Washington had pre-empted Congress. With this step already taken, the members of Congress who had been hesitant to take the initial step could more easily agree to add two ships to the total. On 13 October 1775, the second Continental Congress took up the committee report and authorised the purchase and arming of two vessels ‘to cruize [sic] eastward, for intercepting such transports as may be laden with warlike stores and other supplies for our enemies’.5 With this act, the Continental Congress created the small naval force that came to be known as the Continental Navy. Today, the US Navy takes this date as its officially recognised founding date. Even though the US Navy officially uses this date as its ‘birthday’, it marks only the formal beginning of its immediate predecessor, not the service that exists today. The history of the Continental Navy was short, lasting only from 1775 until it was dissolved ten years later in 1785, when its last ship was Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

sold. In that short period, the Continental Navy had reached a reasonable size. Nearly 60 different vessels served at one time or another, 18 of them frigates of 24 to 32 guns, numerous smaller craft, and, at the other end of the spectrum, a 74-gun ship of the line.6 As it was acquiring ships, Congress also created an administrative structure that gradually evolved to support the small fleet. In establishing their first naval administration, Americans looked to the Royal Navy as a model, directly copying and adapting for their own use some of the basic British regulations and administrative structures in American admiralty and naval boards. George Washington famously observed to Benjamin Franklin in 1780, ‘naval superiority … was the pivot upon which everything turned’.7 However, the naval superiority that he had in mind was French, not American. France, with a navy appropriate to a major European power, was the only one that could, and eventually, did achieve the local naval superiority that was decisive in preventing the relief of the British Army at the key battle of Yorktown. Even this was achieved not merely through a simple calculation of the rival naval forces in American waters, but rather in the broader naval balance through which France had created threats to British interests in India, at Gibraltar, in the Channel and home waters, at the same time as Britain was trying to deal with the colonial uprising in 13 of its more numerous colonies in North America and the West Indies. Under this broader strategic umbrella, which had developed at sea only since the creation of the Franco-American alliance in 1778, the tiny Continental Navy accomplished far more modest objectives. Its famous captains, such men as Esek Hopkins, John Barry, Abraham Whipple, Lambert Wickes, Gustavus Conyngham and John Paul Jones, are well remembered in US naval history, but their achievements are largely those won by attacking the British at the periphery of their power as well as by raiding in home waters to force the Royal Navy to divert its resources from North America. The Continental Congress did not have the resources to create either a strong naval organisation or an efficient naval administration. Construction and repair were slow and inefficient, manning was difficult, supplies were scarce, and, on occasion, even the authorities neglected to send timely orders for sailing. For these logistical reasons, the small naval force lost opportunities and even war-ready ships lay idle in port for months. Arguably, the Continental Navy’s most important achievement was to maintain direct and regular diplomatic correspondence with Europe, safely convoying American diplomats such as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and others. One diplomat who did not sail with the Continental Navy, Henry Laurens, was captured. The tiny service proved successful in effectively carrying another much-needed cargo from Europe to Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

America, coins for currency. In addition, the fact that warships of the newly formed United States could show the new US flag in allied and friendly European ports physically demonstrated that Americans were willing and able to wield the symbols and instruments of national sovereignty. The Continental Navy joined also in a larger enterprise in which more than 1,697 American privateers attacked enemy trade in a way that had a much broader effect than any single action. While the direct impact was relatively small, the cumulative effect had an impact on the British economy by forcing up the costs of shipping and by raising maritime insurance rates. The occasional dramatic raid on the British coast and in European waters, such as the famous raids of John Paul Jones, underscored the trends that were already under way, creating incidents that joined other political forces that helped to coalesce British public opinion against the war.8 Beyond these broad effects, some individual actions did have an immediate result. The ability to capture a British ship and to bring home any war supplies it was carrying directly benefited the meagre resources of the Continental Army and Navy. On some occasions, even a makeshift naval force, such as that created on Lake Champlain in 1776, could have a surprisingly large effect. Although British forces defeated Benedict Arnold’s American naval forces off Valcour Island in Lake Champlain, the defeat was a tactical one. In the broader perspective, the Americans had succeeded in delaying for many months the British Army’s advance down Lake Champlain and prevented British forces from gaining control of the vital Hudson River waterway, providing a naval contribution on inland waters that was an element contributing to the British defeat in the Battle at Saratoga in 1777. In Mahan’s memorable phrase, the naval action on Lake Champlain was ‘a strife of pigmies for the prize of a continent’.9 During its 10-year existence, the Continental Navy played a very limited, albeit important role. Its purpose was to contribute to a civil war between American Englishmen and Englishmen at home in Britain, a revolution that brought independence to the 13 United States of America. In this context, the Continental Navy’s role was the maritime equivalent of peoples’ and partisan warfare ashore. With the Peace of Paris and American independence secured in 1783, the roles that the Continental Navy had performed were no longer needed. With the additional problems of finance and supply, it is not surprising that the little navy was almost immediately disbanded and there was very little immediate interest in trying to revive it.

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A DECADE WITHOUT A NAVY

The newly independent country was first governed under Articles of Confederation ratified in 1781 that created a legislative government dominated by the separate interests of its individual states and without an executive branch. While the Articles provided that Congress could build and equip a navy, neither the political support nor the practical resources were readily available to do so after the end of the war. Yet, in the immediate post-war period, maritime commerce was very clearly a fundamental interest to the new republic. In 1784, Congress developed a plan for the key issues that should be incorporated into all the treaties of friendship and commerce that the new country would soon be negotiating. Among issues that became recurring subjects in US maritime policy for a century and a third were the rights of neutrals in wartime. The main issue centred around the ideas that ‘free ships made free goods’, and involved establishing a clear definition of what a neutral vessel was allowed to trade, a definition of what items were contraband, what made an ‘effective blockade’ that would prevent neutral trade in wartime.10 Americans only belatedly realised that political independence from Britain did not bring unfettered commercial freedom at sea. In fact, the newly independent country found that suddenly it had lost the advantages and benefits of the normal avenues of British imperial trade from which it had long benefited. Now excluded from those benefits, American merchants had to create new markets and work around British economic dominance at sea. In 1785, one of the Founding Fathers, James Madison, even questioned the very advantages of independence, when he noted, ‘Our trade was never more compleately monopolized by Great Britain when it was under the direction of the British Parliament than it is at this moment.’11 However, that fact remained the commercial and strategic reality for the United States throughout the next century. The new United States had to learn to forge both its maritime commerce and its navy within the context of a larger maritime world in which Britain remained the dominant power at sea. On the one hand, this meant looking for new markets for merchant shipping and on the other, it meant that a small US Navy did not need to be concerned about the broad problems of naval supremacy or of naval competition. The awkwardness of the Articles of Confederation as the basis for governing the country soon became apparent and, in 1787–88, the Constitutional Convention set about creating an improved and permanent basis for government. Whether or not the country should have a navy was not a critical issue in the debate over the Constitution, but it was one that arose and the discussion surrounding it began a continuCopyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

ing debate as to what kind of a navy was most appropriate for the country and what the roles and purposes of a US navy should be. The political sentiments revealed in this discussion have persisted through the nation’s history. Having survived the country’s transition to superpower status, they may even still be found on the domestic political landscape in the twenty-first century.12 The range of views could be seen amongst such key figures as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. While Jefferson preferred to have a navy operating only in wartime, Adams saw its value in dealing with pirates and protecting trade, while Hamilton, even more strongly, saw a US navy which would allow the United States to be ‘the arbiter of Europe in America, and to be able to incline the balance of European competitions in this part of the world as our interest may dictate’.13

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE US NAVY

The discussions in the Federalist Papers and in Congress were exceptionally important, as they were some of the few occasions in the naval history of any country when the broad functions of a navy were examined and debated without an existing naval infrastructure and institutional bias. At the same time, however, this was all theory and debate, not action. It suggested the future and permanent spectrum of the nation’s political views about a navy, but the country still did not have a naval force afloat. The first step towards that occurred only in December 1793, when Americans first learned that, in response to Britain’s persuasive need to develop a coalition against Revolutionary France, Portugal had signed a peace treaty with Algiers. Up until that time, US merchant shipping had tacitly depended on Portugal’s ability to contain the activities of the Algerian corsairs. With Portugal no longer playing that role, American merchants wanted protection and, as if to prove the point, within a short time Algerian corsairs attacked US ships.14 After several months of committee work and debate, Congress passed with an 11-vote margin, ‘An Act to Provide a Naval Armament’. Becoming law on 27 March 1794, it provided for the procurement of six frigates. Taking the law one step further, President George Washington decided, on the advice of naval experts such as Joshua Humphreys, not to buy ships and convert them, but to construct four 44-gun ships and two 36-gun ships, using a new design. There was a contingency clause in the Act that provided that if peace was made with Algiers and the emergency ended, then the plans would be put on hold. The political opponents of the Act pointed out that such a force as this provided was entirely inadequate to carry out what was needed. As Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

work proceeded, progress on the construction of the ships fell behind as their costs steadily rose. In 1796, a diplomatic arrangement was made with Algiers and so work stopped momentarily on the unfinished ships. In a political compromise, Congress eventually allowed construction to continue on three of the six ships. The first of them to be launched was USS United States in May 1797, followed by Constellation in September and Constitution in October. Although completed, they were to be placed in reserve under the administration of the War Department until required for some emergency, such as that which had just passed. At the time, many Americans believed that they should never be allowed to be at sea in peacetime, where they might force the United States to become unnecessarily involved with a war in Europe or elsewhere. The election of John Adams as George Washington’s vice president and then, after eight years in that role, as the second president of the United States from 1796 to 1800, brought to power an individual who had consistently held strong views in support of the role of a navy. Eventually, it was he who was able to oversee a change in the political climate regarding the US Navy that led to its permanent establishment. ‘A mercantile marine and a military marine must grow up together’, Adams explained at the opening of his administration; ‘one can not long exist without the other’.15 Adams was a man who believed in peaceful, free trade, but, in the contemporary state of the world, a naval force was necessary for the protection of lawful and peaceful trade. His point was particularly underscored by the succession of events that had occurred after Britain and France went to war in 1793, when the United States found itself caught between the two rival nations fighting in the wake of the French Revolution. When American diplomatic overtures failed to resolve issues, in particular French violations of US neutral rights and attacks on US trade, John Adams sent a request to Congress in May 1797, asking that it create a navy that could protect American commerce at sea during this crisis, along with becoming a permanent system of naval defence. As tensions increased and France even refused to recognise American diplomats, Congress responded with a series of legislative acts. In April 1798, it authorised both the acquisition of 12 small, armed vessels and the creation of the Navy Department. Shortly thereafter, the Navy Department ordered the three frigates, United States, Constellation and Constitution, to sea for the first time. Later Congressional acts in May and June that same year provided for additional galleys and sloops, and finally in July, Congress voted to complete the other three frigates, whose construction had been halted at the time of the peace treaty with Algiers three years earlier. On his own executive authority, Adams soon established the country’s first navy yard at the capital in Washington, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

DC, and others soon followed at Boston and Norfolk. By the time that the quasi-war with France was over, in 1800, the new US Navy had commissioned 45 ships. As Adams so eloquently explained to the nation in his last address to Congress: While our best endeavours for the preservation of harmony with all nations will continue to be used, the experience of the world and our own experience admonish us of the insecurity of trusting too confidently to their success. We cannot, without committing a dangerous imprudence, abandon those measures of self-protection which are adapted to our situation, and to which, notwithstanding our pacific policy, the violence or injustice of others may again compel us to resort.16

From 1775, it had taken almost a quarter of a century of legislative consideration and debate, before the US Navy was born as a permanent and continuing institution in 1798. For the entire century that followed, the consistently recurring theme in the employment of the navy was the protection of US trade and the protection of American citizens abroad. In the years that followed, the United States moved slowly and cautiously as it created a series of forward deployed stations during the nineteenth century. It took just over 40 years, 1801 to 1843, to complete the pattern, which remained in place for the remainder of the century and into the twentieth century.17 Established clearly for the protection of US commerce and Americans abroad, they gradually and hesitantly grew. The first American warships sailed to overseas assignment in the Far East from 1800 and in the Mediterranean from 1801. These early deployments, however, did not immediately lead to a permanent naval presence in these areas, but this did gradually follow, with ships being rotated from the United States to and from a station, using foreign ports as bases of operations overseas, and creating an uninterrupted, but tiny, US naval presence on a world-wide basis. From 1815, the Mediterranean became such a permanent station for the US Navy, followed by the West Indies Station from 1821, the eastern Pacific Station on the South American coast from 1821, the Brazil Station from 1826, the East Indies Station from 1835, a Home Station from 1841 and a western Africa Station from 1843. These names changed in 1865, and several were combined into one. The Mediterranean and West Africa stations were combined into a European station at this point, while the Brazil station became the South Atlantic Station, the East Indies became the Asiatic Station and the Home Station became the North Atlantic station. These were only changes of name that more clearly reflected the wider cruising areas and that rationalised some overlap between stations, but made little change in terms of their function or purpose. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

This pattern of overseas deployment remained characteristic of the US Navy throughout the nineteenth century and up to the First World War. From the very beginning these distant operating stations had limited and specific functions. The Navy Department’s orders to Commodore James Barron in 1807 expressed the basic concept behind these operations, as they developed through the century and were applied to the other regions and stations: Being at Peace with all the world, our principal objects in sending publick vessels of War into the Mediterranean are: to protect our commerce and seamen against the predatory dispositions of the Barbary Powers; to keep them at peace with us, by a conciliatory deportment, and by displaying a force at all times prepared to protect our commerce; and to exercise our officers in the practical duties of their profession. These are justly considered interesting national objects … .18

This idea of protecting maritime commerce and American citizens abroad was the central focus of the ships on all these stations – all, that is, except the short-lived west African station, which was established to halt the continuing American participation in the slave trade. These were not major fleet deployments, but deployments of typically half a dozen, but sometimes as few as one or two ships, to a particular station for periods of, typically, three years. Almost always, American ships operated as single ships on individual and independent duty and not as a squadron of ships that formed a tactical unit. The total number of US warships deployed on overseas stations in peacetime varied during the century, but the numbers were never high. For example, there were 17 ships deployed abroad in 1830; 32 in 1850; 34 in 1870; and 20 in 1890. A survey of American naval history from 1775 to 1917 reveals that the American Naval forces fought in ten wars, yet that number of wars accounted for only a fifth of the period, 30 years out of a total of 142 years: The War for Independence in 1775–83, the quasi-war with France in 1798–1800, the War with Tripoli in 1801–05, the War of 1812–15, the Algerian War in 1815, the Seminole War of 1839–42, the Mexican War of 1846–48, the Civil War of 1861–65, the SpanishAmerican War of 1898, and the Philippine Insurrection of 1899–1900. While each of these wars had its particular strategic problem, four of them – the wars with France, Algiers, Tripoli and Britain in 1812 – all dealt directly with issues surrounding attacks on American maritime commerce. In addition, naval operations during the Mexican War, Civil War and Spanish-American War included substantial questions on how to deal with neutral trade from other countries. Throughout the greater part of these 142 years, the United States took an independent and neutral stance in world politics. From the beginning, however, neutrality presented a dilemma that required naval Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

force to protect and to sustain it. As the nation slowly developed the institutions to support and to maintain a small naval force, it was also developing a distinctive approach to its neutrality. Underscoring this long-standing opinion, the secretary of state informed the French minister in Washington in 1856: The United States consider the powerful navies and large standing armies, as permanent establishments, to be detrimental to national prosperity and dangerous to civil liberty. The expense of keeping them up is burdensome to the people; they are in the opinion of this Government in some degree a menace to peace among nations. A large force ever ready to be devoted to the purposes of war is a temptation to rush into it.19

This view was the prevailing and traditional understanding about the US Navy before the twentieth century and it directly paralleled a complementary, fundamental view about neutral trade. The policy remained clearly in place, although beginning in the 1870s and 1880s one can begin to find the first threads of practice that led to the use of the navy to promote trade directly and then to become more directly involved in foreign policy issues. This subtle change also paralleled a change that began to take place in the broader naval policy and the use of US naval vessels on forward deployed stations from 1898 onwards.

AMERICAN POLICY TOWARDS NEUTRAL TRADE

As a neutral trading country, the primary interest in its early period was in staying out of European conflicts and in promoting the commercial profit of its own merchants. International law, as generally understood in the closing years of the eighteenth century, clearly allowed this, but with some qualifications and differences of opinion on certain points between individual nations. The fundamental law of the sea had been established centuries earlier in the idea that any nation could have free access to and use of the open seas for its own peaceful purposes. By the end of the eighteenth century, it was generally recognised that states that were actively engaged in fighting a war were allowed a limited right to interfere with peaceful neutral, merchant shipping. In this, a warship of a nation at war could stop, visit and search a neutral merchant ship in order to establish its identity, the nature of its cargo and its destination. The warship could capture the neutral ship and seize its cargo, but only if the warship could prove in a court of admiralty law that the ship was performing a non-neutral act, such as carrying enemy dispatches, trying to run an effective blockade, carrying certain goods specified under international law as contraband and destined for the use Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

of an enemy armed force. In international law, the sovereign rights of a neutral state over its own ships on the high seas were absolute and a state could take whatever measures it believed appropriate in protecting its neutral sovereign rights. In practice, a small country like the United States faced a particular dilemma. The desire of a county that was actively engaged in fighting a war, quite obviously wished to force its enemy to an agreement and to prevent other states from coming to its enemy’s assistance. In the eyes of a neutral, searching a neutral merchant ship not only delayed the timely delivery of a cargo, but also contradicted both the basic principles of sovereignty and of neutrality. Moreover, several countries held different views about how to deal with privately owned property found on neutral ships. Of particular relevance to the United States in the years between 1793 and 1815, France and the United States refused to recognise the British practice of seizing enemy private property in neutral ships. At the same time, Britain refused to recognise France’s practice of seizing neutral property on enemy ships. In parallel with the gradual development of the US Navy, the United States also had a distinctive policy towards maritime commerce during war. This view was apparent from a very early stage in American history and involved its own regulations in regard to warships and to privateers as well as to the treatment it expected from the warships of other nations. The American view was not original to the United States, but based largely on the model of the treaty of commerce and navigation between Britain and France, negotiated and signed at Utrecht at the close of the War of the Spanish Succession in April 1713. The Continental Congress made the first formal American statement on this subject in its plan for treaties, passed in September 1776, and included portions of the Utrecht treaty as an example. The provisions of this portion of the Utrecht treaties, however, did not represent the generally accepted view in international law 65 years after the Utrecht negotiations. At that time, it was generally accepted that goods of a belligerent shipped in neutral ships were liable to seizure and that goods belonging to a neutral found in the ships of a belligerent were exempt from seizure. The example of the Utrecht provisions had, at that time, not yet been widely adopted by other nations in other agreements on the subject of maritime commerce. However, the founders of the United States were well aware that one major source of international law is the generally accepted practice of nations as they make agreements among themselves. With this in mind, they very consciously set out to try to establish a consensus around their views by establishing the concept firmly in the treaties that Congress undertook. The Treaty Plan of 1776 explicitly provided that ‘free ships shall also give a freedom to goods’. More specifically: Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

It shall be lawful … to trade with the same Liberty, and Security, from the Places, Ports, and Havens of those who are Enemies of both or either Party [to a treaty], without any opposition or Disturbance whatsoever, not only directly from the Places of the Enemy aforementioned to neutral Places; but also from one Place belonging to an Enemy, to another Place belonging to an Enemy, whether they be under the Jurisdiction of the same Prince or Several.20

The United States included this same provision in its treaty with France in 1778. Two years later in 1780, Russia made its own declaration on neutral trade, which coincidently incorporated some similar ideas. The Russian declaration stimulated John Adams, then serving in a diplomatic assignment in Paris, to make the first, original American recommendation on this subject. Reflecting on it, Adams wrote to the president of the Continental Congress and advised him that anything that suggests an association of states opposing the violence that Englishmen have used at sea is worthy of note. ‘For my own part’, Adams wrote, ‘I think the abolition of the whole doctrine of contraband would be for the peace and happiness of mankind.’21 Such a view was far more radical than others would accept as practical, but suggests the ultimate direction of American thinking and the importance of unhindered trade. Indeed, five years later, a provision to this effect was incorporated in the Treaty that the United States signed with Prussia.22 During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain found itself short of seamen to man its large navy and began to extend the practice of impressing seamen from the merchant vessels flying its own flag to American flagged vessels. At the time, the conditions of employment in American vessels were somewhat more attractive to merchant seamen than those in British ships, so there was very sound reason for British officials to look for their own subjects in American vessels.23 While Americans saw such impressments as a violation of their sovereignty in ships at sea, the matter was complicated by the fact that all Americans had relatively recently been British subjects and it was not easy to determine whether someone who was British-born was an American or not, particularly when American certification of citizenship was easily obtained. When British seamen deserted from British warships in American ports, American authorities had failed to provide the British government with assistance, even when the deserters had enlisted in the US Navy. It was just such a situation that led to HMS Leopard firing on USS Chesapeake in 1807, creating a vivid legend in American naval history. President Thomas Jefferson’s first reaction was not to use this incident to go to war, but rather to seek peaceful accommodation by asking for a formal explanation and closing US ports to British warships. At the end of that same year, in response to the British Orders in Council and Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Napoleon’s Berlin and Milan decrees, Jefferson attempted to create economic pressure on Britain, by placing an embargo on all foreign commerce with the United States. In practice, the effect was the reverse of that intended and the US economy suffered serious consequences.24 Other measures were attempted, until in 1812 the United States finally declared war on Britain. In a message to Congress, James Madison described the basic American view of the issue involved: We behold our seafaring Citizens still the daily victims of lawless violence, committed on the great common and high way of nations, even within sight of the Country that owes them protection. We behold our vessels, freighted with the products of our soil and industry, or returning with the honest proceeds of them, wrested from their lawful destinations, confiscated by prize courts, no longer the organs of public Law, but the instruments of arbitrary Edicts; and their unfortunate crews dispersed and lost or forced or inveigled in British ports, into British fleets: whilst arguments are employed, in support of these aggressions, which have no foundation but in a principle, equally supporting a claim to regulate our external commerce, in all cases whatsoever.25

After nearly three years of fighting, the peace treaty signed at Ghent that concluded the War of 1812 failed to reach any agreement with Britain on the fundamental issues that had led the United States into the war in the first place. However, American experience of the war itself helped to crystallise and to underscore for Americans a national view towards neutral trade and the freedom of the seas. The national legends that grew up during the century that followed about the navy’s role in the War of 1812 emphasised such slogans as ‘Don’t give up the ship’ and ‘Free trade and sailors’ rights’. These views also paralleled and underscored the primary focus for the US Navy during the nineteenth century in protecting US mercantile interests abroad.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN US POLICY TOWARDS NEUTRAL TRADE

From these first beginnings, the United States developed a distinctive, and fairly consistent, view on the freedom of the seas that lasted, at least, until the US entry into the First World War. In terms of the specific points of international law, these gradually expanded and centred around seven specific themes: • enemy goods in neutral ships • neutral goods in enemy ships Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

• • • •

definitions of contraband continuous voyage and the rule of 1756 validity of blockade immunity of private property at sea.

During the Crimean War, the British and French governments had eventually agreed to the general principle that, with the exception of contraband, free ships made free goods. In the Declaration of Paris following that war, American diplomats were pleased that it had a provision on this matter, even though the US government did not sign the final agreement. The United States, however, did sign six other treaties containing such a provision and applied it during the Civil War and during the Spanish-American War. The United States declined signing the Declaration for several reasons. One of them involved the fact that the Constitution granted the president the power to issue letters of marque and reprisal. The United States could not legally agree to a treaty for the abolition of privateering without first changing the Constitution. Yet there were also other reasons.26 In later explaining why it had declined to join in the Declaration of Paris, Secretary of State Lewis Cass wrote in 1859: The United States indeed declined to become a party to the Paris Conference, though that circumstance does not affect the position they occupy. They did so for the most satisfactory reasons, because the propositions were not divisible, and because they were required to surrender a mode of maritime warfare peculiarly adapted to their condition and pursuits, and essential to their defense upon the ocean. It was not that the propositions went too far, but because they did not go far enough, that this country felt it its duty to withhold its concurrence from the acts of the conference.27

Continuing on, Secretary Cass made the larger point As far as reasonably practicable, the evils of war should be confined to the parties engaged in it; and neutral nations have a right to demand, that their interests should not be effected, unless, when brought into contact with hostile operations fairly adapted to promote the submission of an enemy.28

With this in mind, the United States opposed the abolition of privateering without the further extension of the prohibition to the capture of all private property at sea. By just abolishing privateering, which the United States regarded as a controlled form of state-sponsored warfare at sea, neutral states were placed entirely at the mercy of nations with Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

large navies. Americans saw that agreeing to the Paris Declaration’s formulation on this point would have ceded one of the few practical responses that a small neutral nation had in response to a major naval power’s attempts to control the seas. On the matter of neutral goods in neutral ships, the United States consistently held that neutral goods that were not contraband were not open to capture. On the issue of contraband, Adams had stated the most extreme position in his desire to eliminate it, but no country other than Prussia accepted this suggestion in formal treaties, although the United States repeatedly advocated it. Interestingly, the United States issued no lists of contraband goods to guide naval officers or consular officials in dealing with foreign merchant vessels during the War of 1812 or during the War with Mexico. During the Civil War, American diplomats circulated a strict list of contraband narrowly confined to arms, munitions and naval stores. In June 1865, President Andrew Johnson declared contraband to be only ‘arms, ammunition, all articles from which ammunition is made and gray uniforms and cloth’.29 Three further subjects that involved difficult points of international law were also ones that interfered with neutral shipping and neutral profits. The first of these involved the point that Americans had made from the outset, claiming that neutral trade should be freely allowed between enemy ports and with a neutral port. This view ran directly counter to a British view, known as ‘The Rule of 1756’, that did not allow wartime neutral trade when that same trade was not allowed in peacetime. When applied to the United States’ trade with the French West Indies in the 1790s, it prevented Americans from participating in the extremely profitable ‘long-haul’ trans-Atlantic trade from the sugar islands to metropolitan France.30 In order to avoid this, US merchant ships took their cargoes from the French West Indies to the United States, landed them there, and then reshipped them again to ports in France. British prize courts, however, saw what was happening and declared that cargo handled in this way was part of a continuous voyage. After the Napoleonic Wars, US diplomats attempted to make their views a permanent fixture in international law through a number of treaties that the United States made with the newly independent South American countries. During the American Civil War 1861–65, the US Navy broke with the country’s traditional attitude towards neutral shipping in wartime. During this conflict, the shoe was on the other foot and the Union Navy was the superior naval force dealing with the smaller Confederate States Navy. The US Navy Department ordered its warships to seize neutral ships and their cargoes – notably, those under the British flag – trading with the Confederacy. While there may have been in this some superficial sense of revenge for British actions a half-century earlier, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

nevertheless, it was a clear breach of principle and traditional American practice. Most infamous among the incidents involved was the case of USS San Jacinto commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, who in November 1861 seized the Royal Mail steamer Trent, while it was carrying the Confederate diplomats Mason and Slidell.31 While trying to justify a policy that was inconsistent with previous American views, the Lincoln administration claimed, on one hand, that the war was not one between belligerent states, but an internal insurrection. On the other, they argued that these neutral ships had directly or indirectly attempted to trade with legally blockaded ports and were therefore liable to seizure. This incident nearly created a war between the United States and Britain. The crisis passed, but in the post-Civil War period, the complicated and entangled diplomatic negotiations between Britain and the United States over the Alabama claims touched on many related issues that brought into question Britain’s neutrality through the indirect support that the Confederacy found in Britain during the Civil War.32 On the issue of blockade, the United States had always maintained that, in order to be valid, a blockade must present a direct hazard to shipping trying to enter a port. This definition had been included in the 1784 Congressional plan for treaties, although the young country was initially unsuccessful in getting any other country to approve of the definition, but in 1824 a treaty with Colombia heralded a series of treaties with Latin American countries that contained the provision. During the Mexican War, when an overly enthusiastic naval commander had declared that all ports of Mexico were under blockade, the Navy Department reprimanded him and instructed naval officers that no port was blockaded unless there was a naval force nearby that could make it hazardous for a merchant ship to enter it.33 Similarly, during the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Navy Department clearly stressed this point and went on to explain: If blockading vessels be driven away by stress of weather, but return without delay to their stations, the continuity of blockade is not thereby broken; but if they leave their stations voluntarily, except for the purposes of blockade, such a chasing a blockade runner, or are driven away by the enemy’s force, the blockade is abandoned and broken.34

Another related issue involved was the matter of the immunity of private property from capture at sea. In American thinking, Benjamin Franklin promoted the idea as early as 1780 and it was among the points that the US commissioners wanted to negotiate with Britain in the peace of 1783. This idea had several ramifications. Designed to protect trade and private wealth, making only belligerent government Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

property vulnerable in wartime, it also demanded the prohibition of privateering and any government encouragement to attack commerce. In instructing a US diplomat on this point, in hope of negotiating a general agreement on the matter in 1823, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams wrote that the United States was taking ‘the first step towards the eventual abolition in the Law of Nations of private War upon the Sea, an improvement entirely congenial to that of the final and total abolition of the Slave trade …’.35 Similar thoughts were consistently included in a variety of treaties, including those with Bolivia in 1858, Haiti in 1864 and Italy in 1871, but the United States slowly modified its stance to consider contraband. Making this point explicitly at the end of the Spanish-American War, President McKinley requested authorisation from Congress in 1898 to correspond with Governments of the principal maritime powers with a view to incorporating into the permanent law of civilized nations the principle of the exemption of all private property at sea, not contraband at war, from capture and destruction by belligerent powers.36

The following year, Secretary of State John Hay reiterated the same view in his recommendations to the American delegates at the Hague Conference, a conference, he noted ‘which has its chief reason for existence in the heavy burdens and cruel waste of war, which now affect innocent persons more severely or unjustly than in the damage done to peaceable trade and commerce, especially at sea …’.37 Despite the consistency in the American diplomatic position for more than a century, it is notable and indicative of the twentieth-century future that the US naval delegate to that conference, Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan, opposed the idea. Others soon followed his thinking that The exchange of goods, commerce, is the financial life of a nation, and it is now a commonplace that money is the sinews of war. Commerce, therefore, and especially maritime commerce bears to the military life of the nation at large just the relation that the communications of an army in a campaign bear to the efficiency of the army … Destroy the commerce of a nation and its military life is so far sapped as to reduce its powers of resistance and so to hasten peace … .38

Not all were immediately willing to accept this view. For others in the US Navy, the experience of the Spanish-American War had brought to the fore the issue that there was no clear codification of international law governing war at sea.39 With this in mind, Secretary of the Navy John D. Long directed Captain Charles Stockton to create a code. Based Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

at the Naval War College, Stockton had the example of the Code that Francis Lieber, a German-born Columbia University law professor, had drafted in 1863. Using it, Stockton extended to maritime warfare all of the fundamental ideas that regulated land warfare, including the ideas that came from the First Hague Conference in 1899 and the full range of views found in American diplomacy and policy on neutral maritime trade in wartime as well as on a century of US prize case decisions that severely limited belligerent rights over neutral shipping. Upon its completion, the US Navy formally adopted the Code in June 1900 as the guiding principle under which it would conduct itself during war. The new Code narrowed the limits on bombardment of unfortified coastal towns, forbade reprisals in excess of an offence, provided definitively that free ships make free goods, exempted mail steamers from capture, exempted coastal fishing vessels from capture, exempted neutral convoys from search, and classified contraband goods in a narrow way that might lead the way towards international agreement.40 The United States maintained the Code as part of US naval regulations for nearly four years. In 1904, the Navy Department withdrew the Code in February 1904 for the practical reason that it would put the US Navy at a disadvantage in a war with a less-principled state. At the same time, however, the United States continued with a concerted effort to get the international community to accept the provisions of the Code and to place it in international law through a formal treaty. The opportunity to do this came first with the Second Hague Conference in 1907 and then, with the London Conference of 1908–09. To support the government’s views in London, the United States sent as a delegate Charles Stockton, who had written the 1900 Code, with instructions to use it as the basis for the US position. Meanwhile, professional naval thinking and naval contingency planning in the capitals of the major European naval powers was diverging markedly from these ideas, making their acceptance increasingly less likely. Even in the United States, Mahan and his supporters were arguing that the United States should no longer view itself as a small, neutral naval power but as a great power. Writing to President Theodore Roosevelt, Mahan declared ‘Our weakness of a century ago is not expedient to our strength today. Rather, we should seek to withdraw from our position of the flag covering the goods. We need to fasten our grip on the sea.’41 In the last half of the nineteenth century, one can clearly trace the beginnings of the rise of the United States to global power. Its rise is tied to the Second Industrial Revolution and the American quest for economic and business opportunities world-wide. This paralleled a shift in emphasis within the US government from one dominated by Congress to one in which a strong president actively used the diploCopyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

matic, military and naval resources of the executive branch to extend the sphere of US influence world-wide. These developments in nineteenth-century US internal and external politics, as shown particularly during the presidencies of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, provided the basis for the changes that soon characterised US external policy in the twentieth century.42 With the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1914, the United States was once more deeply and directly concerned with the safety of its shipping.43 President Woodrow Wilson immediately declared that since the people of the United States came from many nations, it was the responsibility of the US government to remain neutral and to play the role of impartial mediator in the conflict. As soon as the news arrived in Washington that war had broken out, Wilson sent diplomatic notes to all the major maritime powers asking that the provisions of the 1909 London Declaration be used. Germany and Austria-Hungary accepted the proposals, but Britain stipulated so many modifications that no consensus was possible. In contrast to the situation during the last great war in 1793–1815, the US government did not uphold the principles of neutrality equally with both Britain and Germany. Thus, the Wilson administration acquiesced to Britain’s proposals for its economic blockade of Germany, compromising the traditional US views on neutral rights and freedom of the seas. In contrast US officials were quick to warn Germany that its declaration of a war zone around the British Isles led Germany to be liable to what the US government called an indefensible violation of neutral rights. By March 1915, it was clear that Wilson had failed to enforce equally from Britain and Germany a demand for US neutral rights and had clearly lost the strict legal basis for being a neutral.44 Shortly thereafter, on 21 July 1915, in a move that marked a superficial, but dramatic, shift in Wilson’s views on naval power, the president privately instructed Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels to begin to prepare a plan that could be proposed to Congress in 1916 for significantly increasing the size of the US Navy. Exactly a year after Wilson had instructed Daniels to prepare a plan and immediately after receiving detailed news of the Battle of Jutland, Congress passed an act authorising the construction of 156 new naval vessels, including ten battleships, ten cruisers, 50 destroyers and 68 submarines. Initially Wilson used all the arguments in the traditional US position on the freedom of the seas. In January 1917, Wilson told the United States Senate, foreshadowing his ideas about a league of nations and his 14 points, ‘There must be not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organised common peace.’45 A key part of this involved the common use of the sea, as Wilson put it, ‘the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. The freedom Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and cooperation.’46 In closing his remarks, Wilson summarised the three interrelated major points in his message by saying: I am proposing [to the world] government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of armaments that makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence. These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others. And they are also the principles and policies of forward looking men and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community. They are the principles of mankind and must prevail.47

The rhetoric sounded similar to that of a century earlier, but there were some notable differences in context, practice and objectives. While clearly based in US development in the nineteenth century, his vision was far broader and more idealistic than any of his predecessors’ had ever been. Earlier, Americans had sought to separate themselves from the entangling issues of the world, not create a new world order. More specifically, Wilson’s hope of maintaining an armed neutrality were quickly shown to be impracticable in the face of the submarine war, a type of warfare which used methods not previously envisaged in international law. In practical terms, submarine commanders were unable to carry out some of the provisions in international law that specified boarding and search, capture and adjudication of prizes, immediate advance warning of an attack on a vessel and rescue of lives from sinking ships. With the loss of 216 Americans and 21 US ships since 1914, Wilson emphasised the German submarine war not the doubtful legality of the British blockade, and declared, ‘The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations.’48 Four days later, Wilson signed the proclamation of war on 6 April 1917. The events that occurred between 1915 and 1917 marked the end of a period in which the United States as a small and non-aligned naval power advocated neutral rights in the broad terms of freedom of the seas. As America entered the next phase of its maritime development in the twentieth century, it did so as a great power and a world leader in the context of global war and crisis. NOTES 1. Oscar Wilde, ‘The Canterville Ghost: A Hylo-Idealistic Romance’, in The Works of Oscar Wilde. Lord Savile’s Crime, The Portrait of Mr W. H. and Other Stories Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

(Boston, MA and New York: C. T. Brainard Publishing, 1909), p. 131. Oscar Wilde (1854 –1900) first published this novella in 1887 in the Court and Society Review and, later, in the book Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories in 1891. I am grateful to Dr Michael Crawford, head, Early History Branch, Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC, for his constructive comments on an earlier draft of this section relating to the establishment of the navy. I have used a similar text in my essay ‘A Better Understanding of Naval History Makes A Better Professional’ (forthcoming). William Bell Clark (ed.), Naval Documents of the American Revolution (Washington: GPO, 1964 – in progress), Vol. I, p. 916: Journal of the Continental Congress, 18 July 1775. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 1236: Journal of the Rhode Island General Assembly, 26 August 1775. Ibid., Vol. III, pp. 441–2: Journal of the Continental Congress, 13 October 1775. For details of the vessels, see Howard I. Chapelle, The History of the American Sailing Navy: The Ships and Their Development (New York: W. W. Norton, 1949; reprinted New York: Bonanza Books, n.d.), ch. 2, pp. 52–114. Washington to Franklin, 20 December 1780, quoted in Dudley W. Knox, The Naval Genius of George Washington (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1932), p. 70. Gardiner W. Allen, A Naval History of the American Revolution (1916, reprinted New York: Russell & Russell, 1969), Vol. II, pp. 659–68. A. T. Mahan, Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence. (London: Sampson, Low, 1913), p. 18. Carlton Savage (ed.), Policy of the United States toward Maritime Commerce in War (Washington, DC: GPO, 1934) Vol. I, 1776–1914, pp. 157–60: Doc. 21, ‘Treaty Plan of the Continental Congress, 7 May 1784. Quoted in Raymond G. O’Connor, Origins of the American Navy: Sea Power in the Colonies and the New Nation (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), p. 59. For a detailed discussion of the early phase of this, see Craig L. Symonds, Navalists and Antinavalists: The Naval Policy Debate in the United States, 1785–1827 (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1980). Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, The Federalist (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), p. 87. For a detailed study of the formation of the US Navy, see Marshall Smelser, Congress Founds the Navy, 1787–1798 (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1959). Quoted in Symonds, Navalists and Antinavalists, p. 51. Address to Congress, 22 November 1800, quoted in David McCullough, John Adams. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 554. For a survey of this pattern, see Hattendorf, ‘The Nineteenth Century Forward Stations’, in the Proceedings of the Center for Naval Analyses, June 2001 ‘U.S. Navy Forward Presence Bicentennial Symposium’ (forthcoming) and Robert G. Albion, ‘Distant Stations’, US Naval Institute Proceedings (March 1954), pp. 265–73. US Navy Department, Naval Documents Relating to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers (Washington, DC: GPO, 1939), Vol. VI, pp. 523:

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19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith to Commodore James Barron, 15 May 1807. Savage, Policy, p. 388: Doc. 109: Secretary of State Marcy to French Minister Sartiges, 28 July 1856. Savage, Policy, p. 133: Doc. 4: Art xxvi, Treaty Plan of the Continental Congress, 17 September 1776. Ibid., p. 143: Doc. 7: John Adams to President of Continental Congress, 14 April 1780. Ibid., pp. 160–1: Doc. 22: Treaty with Prussia, 10 September 1785, articles 12, 13, 25. For a succinct overview of this, see Benjamin Labaree, W. Fowler, J. Hattendorf, J. Safford, E. Sloan, America and the Sea: A Maritime History (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1998), pp. 194–9. Ibid., pp. 201–13. William S. Dudley (ed.), The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1985), Vol. I, pp. 73–81: President James Madison to Congress, 1 June 1812; quote from p. 80. For a short overview of the right of capturing private property at sea and a comparative sketch of differing national approaches to privateering, see Francis R. Stark, The Abolition of Privateering and the Declaration of Paris. Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, Vol. VIII, No. 3 (1897, reprinted New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1967). Ibid., p. 456: Doc. 115: The Secretary of State to US Minister in France, 27 June 1859. Ibid. Ibid., p. 453: Doc. 135: Proclamation Removing Restrictions on Trade East of the Mississippi, 13 June 1865. Confederate uniforms for both its army and navy were made from gray cloth. Robert G. Albion, Sea Lanes in Wartime: The American Experience, 1775–1945, 2nd edn, enlarged (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1968), pp. 67, 73. See Norman B. Ferris, The Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis (Knoxville, TX: University of Tennessee Press, 1977). Stuart L. Bernath, Squall Across the Atlantic: American Civil War Prize Cases and Diplomacy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1970). Adrian Cook, The Alabama Claims: American Politics and Anglo-American Relations, 1865–1872 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972). Savage, Policy, Vol. I, pp. 363–4: Doc. 96: Secretary of the Navy Mason to Commanding Officers of the Naval Forces in the Pacific, 24 December 1846. Ibid., pp. 488: Doc. 148; Navy Department General Order 492, 20 June 1898: Instructions to Blockading Vessels and Cruisers. Ibid., p. 312: Doc. 71: Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to US Minister Rush in Great Britain, 28 July 1823. Ibid., p. 491: Doc. 150: Message of President McKinley to Congress, 5 December 1898. Ibid., p. 491: Doc. 151: Secretary of State Hay to the Delegates at The Hague, 18 April 1899. See Robert Seager II and Doris Maquire (eds), The Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1977), Vol. II, pp. 610–12, reprinting a letter to the editor, ‘Commerce and War’, New York Times, 22 Nov. 1898, p. 4, col. a; see also, Mahan, ‘Comments on the Seizure of Private Property at Sea’ [1906], in Seager II and Maquire, The Letters and

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39.

40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

Papers, Vol. III, pp. 623–6 and ‘The Hague Conference: The Question of Immunity for Belligerent Merchant Shipping’, National Review, 49 (June 1907), pp. 521–37, reprinted under the title ‘Maritime Capture at Sea’, in Some Neglected Aspects of War (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1907), a volume that also included Julian S. Corbett, ‘The Capture of Private Property at Sea’, The Nineteenth Century, June 1907. See Hattendorf, ‘Maritime conflict’, in Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos and Mark R. Shulman (eds), The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 98–115. For a detailed study, see J. Hattendorf, ‘Rear Admiral Charles Stockton, The Naval War College and the Law of Naval Warfare’, in Leslie C. Green and Michael N. Schmitt (eds), The Law of Armed Conflict: Into the Next Millennium, International Law Blue Book series, Vol. 71 (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1998), pp. xvii–lxxii. Mahan to Roosevelt, 27 December 1904, quoted in Richard W. Turk, The Ambiguous Relationship: Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), pp. 135–6. Walter LaFeber, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Vol. II, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 234–9: ‘Conclusion: The 1865–1913 Era Restated’. For a brief overview, see Labaree et al., America and the Sea, pp. 465, 469–75. Detailed studies are John W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981) and Daniel M. Smith, Robert Lansing and American Neutrality, 1914–1917 (New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 1972). Coogan, The End of Neutrality, p. 235. Savage, Policy, Vol. II, p. 544: Doc. 219: Message of the President to the Senate, 22 January 1917. Ibid., p. 546. Ibid., pp. 547–8. Ibid., p. 588: Doc. 243: Message of the President to Congress, 2 April 1917.

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Part IV: Sea Power or Collective Security? The Northern Waters between the Wars

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8

The Interwar Years: Naval Disarmament, Collective Security and Preparations for War TOM KRISTIANSEN

This chapter sets out to discuss some of the main formative factors in naval development in the northern region during the interwar period. When considering these issues after the end of the First World War, a number of fundamental questions arise. Did the Scandinavian authorities fully realise that their territorial and adjacent waters, as well as their exports, represented an important factor in the balance of power between the continental and maritime states in northern Europe in a modern war? And to what extent did wartime experiences influence their security policies? In Scandinavian foreign policy there was a clear tendency to emphasise collective security under the auspices of the League of Nations, the further development of international law and bilateral arbitration agreements rather than defence measures. Moreover, there was a considerable degree of enthusiasm for arms reduction by way of unilateralism and multilateral agreements. The latter issue will be addressed in Joseph Maiolo’s chapter. In this overall political climate, naval and military force was assigned a subordinate role compared to political, legal and diplomatic measures. More specifically, three topics will be examined in the following pages. Firstly, I shall consider the naval situation after the ceasefire in November 1918 and developments down to the outbreak of war in September 1939 when the Scandinavian states declared their neutrality. This will be followed by a brief look at the state of affairs before the German attack on Denmark and Norway in April 1940. Secondly, I shall discuss the state of the laws of war at sea during the period. The Scandinavian countries traditionally had based their war policies on neutrality in accordance with the duties and rights enshrined in interCopyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

national law. But what were considered to be the implications of the First World War for small neutral states in a total war, and what impact did their belief in collective security and international law and arbitration have on their naval policies? Thirdly, I shall give a brief account of the development of naval matériel and the possibilities it opened up. For minor naval states modern matériel offered an effective and relatively inexpensive alternative to traditional capital ships, which because of spiralling costs were beyond the reach of most small states. Moreover, the new naval matériel provided opportunities for evolving doctrines for operations in littoral waters to shore up neutrality and sovereignty.1 In the naval history of the northern waters, the interwar years constitute a rather short chapter. The reason is that naval historians tend to be more interested in wars than in the years of peace in between, even though it is during those years that the foundations of wartime performance are laid. Besides, academic historians in Scandinavia generally have not been much interested in naval or military history. This is so despite the watershed experiences of the First World War. The vital strategic and economic importance of the northern waters to Germany, Great Britain and Russia had been clearly demonstrated in anticipation of the strategic issues of the region that would prevail throughout the twentieth century. It might seem that the principles laid down in the laws of war at sea – evolved over centuries – were destined to yield when Great Power interests were at stake in a total war. For the German Navy the North Sea was, as Vice Admiral Wolfgang Wegener put it in the 1920s, ‘The Door to the Atlantic’; it was necessary to control this gateway in order to provide space for the navy in its efforts to secure German seaborne trade and naval operations against the enemy.2 As a consequence, it proved crucial for the Royal Navy to keep this door shut in order to maintain its dominance in home waters and thus contribute to Britain’s long-term war efforts. This is why First Sea Lord Admiral John Fisher as early as 1906 indiscreetly informed (privately) the Norwegian representative in London, Fridtjof Nansen, that the Royal Navy would consider taking control of a Norwegian port in a war with Germany.3 For Russia the hazardous sailing through the Danish Narrows (and Bosphorus) in times of war necessitated a rerouting of trade and allied war provisions via the Barents Sea. From 1916 the opening of the Murmansk railway provided access to an all-year ice-free port connected to the Russian inland transportation system, in addition to the low-capacity winterfrozen port of Archangel in the White Sea and the ineffective and vulnerable transports from the north Norwegian coast via Finland to Russia that started in 1914. The first German naval operation in the Arctic Sea took place in 1915 when the Hilfskreuzer Meteor laid mines to stop allied war provisions that were harboured in Archangel.4 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Moreover, it was demonstrated during the war that the northern neutrals – Denmark, Norway and Sweden – were inextricably linked to the Great Powers by way of trade, strategy and politics. Despite the many conflicts of interest and temporary setbacks, the Scandinavian countries succeeded in maintaining their formal neutrality, and they appeared to constitute a political bloc during the war. This was achieved through a series of official meetings between the kings and the foreign ministers, as well as high-level consultations and coordination of policy based on an overarching assumption: that they would remain nonbelligerent at almost any cost.5 For Norway – most vulnerable to cross-pressure due to its geographical position, its large-scale export of raw materials to the arms industry and its heavy dependence on imports of fuel for the merchant and fishery fleets – the situation became so problematic from 1916 onwards that the government was forced to adjust its trade and war policies in accordance with British war interests. Norway’s intricate position has been characterised by Professor Olav Riste as that of a ‘neutral ally’.6 For Denmark and Sweden the situation was somewhat different since they were geographically and economically more closely linked to the continental powers. The Royal Navy was not in a position to exert its full power in that part of Scandinavia. Furthermore, there was little need for a British naval presence in the Baltic approaches and the eastern part of the North Sea as long as the distant blockade further west in the North Sea was effective. The main focus of this chapter is on the naval aspects of the waters adjacent to Norway. There are two reasons for this limited approach. Firstly, the country has a coastline that is 2,650 kilometres long, which runs from Lindesnes at 57 degrees north to Knivskjelodden at 71 degrees north. The North Sea and the Norwegian Sea are subject to especially rough weather. A continuous succession of low pressure areas from the west and south-west cause frequent changes of wind direction and strength. Weather conditions are difficult throughout the year, but in winter they can be extreme. Moreover, the rapid transition from deep to shallow waters often causes heavy seas along the coast. These factors make all kinds of maritime activities off the coast very demanding. Naval bases on the Norwegian Finnmark or south-west coast would therefore make it considerably more convenient for a great power to control the débouchés to the North Atlantic. Nonetheless, the large numbers of islands and fjords make the inner leads of the coast a protected sailing route, and the fjords and littoral waters are deep enough to float all kinds of vessels. Secondly, the First World War marked a shift from a concern with the Baltic and the Baltic approaches to the North Sea and the sea routes to the Atlantic (see Andrew Lambert’s chapter for the Royal Navy’s preoccupation with the Danish Narrows as a part of the Baltic issue in the years leading up to the First Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

World War). This made the Norwegian coast more important for naval strategists than in the pre-1914 period.

THE NAVAL SITUATION AFTER 1918

The Russian Revolution of November 1917 and the defeat of Germany in 1918 were followed by fundamental changes in the balance of power in the Baltic, the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. A few examples may illustrate these changes. In June 1914, German authorities gave notice that 46 vessels of the High Seas Fleet – 28 battleships and cruisers, 18 torpedo boats – would be calling at Norwegian ports.7 Extensive manoeuvres and visits of naval units had been carried out in Norwegian waters for almost two decades.8 Despite the growing wariness of the authorities, there was little they could do to restrict these activities in times of peace. Five years later, on 21 June 1919, none of these vessels was afloat. The High Seas Fleet was interned in Scapa Flow, and when Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter was informed that it was to be handed over to the Royal Navy, he ordered that the ships be scuttled to avoid the humiliation – 52 vessels sank. Fifty U-boats had already been handed over to the British authorities and were anchored at Harwich.9 The only serious challenge to British naval supremacy in northern waters had been extinguished, and consequently, the naval rivalry between Britain and Germany was no longer a concern for the Scandinavian authorities. Another example. Since the end of the nineteenth century Norwegian authorities had been suspicious of Russian designs in the far north. It was alleged that as a continental power Russia ‘instinctively strived for access to the high seas’,10 and consequently that a Russian expansion could be directed towards the north-west. Britain and France had guaranteed the Kingdom of Sweden and Norway through the November Treaty of 1855 which came about as a consequence of the Crimean War. According to the Treaty the dual kingdom would not cede territory to Russia and in return received a guarantee against Russian expansion. This Treaty was succeeded by the Integrity Treaty of 1907, two years after the dissolution of the Scandinavian dual kingdom. Russia – together with Britain, France, Germany and Norway – was a signatory to this treaty. In Russia there was a suspicion that the treaty had come into existence as a result of fear of Russian expansion. Owing to the uncertainty attached to Russia, Norwegian policy towards it had been both cautious, suspicious and reassuring. By the beginning of the 1920s, however, Russia had been so weakened that the Norwegian government dared to send naval patrol vessels to the coasts of Murman and the White Sea to protect Norwegian seal hunters who had been Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

excluded from their traditional areas of activity after the Soviet authorities had extended its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles in 1921. This even resulted in some confrontations with the Soviet coast guard.11 One final example. Since 1905 it had been generally alleged that Norwegian authorities regarded Britain as the guarantor of the country’s independence and integrity. This constituted an unspoken assumption in Norwegian security policy. During the years from 1918 until the middle of the 1930s, an attack on Norway seemed such a remote contingency that the authorities were willing to confront the British over conflicting interpretations of the extent of Norwegian territorial waters. Norway claimed recognition for a sea limit of 4 nautical miles measured from a base line which also placed the broad fjord inlets and vast areas of skerries under Norwegian sovereignty, whereas the British would only accept 3 miles measured from a base line that followed the contours of the coast. The strategic importance of these waters made Norway’s claim for the extent of its territorial waters a source of conflict before 1940. The territorial waters to which Norway laid claim were intended primarily to serve the interests of the fishing fleet, but, as a consequence, the inner leads of the coast became a protected sea lane. Several confrontations between British trawlers and Norwegian coastal fishermen occurred in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1934 Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden even decided to give British fishermen in disputed waters naval protection by sending the patrol vessel HMS Harebell to North Norway. Such confrontations at sea and around the conference table had been difficult to imagine before or during the war.12 These examples illustrate the extent to which the balance of power in the northern waters had shifted as a result of the war. Germany was degraded to the status of a third-rate sea power. The size of its navy was severely limited by the Treaty of Versailles. It was only allowed to keep six pre-dreadnoughts, six light cruisers, 12 destroyers and 12 torpedo boats. The remaining vessels were taken over by the allies. All German construction was stopped and submarines – the most dreaded of weapons among sailors from both belligerent and neutral countries – were prohibited. Germany only started to rebuild its navy in earnest after Hitler came to power in 1933. The Soviet Union also ceased to be an important naval power. The loss of extensive Russian territories in the Baltic reduced the number of western ports and the length of the coast significantly. Russia even lost its ice-free ports in the Baltic. A northern flotilla was established in 1933 at Poljarnoje. It consisted solely of small coastal vessels and submarines that had no ocean-going or offensive capability.13 It was obvious that the flotilla could do no more than protect the ‘northern supply front’, which gained increased capacity with the opening of the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

White Sea Canal in 1933. In 1937 the flotilla was upgraded to the fourth of the Soviet fleets, the Severnyj Flot. The initial plans for the new Northern Fleet were ambitious and comprised two battleships, a carrier, three heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, 38 destroyers and 60 submarines of various classes.14 Even though Stalin’s ambitious fleet construction programme had still not produced very impressive results by 1939, it demonstrated the importance attached to the northern waters by Soviet authorities.15 Against this background the predominance of the Royal Navy was to all intents and purposes unchallenged in northern waters until well into the 1930s – in spite of the limitations imposed on it by disarmament treaties and budgetary constraints. With hindsight, it is obvious that this extreme naval imbalance between Britain and the two great continental powers, Germany and the Soviet Union, could not prevail indefinitely. Immediately after the outbreak of war in August 1914, Norway mobilised parts of the permanent and all the mobile parts of its sea defences. The former consisted of the strong coastal artillery forts at the inlets to the major towns, the shore torpedo batteries outside Oslo and Bergen, the pre-positioned minefields and an elaborate coastal reporting system made up of both naval and civilian elements; the latter of the navy proper and a large number of chartered patrol cutters. Torpedo and gun boats together with the oldest vessels were used for surveillance and inspection, while the heavier warships and the various modern vessels with more speed and fire-power were kept as a strategic reserve.16 According to international law neutrality needed to be backed up by naval force at a national level. The mobilisation plans for the neutrality guard were based on the assumption that the Norwegian south-west coast was of great strategic importance for both Britain and Germany, and that the belligerents in the opening phase of the war would test the readiness and ability of the Norwegian Navy to intervene. Such neutrality infringements were carried out by the Royal Navy off Stavanger a few days after the outbreak of war. It was of particular importance to ascertain that the enemy would not have easy access to Norwegian assets. Instead of being forced to strengthen the neutrality guard step by step as a response to evolving incidents, the authorities ordered a full mobilisation of the maritime defence system, which could then be gradually reduced on the basis of operational needs. The neutrality guard was able to carry out a fairly effective control of Norwegian territorial waters throughout the war. However, it proved impossible for Norway as a third-rate naval power to protect the large merchant fleet (which was the fourth largest in the world) in international waters. Non-belligerent Norway lost more than 2,000 sailors and 1,000 vessels during the war. This was the background for the fundamental disagreement over naval policy in Norway in the interwar years. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

One strand of thinking claimed that the navy should primarily act as a neutrality guard, but at the same time retain the capacity to escalate action to limited war if a deliberate infringement of neutrality turned out to be an effort to seize a naval base on the coast. Another strand of thinking supported the building of an ocean-going fleet capable of defending the sea lines of communication and the merchant navy in international waters. As a result of the tight budgetary constraints in the years up to 1937, both options – in particular, the latter – turned out to be unfeasible. After the completion of the six B-class submarines in 1929, the Norwegian Navy commissioned only two patrol vessels and an ocean-going minelayer.17 Only in 1936 was the first modern destroyer of the Sleipner class launched and five more were to follow before 1940.18 The change in Norwegian defence policy came at the beginning of 1937 after the government in December 1936 had decided to grant substantial extraordinary defence appropriations. That was too late to have any significant effect on the navy. The situation was therefore critical at the outbreak of war in September 1939. The plans for the neutrality guard were identical to those presented above. Nonetheless, the Norwegian Navy was only able to mobilise a fleet half the size of that of 1914 and the majority of the warships were out of date. Moreover, the government decided that only a part of the coastal artillery, none of the shore-based torpedo batteries and none of the prepositioned minefields were to be mobilised. Due to the previously mentioned budgetary constraints the navy had not been able to modernise the fleet, train a sufficient number of officers and men or maintain operational standards. The material and operational status was similar for the coastal defences. It was thus evident that the various socialist and non-socialist governments of the interwar years had chosen to ignore the security challenges that had arisen during the First World War and had resorted to a security policy in which diplomacy, international law and arms reduction agreements constituted the main security measures. There were abundant warnings from the defence leadership against a security policy without an element of force, and which assumed that neutrality did not need military protection. Moreover, these warnings were at the outset based on Norway’s strategic and economic position, the experiences of the First World War and the development of modern technology, which made even the remote parts of the country accessible to power projection. In 1936 the chief of the Norwegian general staff, Colonel Otto Ruge, summed up the challenges that Norway faced. Since the country is ‘situated on the bank of one of the main routes of international trade’, he claimed that Norway was in immediate danger of finding itself ‘in the field of fire’ at the outbreak of the next Great Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Power war.19 Ruge’s alarmist views found little support in Parliament and in parts of the defence establishment. They considered that Norway’s remoteness in combination with British naval superiority and international law made up a viable security setting which only needed rudimentary defence measures for observation and marking of neutrality breaches. Colonel Ruge maintained that Norway had to give priority to its navy and air force because of its proximity to strategically sensitive areas. This was perceived as a provocation within the army, which was the senior service. From a strategic and naval point of view, the experiences of the First World War were clear and conclusions could easily be drawn from them. This was equally true for the Great Powers and the northern neutrals. As already mentioned, the northern waters were of great strategic and economic importance for all the states in the region. During the total war of 1914 –18 it had proved impossible to maintain trade according to the letter of international law when neutrality conflicted with the interests of the dominant sea power, and when it could not be backed up by effective force. When the United States entered the war in 1917, an essential precondition for continued neutrality disappeared. Norway, in particular, was caught in the crossfire, and was forced to comply with the policies of Great Britain. The major strategic challenges of the period up to 1918 seemed altogether irrelevant after the defeat of Germany and the dissolution of the Russian empire. In addition, the establishment of the new European states system shaped by the Paris Peace Conference reinforced this shift. But it was not to be permanent. It proved very difficult for the Scandinavian states to adapt in time to the transition from an environment without detectable threats to the Great Power rivalries of the latter part of the 1930s. By the end of the 1930s developments had come full circle for the Norwegian authorities. This meant a reappearance of the strategic challenges from the period up to 1918, the most important of which was the Royal Navy’s ability to control the entrances to the Atlantic. The issue of seizing a base on the Norwegian coast was not on the agenda before the late 1930s because of the strong position of the Royal Navy in home waters and the lack of a serious challenge before the German Navy had regained some of its strength. In March 1939 it again was stated explicitly in the Foreign Office that Britain would automatically intervene – in an unspecified way – were Germany to attack Norway: ‘a glance at the map ought to show [the Norwegians] that we could never allow so vital a strategic position [the Stavanger region] for attack on Great Britain to fall into German hands without a fight’, wrote Laurence Collier, the Head of the Northern Department at the Foreign Office.20 In September 1939 the British representative in Oslo, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Sir Cecil Dormer, was instructed to make a ‘confidential but formal intimation … to the Norwegian Government to the effect that His Majesty’s Government would regard a German attack on Norway as tantamount to an attack on this country’.21 To quote Patrick Salmon: ‘the commitment to Norway’s defence had … been made’.22 The possibility that a great power under certain circumstances would seek to secure a naval base on the Norwegian south-west coast was looked upon by the Norwegian Army leadership before 1940 as a worst-case scenario. It was the impetus for both their operational thinking and suggestions for procurement policies. However, as a result of the lack of financial resources Norway did not finish the plans for such contingencies. And as already mentioned, the majority of politicians and influential representatives of the defence leadership did not share the fears of the army leadership. They were convinced that a coastguard without significant firepower would be sufficient for the tasks they envisaged. When collective security broke down towards the end of the 1930s, the Scandinavian small states tried to reactivate their previous neutrality policy and to establish the sea power necessary to protect it. For Norway a return to the traditional position of neutrality proved to be very problematic. Several serious incidents led Norwegian Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht to maintain that he felt ‘like a flea squeezed between two nails’ in the evolving conflicts between Britain, Germany and the Soviet Union.23 For the Norwegian government neutrality did not rest primarily on naval power. The framework of international law was regarded as far more important. But maritime law had been neglected for decades. In their entirety, the laws of the sea had been formulated during the period between 1856 and 1909.

MARITIME LAW

During the First World War it had gradually become clear that maritime law – the Declaration of Paris of 1856, the Hague Convention of 1907, and the London Declaration of 1909 (which was not ratified by the House of Lords in 1911) – was not adapted to the contingencies of a modern total war that turned out to be a long drawn-out economic struggle between the belligerents. This became evident in 1917 when the United States entered the war, and neutral rights no longer were protected by a major naval power.24 The question of defining a list of contraband was not solved and remained unsolved during the interwar period. The shared policy of all the Nordic countries in war was to declare themselves neutral. This was an uncontested policy with centuries of Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

tradition behind it, and their naval policy during the interwar years must above all be seen in this context. They all subscribed to the principle of armed neutrality, but in Denmark and Norway the question of escalation leading to the use of force in the face of deliberate violations had not been clarified at the outbreak of war in 1939. One problem faced by the Nordic countries was that membership of the League of Nations made neutrality difficult if a member state were to launch an unsanctioned war. According to the Covenant, the League could then carry out both economic and military sanctions against the offending state. This position was unproblematic as long as war seemed a remote possibility, and the League had a fairly good record in resolving conflicts in the 1920s. When international affairs took a more serious turn in the second half of the 1930s, the Nordic states sought to loosen their commitment to the sanctions regime to avoid being involved in conflicts to which they were not a party. A Norwegian historian has aptly described this policy as the ‘flight from Geneva’.25 The idea of wartime alliances with Great Powers was practically inconceivable in the Scandinavian countries both before and after the First World War. However, there was a continuous debate about Nordic defence cooperation which was discussed in terms of Nordic neutrality or peace union. Because of diverging security policies, these efforts did not produce any results except for agreements on coordination of surveillance, exchange of intelligence and arms production.26 As already mentioned, parts of maritime law had been seen as too diffuse and unsuited to the realities of modern industrial society and international trade when it was applied during the First World War. When whole societies were at war with one another, almost all categories of goods could be classified as contraband – if not legally, then de facto. In the eyes of the belligerent Great Powers the letter of the law was considered irrelevant when their existence was at stake. The major problem was that maritime law had not been further developed on the basis of the experiences of the First World War because both the new states system and international institutions were supposed to prevent conflict, and thus in the long term make the laws of war superfluous. With the collapse of collective security, however, the northern neutrals sought protection under the old rules that were still legally binding. In an article in January 1940 the American expert in international law, W. Friedman, commented that the collapse of the League of Nations had ‘left a world that had travelled a long way from the social economic and political conditions which had produced the rules of neutrality as laid down in the Hague Conventions and the Declaration of Paris’.27 Nonetheless, the northern neutrals sought refuge in this legal regime, something which for Norway posed a foreign policy dilemma in Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

addition to the fact that the laws of war at sea could seem outdated in a modern war. On the one hand, Norwegian authorities regarded Britain as a guarantor of Norwegian integrity, and they sympathised openly with the Western democracies in the evolving conflicts with the totalitarian states. Germany and the Soviet Union only received support from marginal groups. On the other hand, it was realised that Britain in a conflict with Germany or the Soviet Union could be forced to challenge Norwegian neutrality at sea since vital British security interests were dependent on its control of home waters. Norway’s strict compliance with neutrality law would benefit Germany since it meant that Germany had protected sailing and thus a better chance to break the Royal Navy’s blockade. Several incidents after the outbreak of war in 1939 showed that this dilemma was impossible to handle within the framework of international law. The incidents that attracted most international attention were the Altmark affair in February 1940, which triggered Hitler’s decision to invade Norway, and the British minelaying of Norwegian waters on 8 April 1940, which coincided with the German attack.28

DEVELOPMENTS IN NAVAL MATÉRIEL

Both before and during the First World War the maritime nations had reaped the harvest of the nineteenth-century revolution in naval technology. All navies had introduced armoured and high-speed vessels. Artillery was greatly improved both technically and operationally: range, speed, penetration, explosive force and precision had all been markedly improved. The evolution of ever-heavier guns had made the platforms, whether they were ships or coastal forts, larger and consequently more expensive. This also made them less accessible for small countries with limited resources. In addition to artillery, mines and torpedoes were similarly developed. Mines had originally been defensive weapons which first proved their worth during the American Civil War (1861–65) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). During the First World War they carried an explosive load of around 200 kilos and the depths at which they could be anchored increased from around 150 to more than 350 metres. They were used as offensive weapons both against shipping and in blockades. Large areas of the North Sea were suitable for mine warfare because it is shallow and carries a lot of traffic. The potential of the modern mine was demonstrated on a large scale in 1917–18 when the British and Americans laid down a barrier between Scotland and the Norwegian sea limit – in all about 70,000 mines. Subsequently, the Norwegian Navy was forced to mine its own territorial waters in the vicinity of Karmøy. Thus Norway became part of the allied North Sea barrage.29 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

The torpedo also increased its speed, range and explosive force. The war showed how effective it had become, although it achieved its greatest successes in attacks on enemy vessels in harbours or at anchor. From the perspective of the smaller states it was a cheap weapon compared to artillery because it could be fired from cheaper platforms such as light and fast boats, aircraft and submarines. The Norwegian coast was also well suited for land-based torpedo batteries. The torpedo had become a serious contender in the old race between artillery and armour. The submarine was probably the weapon with the greatest effect for the smaller states. The limitations on the ability of the great powers to detect and counter this threat in coastal waters make it easy to understand why the Royal Navy, for example, tried during the interwar years to limit the number and size of submarines. Even the Norwegian Navy’s B-Class of 365-ton submarines built during the years 1922–29 would have been affected by the restrictions that the British sought to impose on tonnage.30 Why go into the details of technological developments? For the small states forced to fall back on littoral operations, these changes opened up opportunities they had not previously had. The new matériel was effective with regard to their defence needs, and costs were not nearly as prohibitive as they were in regard to the heavier types. The smaller states could develop doctrines that enabled their weaker links to multiply force when they interacted. They could thus make an attack by a great power a far more risky and costly undertaking. Great Power fleets could not exert their full force in coastal operations. An asymmetrical element entered into the balance between great and small navies, the consequences of which were difficult to calculate. It is useful to remember that it was a partly mobilised coastal fort manned by reservists that sank the heavy cruiser Blücher in the Oslo Fjord on 9 April 1940; and that the Royal Navy expected to lose three cruisers when it considered a frontal attack on the town of Trondheim as the initial action to reconquer mid-Norway during the campaign in 1940.31 From a technological and operational perspective the interwar years provided the smaller states with new opportunities to develop effective navies to protect neutrality and defend nerve centres along the coast. But it was the overarching international, domestic and economic framework that for most of the period determined naval policy in the majority of states – not new technological opportunities and operational needs. This was evident in the autumn of 1939 when the Norwegian government only managed to mobilise half of the coastal defence system it had established in August 1914.32

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CONCLUSION

Norwegian government and military authorities were well aware of the strategic importance of the northern waters, though it is not clear if the government fully realised that Norway was linked to the balance of power between the continental and maritime powers. Neither Parliament nor public opinion was well informed. For much of the period they lived in a kind of fools’ paradise in which geographical distance to the Continent, international law and the assumption of British assistance were regarded as sufficient means of defence per se. The main problem towards the end of the 1930s was to reactivate an almost defunct coastal defence and a legal system that had proved insufficient during the First World War at a time when northern Europe was rapidly gaining in strategic importance. It was the lack of long-term planning in naval policy and the belief in effective advance warning that were to prove catastrophic for Norway.

NOTES 1. T. Kristiansen, ‘Krigsplaner og politikk. Norsk krigspolitisk og strategisk tenkning mellom demokratisering, profesjonalisering og teknologisk modernisering’ (Dissertation, University of Bergen 2002). 2. ‘Die Tür zum Atlantik’, W. Wegener, Die Seestrategie des Weltkrieges: Zweite durchgesehene und erweiterte Auflage, 2 edn (Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1941), p. 13. 3. R. Omang, Norge og Stormaktene 1906–1914 (I). Kilder til Integritetstraktaten (Oslo: Skrifter, Det Kgl. Utenriksdepartement, 1957), Doc. no. 134, Fridtjof Nansen to Foreign Secretary Jørgen Løvland, 13 March 1907. 4. Vizeadmiral Eberhard von Mantey et al., Unsere Marine im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Berlin: Brunnen, 1927), p. 153. 5. R. Berg, ‘Nordisk samarbeid 1914–1918’, IFS Info, 4 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 1997). 6. O. Riste, The Neutral Ally. Norway’s Relations with Belligerent Powers (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1965). 7. PRO, FO 371/2056, Minister Findlay (Oslo) to Foreign Office, 16 June 1914. 8. B. Marshall, Reisen und Regieren: die Nordlandfahrten Kaiser Wilhelms II (Heidelberg: Skandinavistische Arbeiten, no. 9: 1991); T. Kristiansen, ‘Mellom landmakter og sjømakter. Norges plass i britisk forsvars- og utenrikspolitikk 1905–14’ (Dissertation, University of Oslo, 1988). 9. D. van der Vat, The Great Scuttle. The Sinking of the German Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919 (London: Grafton Books, 1982). 10. J. P. Nielsen, ‘Ønsket tsaren seg en isfri havn i nord?’, Historisk Tidsskrift, 4 (1991), p. 609. 11. R. Scheen, ‘Da Heimdal dominerte på selfangstfeltet i Østisen’, Norges Sjøforsvar, 4 (1931). 12. O.-B. Fure, Mellomkrigstid 1920–1940, Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie, Vol. III (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1996), pp. 77–107. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

13. According to S. G. Holtsmark’s forthcomming book on Soviet–Norwegian relations 1917–53 the flotilla was made up of three small destroyers, three patrol vessels, three submarines and a few minesweepers. 14. G. Åselius, ‘The Soviet Naval Theatres in Soviet Grand Strategy During the Interwar Period’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 13, 1 (March 2000), p. 74. 15. J. Rohwer and M. S. Monakov, Stalin’s Ocean-Going Fleet. Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes 1935–1953 (London: Frank Cass, 2001); Åselius, ‘The Soviet Naval Theatres’. 16. T. J. Melien, ‘Vakt og vern. Marinen og kystartilleriet 1914–1918’, Forsvarsstudier, 1 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 1995). 17. The submarines were German constructions of 365 tons built in Norwegian yards 1922–29. 18. The Sleipner class is listed in Jane’s Fighting Ships as ‘destroyers’ even though they were only 597 tons. 19. O. Ruge, ‘Generalstabssjefen om vårt krigsberedskap’, Befalsbladet, 21 (1936). 20. PRO, FO 371/23652, N1674, minute signed L[aurence]C[ollier], 29 March 1939. 21. PRO, FO 371, 23658, Chief of Staff Committee Report, 4 September 1939, Cabinet Paper Secret No. C.O.S. (39) 7. Instruction given in PRO, FO 371, 23658, Foreign Offoce to Cecil Dormer, 11 September 1939. Dormer’s report in PRO, FO 371, 23658, Dormer to Foreign Office, 16 September 1939. 22. P. Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers 1890–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 45. 23. H. Koht, For fred og fridom i krigstid, 1939–1940 (Oslo: Tiden, 1957), p. 123. 24. See, for example, J. Coogan, The End of Neutrality. The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981). 25. N. Ørvik, Sikkerhetspolitikken 1920–1939. Fra forhistorien til 9. april 1940. Bind I. Solidaritet eller nøytralitet? (Oslo: Johan Grundt Tanum Forlag, 1960), p. 289. 26. S. G Holtsmark and T. Kristiansen, ‘En nordisk illusjon? Norge og militært samarbeid i Nord, 1918–1940’, Forsvarsstudier, 6 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 1991). 27. W. Friedmann, ‘The Twilight of Neutrality’, The Fortnightly, Vol. 147 (January 1940), p. 26. 28. E. A. Steen, Norges Sjøkrig 1940–1945. Bind I. Sjøforsvarets nøytralitetsvern 1939–1940. Tysklands og Vestmaktenes planer og forberedelser for en Norgesaksjon (Oslo: Forsvarets Krigshistoriske Avdeling, 1954). 29. Riste, The Neutral Ally, pp. 212–24. 30. Kristiansen, Krigsplaner og politikk, ch. 10. 31. R. Hobson and T. Kristiansen, Total krig, nøytralitet og politisk splittelse, 1905–1940, Norsk Forsvarshistorie, Vol. III (Bergen: Eide forlag, 2001), p. 298. 32. Ibid., pp. 246ff.

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9

Naval Armaments Diplomacy in Northern Waters: The Origins of the Anglo-Scandinavian Naval Agreement of 21 December 1938 J O S E P H M A I O LO

The history of interwar naval disarmament is dominated by the story of competition between the Great Powers. Topics such as the Anglo-US cruiser dispute of the 1920s and the Japanese rebellion against naval arms control in the 1930s attract the attention of naval and diplomatic historians. Franco-Italian naval antagonism is less often studied, but not entirely ignored. And, while the Anglo-German naval agreement of 18 June 1935 has received a great deal of scholarly attention, the talks that followed the treaty have not.1 Historians of this period overlook the complexities of naval arms control in northern waters, particularly the role of the small powers. In the summer of 1937, the British concluded two bilateral qualitative naval limitation treaties: one with Nazi Germany, the other with Soviet Russia. In April 1938, Britain signed a similar bilateral naval agreement with Poland.2 Finally, on 21 December 1938, Britain concluded a five-power Anglo-Scandinavian naval agreement with Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The aim of this chapter is to reconstruct the diplomacy of this last treaty – the Anglo-Scandinavian naval agreement. By examining these negotiations, I hope not only to shed light on a little-known chapter in the history of interwar naval disarmament, but also to cast some light on the tensions and common interests between Britain and the four Nordic countries. In one of the few books that mentions the naval agreement, Patrick Salmon argues that the Anglo-Scandinavian naval negotiations of 1936–37 provide evidence of Britain’s ‘indifference’ to Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the naval balance in the Baltic, and he suggests that, had the agreement come into effect, it would have ‘enhanced Germany’s [naval] preponderance’.3 In contrast, this chapter argues that the Anglo-Scandinavian naval agreement represents the culmination of a British effort to co-opt the Nordic countries into the containment of German and Soviet naval ambitions in northern waters. It also argues that the Nordic states – in one of the few examples of what might be described as a ‘common security response’ – cooperated in defence of their naval liberty vis-à-vis the Great Powers.

BRITISH NAVAL ARMAMENTS DIPLOMACY

The starting point for any discussion of interwar naval disarmament must be the purposes behind British naval diplomacy. Most historians attack British naval disarmament policy as either an ill-timed experiment in liberal internationalism or as a politically expedient evil perpetrated against the Royal Navy by cash-conscious Cabinets. In fact, by the 1930s, naval diplomacy had become a fundamental tool for the maintenance of British naval supremacy. The relationship between diplomacy and British sea power was well understood by Admiral A. E. Chatfield, the First Sea Lord from 1933 to 1938. In the 1920s, he had witnessed first-hand how naval armaments diplomacy had helped to ease the great burden of naval power. By formally accepting parity with the US Navy at Washington in 1921, for instance, British negotiators had cleverly defused a potential US bid for naval supremacy without jeopardising any vital British interests.4 When he assumed the post of First Sea Lord in 1933, Admiral Chatfield was determined to secure the empire with the same adroit naval diplomacy as well as a good measure of British naval expansion. Indeed, his aim was to reach by the mid1940s a renewed two-power standard over Japan and the largest European navy. Two difficulties threatened this programme of British naval renewal: one was industrial, the other fiscal. Britain only had sufficient industrial capacity to replace the existing battle fleet until about 1940. If the revisionist powers all began to build warships in earnest too early, the Royal Navy would find it impossible to keep pace and win a naval race. The related problem was one of cost. Global naval competition needed to be calibrated to what Britain could afford to pay to stay on top. After all, the admirals had to convince the politicians that sea power offered a cost-effective and realistic solution to Britain’s strategic predicament.5 Consequently, British naval armaments diplomacy must be interpreted as part of a broader programme to calibrate the rate of global naval expansion to Britain’s capacity to stay on top. To co-opt the rest Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

of the world into this effort, the Admiralty and the Foreign Office hoped to enhance the measures of transparency and qualitative limitation provided by the 1922 Washington and 1930 London naval treaties in a new treaty – what in fact became the 1936 London Naval Treaty. If all the naval powers exchanged warship programmes, so the British believed, then mistrust would be reduced. Likewise, if the sea powers did away with the Washington tonnage ratios, which only served to inflame national pride and spark pointless rivalry, then the quantitative naval balance would settle down into a natural order with Britain on top, followed closely by the United States and Japan, and then the other naval powers. In the new treaty, qualitative limitation would be reinforced to suspend what Admiral Chatfield described as the competitive principle of ‘going one better’.6 As Britain’s chief negotiator explained to the Scandinavian representatives in September 1936, ‘qualitative limitation was really of greater importance than quantitative and did more to prevent dangerous competitive building, since it prevented the evolution of a new type of ship putting whole classes out of date’.7 In other words, the British Admiralty and Foreign Office hoped to bring about qualitative standstill through a system of global naval limitation in order to prevent revolutions in warship design and naval strategy. German adherence to qualitative limitation, for instance, would commit Nazi Germany to an orthodox battle fleet, and prevent Hitler’s admirals from embarking on a revolutionary warship strategy premised on cruiser warfare. The precedent for this sort of unorthodox naval construction strategy existed. Outside of the naval treaties, Weimar Germany had developed the 10,000-ton/11-inch gun Deutschland pocket battleships, which were faster than more heavily armed ships and more heavily armed than faster ships. Revolutionary designs such as this were ideal for disrupting British trade. A new German fleet composed of such ships, along with light cruisers and ocean-going U-boats, could evade Britain’s main fleet and strike a deadly blow against the empire’s vital overseas trade. When German negotiators arrived in London in early June 1935, the Admiralty was not moved by Hitler’s ‘generous’ offer of a permanent 35 per cent tonnage ratio between the two navies, but by the German promise to adhere to qualitative limitation as agreed to by the Washington treaty powers. Thus, the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of June 1935, which permitted Hitler to build a conventional navy, was not the first act of ‘appeasement’, but a bold stroke calculated to commit Nazi Germany to following a longterm pattern of naval development that was the least dangerous from the Royal Navy’s viewpoint.8 For Sir Robert Craigie, the British Foreign Office expert on naval disarmament and the guiding hand behind British naval diplomacy, the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

signing of the London Naval Treaty in March 1936 was therefore a triumph. Britain, France and the United States had agreed to qualitative limitation in each warship category as well as improved rules for the exchange of information. Among other clauses, the British had secured a suspension to the building of heavy Washington-type cruisers – 10,000 tons armed with 8-inch guns – in the so-called cruiser holiday, as well as a non-construction zone between the cruiser and capital ship categories – thus outlawing revolutionary hybrids such as Germany’s pocket battleships.9 Although Japan and Italy had refused to join the 1936 London Naval Treaty, there were good reasons to suppose that Italy would do so, and that Japan might eventually do so if the treaty were a success. For the British, as Craigie argued, the next step was to secure the qualitative balance in the Baltic and North Sea. Although Berlin offered to sign the multilateral naval treaty, the French had opposed this step. So, in the summer of 1936, London and Berlin began negotiations towards a second bilateral agreement designed to bring Nazi Germany into the 1936 London Naval Treaty. As a precondition, however, the Germans insisted that the Soviet Union must also conclude a similar agreement with Britain.10 In 1936–37, the focus of naval diplomacy in northern waters was therefore on bilateral negotiations between London and Berlin and London and Moscow. There is insufficient space here to recount the details of these complex and often tedious negotiations. What is most germane to the theme of this chapter is the principal point of contention in these talks: the German–Soviet dispute over the construction of heavy cruisers (designated A-Category cruisers in the 1936 London Naval Treaty). The British had been anxious to stop the building of more of these Washington-type cruisers – which the Admiralty regarded as suitable only for busting British blockades – and had hoped the 1936 London Naval Treaty would prevent the naval powers from acquiring more in the 1930s. Unlike the five Washington Naval Treaty signatories, though, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, now just starting to rebuild their fleets, did not possess a legacy of these heavy cruisers from the 1920s. According to the terms of Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935, Nazi Germany was nominally entitled to build five A-Category heavy cruisers, but, after heated bargaining, the Germans had agreed (on paper anyway) to build only three to preserve the cruiser holiday. When talks opened with the Soviet Union in May 1936, the Russians claimed the right to build ten heavy cruisers of 8,000 tons, armed with 7.1-inch guns, but eventually agreed, under much British pressure, to reduce the number to seven. By the end of 1936, an uneasy truce was reached: Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia agreed to hold at three and seven heavy cruisers respectively, so long as the other did not build more.11 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

NAVAL ARMAMENTS DIPLOMACY AND THE NORDIC STATES

With this precarious German–Soviet heavy cruiser truce in mind, we can now turn to the role of the four Nordic countries. From the British point of view, there was a real danger that the small powers (including Poland) might do something to disturb the emerging naval balance between the Great Powers in northern waters. For this reason, the British government refused to turn the process of extending naval limitation over to the League of Nations. As Sir Robert Craigie reasoned, ‘it is indeed quite possible that, were our guiding hand to be removed, a number of minor Naval Powers might club together and produce a rival naval treaty which might prove embarrassing to our own interests’.12 For Craigie, the policy choice was therefore clear enough: the Nordic countries would have to be co-opted into the British effort to universalise qualitative limitation and to help maintain the cruiser compromise between Berlin and Moscow. However, as a consequence of the rise of Nazi Germany, British influence in Northern Europe was suffering. Scandinavia remained a vital British economic sphere, and there existed between the British and the Scandinavians a shared commitment to liberal internationalism, disarmament and democracy, but the challenge of the revisionist Powers had caused policies to shift.13 The British, overburdened by world-wide commitments and multiple threats, were forced to make some hard choices. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935 was one such choice. As mentioned before, the British signed the agreement because German adherence to the global system of qualitative naval limitation would further the Admiralty’s programme for defending British sea supremacy. Outwardly, however, the agreement appeared to condone Hitler’s blatant violation of the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. It also appeared to signal British indifference to the strategic situation of the small northern states, particularly in the Baltic. As Laurence Collier, the head of the Foreign Office’s Northern Department, lamented in July 1935, the bad impression made by the naval agreement in the region ‘seems to be deepening and spreading’.14 The reaction of the status quo Powers to Mussolini’s conquest of Abyssinia in 1935–36 further eroded the confidence of the small states. British and French reluctance to back the League of Nations and impose sanctions damaged British prestige in northern capitals. To be sure, joining the League did not mark for the Scandinavians an absolute break from their traditional policy of neutrality. In the 1920s, though, the promise of a transformed international system based on liberal principles persuaded many that the exchange of neutrality for collective security made sense because Geneva offered the small powers a greater voice in world affairs. But Abyssinia drove home the great risk of collecCopyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

tive security. Why should the small powers expose themselves to the wrath of the aggressive Great Powers when the founding members of the League refused to do so? Consequently, on 1 July 1936, with Nazi Germany outside the League of Nations, the Soviet Union appearing to play the role of its leading member, and France and Britain reluctant to commit, the Nordic states and the other former neutral countries issued a joint resolution repudiating their obligation to implement sanctions under Article 16 of the League Covenant. In effect, the joint declaration amounted to a retreat into neutrality.15 Of course neutrality could not solve their security problems. The Nordic states still had to contend with Great-Power rivalry in their region. The threat of another general European war raised the question of to what extent they should cooperate to secure their neutrality and fend off Great-Power intervention.16 During the 1930s, in the absence of a British commitment, the answer turned out to be not very much at all. The reason for this is clear enough: as Patrick Salmon has argued, a ‘fundamental divergence of interests’ between the Nordic countries prevented political and strategic unity. Norway’s geographic isolation and its reliance on British naval supremacy for security fostered a cautious approach to cooperation with its more vulnerable neighbours. Denmark was too exposed to Germany to regard talk of a defensive alliance as anything but ‘utopian’. Fear of the Soviet Union encouraged Finland to support Sweden’s policy of enhancing its own security and that of the region through closer military and political unity.17 Although these divergent interests did not disappear during the naval negotiations, as we shall see, what was striking about the talks was the way in which the Nordic states cooperated in defence of their naval interests. Nonetheless, the Scandinavian foreign ministers were initially very reluctant to participate in talks towards a bilateral naval agreement with London before the Great Powers had first, under the auspices of the League of Nations, signed a general naval treaty.18 ‘I gathered that one preoccupation of the Norwegian Government with regard to the naval treaty’, reported the British representative in Oslo, ‘was fear of Norway joining any particular grouping of Powers, i.e., in the event of some Powers declining to adhere and thus departing from her settled policy of neutrality.’19 In July 1936, however, despite their fears about compromising their neutrality, the Nordic foreign ministers accepted Sir Robert Craigie’s arguments that a series of bilateral agreements was a crucial step towards a general naval treaty, and that this diplomatic process would not violate the principles of the League. This shift in policy can be explained in part due to agreement among the Nordic foreign ministers on the real threat – a German–Soviet naval race – and in part due to their agreement that Britain was the only Great Power able, and some thought still willing, to offer assistance.20 Moreover, so Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

long as Berlin and Moscow accepted the bilateral process and joined the treaty system, there appeared to be little danger in antagonising these two Great Powers by negotiating directly with London.21 From the Foreign Office and Admiralty records, it is difficult to determine what the British expected from the Scandinavian navies beforehand. In order to counter-balance the growth of German and Soviet sea power in the Baltic, some officials in the Foreign Office’s Northern Department favoured the build-up of a powerful Swedish navy. In contrast, Craigie made his position clear: ‘From the narrow point of view of the naval negotiations, the less anyone except ourselves builds or plans to build the better I am pleased.’22 Turning to the Admiralty, perhaps the view of one senior officer is indicative of the Royal Navy’s general attitude towards small navies: ‘It is never easy to advise on small navies’, wrote the deputy chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral James, ‘because it is almost a truism that, if a country cannot build and maintain a really strong navy, it is better not to have a navy at all …’.23 Instead of costly armoured ships, which took years to built and place into service, Admiral James considered an asymmetrical strategy as the best solution for the small navies: in other words, a reliance on inexpensive defensive technologies such as small coastal submarines, light surface ships, mines and torpedoes. In retrospect, as Tom Kristiansen argues (in this volume), this sort of asymmetrical strategy might have furnished the small Nordic navies with force multiplying weapons of considerable deterrence value vis-à-vis the Great Powers. However, when the Anglo-Scandinavian naval talks opened in September 1936, the British quickly learned that the Nordic states did not intend to dispense with armoured ships.

THE ANGLO-SCANDINAVIAN NAVAL TALKS

The Anglo-Scandinavian talks were held at the British Foreign Office. There were three meetings: two on 15 September and a third on 17 September 1936.24 Sir Robert Craigie and Captain Phillips, the director of Admiralty Plans Division, represented Britain. Each of the Nordic delegations was led by its London minister or chargé d’affaires.25 Before the conference, the British had requested that each delegation include a naval officer prepared to offer expert advice on technical matters.26 Significantly, the four naval officers, who had earlier met in Copenhagen to coordinate their bargaining strategy, usually spoke for their governments. Much to the surprise of the British, the four delegations pressed for the right of their respective navies to build in the so-called zone of non-construction as contained in Article 4, paragraphs 3 and 4, and Article 6, paragraph 1, of the 1936 London Naval Treaty.27 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Article 4 (3 and 4) prohibited construction of capital ships with dis-placements between 10,000 and 17,500 tons and the arming of capital ships with guns of less than 10 inches. Article 6 (1) likewise prohibited the building of cruisers larger than 8,000 tons armed with a gun exceeding 6 inches. As mentioned earlier, the ‘zone of non-construction’ was written into the treaty to prevent the growth of commerce raiding hybrids such as the Deutschland class and to halt construction of A-Category cruisers. This ambitious and very unwelcome proposal thus caused the British real consternation. The Scandinavians claimed the right to construct ‘super cruisers’ and pocket battleships just at the moment when the Great Powers had endorsed the ‘zone of non-construction’. As Admiral Chatfield later warned, if the proposed Scandinavian amendments to the 1936 London Naval Treaty were accepted by the other signatories and written into the general naval treaty, it would ‘in effect create a new class of ship of the Super Deutschland type’.28 Worse still for London, Berlin and Moscow would probably exploit cruiser building by the small navies as a pretext to end the cruiser holiday.29 As his opening remarks indicated, Craigie hoped that the Scandinavians would restrict themselves to limited ‘replacement building’ that would conform to the new qualitative standards; he told the delegates that their ‘example would help to bring in other powers and lead towards that general agreement for which we all hope’. As the Scandinavians argued, the ‘zone of non-construction’ would prevent their navies procuring the sort of ships their planners now wished to build. In 1930–31, for instance, Finland had acquired two 3,900-ton ships, mounting four 10-inch guns of the Ilmarinen class. Captain Sundman, the Finnish naval representative, explained that these two 15knot coastal monitors were too slow to perform the role of cruisers: ‘in future Finland might wish to mount a smaller calibre gun, probably 8 inches [on ships of 28 knots] but by Article 4, paragraph 4, she could not mount this gun’. The Danish representative, Captain Hammerich, agreed. The Danish naval staff did not want ships as fast as cruisers, but 10-inch guns were too big and 6-inch guns too small for their requirements. The Norwegians likewise complained that they could not arm their ships with guns as big as 10 inches. Norway ‘was incapable of building the types of ship she was allowed to build’, Captain Bull protested, ‘with the exception of cruisers below 8,000 tons mounting 6.1-inch guns’. If Norway ‘could build 4 replacement ships under 8,000 tons with 8-inch guns’, interjected Mr Colban, the Norwegian minister, ‘it would satisfy her’. Ultimately, the Swedish reservation proved to be the most vexing for the British. Captain Öberg had been instructed to make it very clear that Sweden ‘wanted to leave open for the time being the limits of displacement of capital ships, reserving the right to go as high as 10,000 tons and to mount guns of calibres between 8 and 10 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

inches’. A parliamentary commission would soon sit to consider Sweden’s national defence, and the present government could not tie the commission’s hands in advance by agreeing to observe the ‘nonconstruction gap’. Craigie replied that the whole point of the ‘gap’ was ‘to prevent capital ships being built which would in fact be super cruisers’. Captain Öberg retorted that ‘the whole world knew that Sweden had not laid down a capital ship since 1915, but that she must now take into account the recent construction in the Baltic, including German pocket battleships and heavy cruisers’.30 As Admiralty officials privately admitted, the Scandinavians had an excellent case. Accepting qualitative limitation would ban the type of ship best suited to their purposes. ‘It is difficult not to sympathise with the Scandinavian powers’ point of view’, wrote Admiral Phillips. ‘The “gap” [of non-construction] in the Treaty is designed to suit the convenience of the Great Powers and its effect is to hamper the Scandinavians!’31 Craigie saw only two solutions. The first – the establishment of different qualitative standards for small powers – would certainly undermine the principle of universal qualitative standards and possibly wreck the treaty system. The second solution was to permit the Scandinavians to build a limited number of ‘non-standard’ ships during the lifetime of the 1936 London Naval Treaty – that is, in the five years before 1942. To make this limited deviation from the treaty norms acceptable to the Great Powers, especially to Berlin and Moscow, Craigie insisted that the Scandinavians build ships clearly designed for ‘coastal defence’. If the small navies armed their capital ships of less than 8,000 tons with guns of 10 or 11 inches, then, given the inevitable trade-offs between protection, gun and machinery, these ships would be slow and best suited to coastal operations. But Craigie also insisted that if the Nordic states built ships up to 8,000 tons armed with 8-inch guns, then they had to accept a speed limit of 25 knots to make it clear that these ships were not cruisers.32 The British proposal for a speed limit or some other self-denying ordinance did not get very far, especially with the Swedes. It should come as no surprise that Sweden’s naval ambitions set the upper limit for the Nordic bargaining position during the naval talks. Sweden had the largest naval potential and Swedish foreign policy at this stage aimed at strengthening Nordic cooperation and perhaps even organising a Nordic defensive alliance.33 Moreover, the question of whether the new Scandinavian armoured ships should be ‘heavy cruisers’ or more orthodox ‘coastal defence’ vessels reflected a long-standing internal debate within the Swedish foreign and defence policy establishment. Typically, for sea defence, the small Nordic navies relied on mines, torpedo boats and destroyers. The defender’s light surface forces were protected from an aggressor’s cruisers, destroyers and minesweepers by better-armed Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

and protected coastal defence ships. However, the doctrinal debate in Sweden deviated from the typical Scandinavian model. From 1921 onwards, some Swedish naval officials entertained a role for fast seagoing armoured cruisers as part of a strategy of forward defence in the Baltic. Other officers simply wished to upgrade the existing division of three Sweden-class 7,000-ton, 23-knot, 11-inch gun ships with improved ‘coastal defence’ vessels. By the 1930s, outside of the navy, there were also voices clamouring for an abandonment of armoured ships altogether in favour of bombers.34 Admiral Charles de Champs, who was appointed commander-inchief of the Swedish Navy in September 1936, preferred large 10,000-ton cruisers of 28–30 knots, armed with guns as large as 10 or 11 inches. These ships, really super cruisers as the British had labelled them, would be capable of combating Russia’s old dreadnoughts and Germany’s pocket battleships in the open sea. The admiral’s ambitions proved to be a key obstacle to the rapid conclusion of the AngloScandinavian naval agreement because he was also appointed to direct the parliamentary inquiry into Sweden’s naval policy. As the admiral ultimately discovered, the high unit cost of ships comparable to Germany’s Deutschland class ruled them out. In September 1937, the admiral’s ‘one man’ commission recommended that Sweden should have a fleet composed of 8,000-ton ships of 29 knots, armed with 8inch guns.35 The Swedish naval attaché told the British Admiralty that the rationale behind the cruiser programme was alliance politics: ‘Sweden believes that if her Navy possesses a high “alliance-value” she may be able to avoid being forced into her neighbours’ quarrels.’36 The possibility of a powerful Swedish–German naval alliance would be enough to deter the Soviets from threatening Sweden. The British were led to believe (perhaps by the Swedish naval attaché) that the alliancevalue strategy had been imposed on the Swedish Navy by the politicians. The reverse was true. According to de Champs, who was an advocate of closer relations with Germany, alignment with London dictated the construction of slow coastal monitors, while cooperation with Germany called for heavy cruisers. Even though these Swedish– German naval alliance calculations ran counter to the main lines of Swedish foreign policy, Admiral de Champs nonetheless succeeded in shaping Sweden’s negotiating position in the 1936–37 naval talks, and, by extension, the position of the other three Nordic states.37 Indeed, in early 1937, after a coordinating meeting of Scandinavian naval negotiators held in Stockholm, each of the Nordic ministers in London met individually with Craigie to report on progress. Not surprisingly, each of them expressed his government’s eagerness to enter into a five-power naval agreement, but only if it included a ‘notwithstanding clause’ that should read: Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, considering the special conditions of their navies as regards the tonnage of ships and the calibre of guns, have the right to construct or acquire vessels, not exceeding 8,000 tons standard displacement, the main armament of which consists of guns with a calibre of 8–10 inches.38

Craigie told the Nordic ministers that they were in effect asking for the right to build an unlimited number of heavy cruisers; their proposed ‘notwithstanding clause’ would ‘contribute to the breakdown of the cruiser holiday’. Certainly Craigie knew that the Scandinavians, who had been stalwarts of interwar disarmament, did not wish to provoke a naval arms race. As it later became clear, the proposals of the Nordic naval representatives simply outpaced the naval policies of their own governments. This is understandable. After all, the Anglo-German naval agreement had formally altered the naval balance in northern waters, and the small navies could not ignore the long-term implications of German and Soviet naval expansion. The Scandinavian ‘notwithstanding clause’ was part of a prudent bargaining strategy that aimed to secure as much freedom of action as possible for the small navies within the treaty system. Moreover, as the Swedish case illustrates, a lack of coordination between foreign policy and naval officials permitted naval officers to drive the bargaining process. Norwegian warship-construction policy, like that of Sweden, also reflected an unresolved internal debate. In 1933, the government accepted in principle a proposal by the Norwegian naval staff to build three cruisers (4,000 tons) and three destroyers in a long-term programme of modernisation. In practice, naval officers and politicians were divided about the value of armoured ships. In 1936, a decision to build six anti-submarine destroyers (of which four were completed before the war) ultimately took priority.39 In 1939, the Danish government was still contemplating an order for two 7,000 ton, 18-knot coastal defence ships armed with 10-inch guns. Finland also failed to reinforce the two Ilmarinen-class ships before the war. After Admiral de Champs’s influence on naval policy had come to an end in 1938, a new inquiry into the armoured ship question recommended that the Swedish government procure coastal defence ships of 23 knots and 8,000 tons. As the British had hoped all along, the Swedish Navy decided to mount 10-inch guns on these two ships.40 In 1937, however, while naval policies remained fluid, and the future of naval limitation by universal qualitative standards remained uncertain, the problem in Anglo-Scandinavian naval relations revolved around definition. The British required a well-defined line between the types of ships the Scandinavians intended to build and Russian and German heavy cruiser designs. Sir Robert Craigie, who had negotiated the precarious cruiser equilibrium between Nazi Germany and Soviet Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Russia, was particularly anxious about Moscow’s reaction: ‘I felt sure that any attempt by the Scandinavians to build A [Category] cruisers as an answer to the Russian cruisers would spell the end of the cruiser holiday.’41 The British therefore continued to pressure the Nordic states to adopt a speed limit or at least to arm their projected armoured ships with 10-inch guns. In mid-March 1937, Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, warned his Swedish counterpart, Rickard Sandler, that the construction by Sweden of fast armoured ships carrying 8-inch guns would provoke Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union into a heavy cruiser building race. In reply, Sandler particularly objected to the idea of a speed limit [for Scandinavian capital ships], because other Baltic Powers were now building very fast ships, whether capital ships or cruisers, and it would be quite impossible at the present time for Sweden to build new ships which would be inferior to others in this respect.42

He also implied that Sweden’s naval defence should not suffer simply in order to limit the number of potential ‘pretexts’ available to the Germans and Russians for abandoning the cruiser holiday. In this encounter, the clash of overall policy objectives became apparent: at a time when the Nordic countries still looked with some hope to Britain for leadership, and Sweden in particular hoped to coordinate Nordic security, the British endeavoured to limit the naval options of the Nordic powers so as to safeguard its global interests. The British were unable to handle Sandler’s protests with more skill because they were genuinely confused about what was going on in Stockholm. In late 1936, the Swedish naval attaché approached the Admiralty with a request for advice on Swedish naval strategy.43 Since the Admiralty and Foreign Office wrongly assumed that the Swedish naval staff wished to build slow coastal defence vessels, and that the ‘Parliamentary commission’ had considered cruisers mainly for their ‘alliance value’, Craigie advocated exploiting the request in an effort to turn the decision in Stockholm against cruisers.44 Over the next few months, the Admiralty’s Plans Division worked on a review of Swedish naval policy. Not surprisingly, the planners concluded that ‘the cruiser type is considered unsuited to Sweden’s requirements … its cost is abnormally high in proportion to its value in defence. The [heavy 8inch] cruiser is no substitute for a coast defence ship due to its lack of protection.’ Moreover, the planners pointed out, Sweden’s hybrid aircraft carrier/cruiser, the 4,775-ton Gotland, could perform all the functions that fleet cruisers would normally perform.45 Although the paper made a convincing case, the Admiralty was not optimistic. ‘It seems unlikely’, wrote Captain Phillips Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

that we shall be able to induce the Swedish government to modify the characteristics of these three armoured cruisers. The advice tendered to Sweden recommending the construction of coast defence vessels of 12–14000 tons and deprecating construction of cruisers is understood to have been endorsed by the Swedish naval staff but overruled by the Cabinet, who decided that no ship larger than 8,000 tons was acceptable for political and financial reasons.46

On 8 September 1937, the director of Plans Division’s pessimism was confirmed. On behalf of the commander-in-chief of the Swedish Navy, Captain Boldt-Christmas, the Swedish naval attaché, thanked Phillips for the Admiralty’s advice, but he added that the Swedish government still insisted on building 8-inch gun heavy cruisers.47 Of course, as we now know, the problem was not Rickard Sandler or the policy of the Swedish government. The real obstacle to a change in Sweden’s position was the personal policy of Admiral de Champs. As his secretary, Captain Ericson, reasoned: ‘if we are on the English side [coastal defence ships] are beneficial for them so that we can tie up the Deutschland ships. If we are against England, then our armoured cruisers are uncomfortable to them.’48 In any case, the British had already decided that the only course left open to them was to stall. As Craigie wrote in March 1937: we do not ourselves mind the Swedes building a few vessels outside Treaty limits, but we fear the effect on Germany and the USSR unless some satisfactory formula can be devised. … The first thing is to conclude the agreements with Germany and the USSR. Once that has been done those two Powers are likely to prove more amenable than at present to any reasonable proposals for amendment of the treaty which may be put forward in Sweden’s favour.49

In July 1937, the second Anglo-German and the Anglo-Soviet naval agreements were signed in London. The instruments of ratification were exchanged four months later. The heavy cruiser truce in the Baltic was in place and holding. London now turned to the Scandinavians. On 18 January 1938, a final Anglo-Scandinavian meeting held at the Foreign Office endorsed a new formula for the construction of armoured ships. The Nordic navies would be permitted to build armoured ships of 8,000 tons or less, and arm them with guns of between 8 and 10 inches. In order to place a limit on the total number of these ships, the small navies would be permitted to build up to 24,000 tons of armoured ships, with no individual vessel exceeding 8,000 tons. The Danish, Norwegian and Finnish representatives made it clear that their governments had no intention of building up to this tonnage before the treaty Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

expired on 1 January 1943. Only the Swedish government proposed to lay down three 8,000-ton ships.50 The path was now clear for a five-power Anglo-Scandinavian naval agreement. In 1938, however, the extended crisis in central Europe and the threat of general war pushed naval diplomacy off the British agenda. Just before Munich, the United States, France and Germany approved the draft text of the five-power Scandinavian naval treaty. On 21 December 1938, as a ‘gesture’ to world armaments limitation in the aftermath of the Czechoslovak crisis, the Anglo-Scandinavian naval agreement was signed.51 In the end, the treaty was never ratified, and the whole system of global naval arms limitation unravelled. Japan refused to bow to Western pressure and sign the 1936 London Naval Treaty. In response, the Washington powers invoked the treaty’s ‘escalator’ clause to raise the qualitative standard for capital ships to 40,000 tons and 16-inch guns. In April 1939, as a rejoinder to Britain’s offer of a guarantee to Poland, Hitler denounced the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the 1934 non-aggression pact with Poland. As the European powers prepared for war, the news that Sweden would refuse to ratify the naval agreement was therefore greeted in London with equanimity. ‘It is not considered desirable at this stage to bring any pressure to bear on Sweden to force her to ratify an unwelcome treaty’, wrote one senior naval officer. ‘If she refuses to ratify we need not take it too tragically. From the strategical point of view a strengthening of the Swedish Navy is to our advantage.’52

CONCLUSION

The fact that the naval agreement never came into force should not cause historians to overlook these negotiations, because they reveal much about the strategic situation in northern waters. The British did not ignore the Baltic naval balance after 1935. Naval diplomacy in northern waters was part of a much more ambitious programme to secure British naval supremacy through diplomacy. Britain’s chief aim was to prevent a naval race between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, especially in heavy cruisers. To contain the naval ambitions of these two Great Powers, Britain turned to the Nordic states in the effort to promote universal acceptance of qualitative naval limitation. But strict adherence to the 1936 London Naval Treaty would have prevented the Nordic countries from building the warships they regarded as essential for their security. With Sweden as the primary mover, the Scandinavians successfully resisted British efforts to trample over their naval interests. In this clash between small and Great Power interests, the small powers held their own by putting up a united front. Unfortunately for Britain Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

and the Nordic states, their commitment to resolving international disputes by peaceful diplomacy and armaments limitation was not shared by the Great Powers which threatened their security most.

NOTES 1. See, for instance, R. Dingman, Power in the Pacific: The Origins of Naval Arms Limitation, 1914–1922 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976). C. Hall, Britain, America and Arms Control, 1921–1937 (London: Macmillan, 1987); and S. W. Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars: Vol. I The Period of Anglo-American Antagonism: Vol. II The Period of Reluctant Rearmament (London: Collins, 1968–76). 2. In May–June 1936, Polish officials agreed to a naval treaty so long as adherence to qualitative naval limitation would not prejudice the Polish Navy’s long-term ambition of procuring ships to outclass German pocket battleships and the old Soviet battleships. The agreement was not signed until April 1938 because the Poles wished to wait until the Germans and Russians had first concluded naval agreements. See Public Record Office (PRO), FO 371/19815, A4629/4/45, Anglo-Polish Conversation, 27 May and 2 June 1936 and FO 371/19837, A4794/A5068/4668/45. 3. Patrick Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers, 1890–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 335. 4. See J. R. Ferris, ‘The Symbol and the Substance of Sea Power: Great Britain, the United States and the One-Power Standard’, in B. McKercher (ed.), AngloAmerican Relations in the 1920s (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 55–80. 5. This is the central argument of J. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933–39 (London: Macmillan, 1998). 6. Ibid., p. 16. 7. PRO, FO 371/19842, A7502/A7503/7131/45, Sir Robert Craigie, minutes of first meeting with Scandinavian powers, 15 September 1936. 8. Maiolo, The Royal Navy, pp. 19–37, 63–86; ‘The Knockout Blow against the Import System: Admiralty Expectations of Nazi Germany’s Naval Strategy, 1934–39’, Historical Research, 178, 72 (1999), pp. 202–28. 9. The Treaty for the Limitation of Naval Armament, London, 25 March 1936, Command Paper 5136, British Parliamentary Papers. 10. Maiolo, The Royal Navy, ch. 2. 12. Ibid. In September 1936, Hitler ordered the German Navy to build five A-category cruisers. On German naval ambitions in the Baltic, see J. Dülffer, Weimar, Hitler, und die Marine: Reichspolitik und Flottenbau, 1920–1939 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1973) and C.-A. Gemzell, Raeder, Hitler und Skandinavien: Der Kampf für einen maritimen Operationsplan (Lund: Bibliotheca Historia Lundensis, 1965) and his Organization, Conflict, and Innovation. A Study of German Naval Strategic Planning, 1880–1940 (Lund: Esselte studium, 1973). On Soviet naval policy, see L. Samuelson, ‘Naval Dimension of the Soviet Five-Year Plans, 1925–1941’, and G. Åselius, ‘The Baltic in Soviet Strategy, 1920–40’, both in W. McBride and E. Reed (eds), New Interpretations in Naval History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998), pp. 177–228 and J. Rohwer and M. Monakov, ‘The Soviet Union’s OceanGoing Fleet, 1935–1956’, International History Review (1996), pp. 837–68. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

12. PRO, ADM 116/3928, PD05648/36, Sir Robert Craigie, 25 March 1936. 13. The best surveys are Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers, ch. 8, and his ‘British Policy towards the Nordic countries between the Wars’, in R. Bohn and J. Elvert, Neutralität und totalitäre Aggression: Nordeuropa und die Grossmächte im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1991), pp. 9–23 and ‘British Security Interests in Scandinavia and the Baltic, 1918–1939’, in J. Hiden and A. Loit (eds), The Baltic in International Relations Between the Wars (Stockholm: 1988), pp. 113–36. Also see J. Hiden (ed.), The Baltic and the Outbreak of the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 14. Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers, p. 299. 15. Ibid., chs 5 and 6. N. Ørvik, ‘Nordic Security, Great Britain and the League of Nations’, in K. Bourne and D. C. Watt, Studies in International History (London: Longmans, 1967), pp. 385–401 and more generally his The Decline of Neutrality, 1914–1941 (London: Frank Cass, 1971). Also see G. van Roon, ‘Neutrality and Security: The Experience of the Oslo States’, in R. Ahmann, A. Birke and M. Howard (eds), The Quest for Stability: Problems of West European Security, 1918–1957 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) and N. Wylie, ‘The Neutrals’, in R. Boyce and J. Maiolo, The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 16. J. Weibull, ‘The Politics of the Scandinavian States under the Threat of Hitler’, in Bohn and Elvert, Neutralität und totalitäre Aggression, pp. 3–8. 17. Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers, pp. 196–7. More generally on the question of a ‘Nordic military bloc’ and Nordic cooperation, see A. Upton, ‘The Crisis of Scandinavia and the Collapse of Interwar Ideals, 1938–1940’, in P. Stirk, European Unity in Context: The Interwar Period (London: Pinter, 1989), pp. 170–87 and S. G. Holtsmark and T. Kristiansen, En nordisk illusion? Norge og militært samarbeid I Nord 1918–1940 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 1991). 18. PRO, FO 371/19815, A4434/4/45, British Embassy, Copenhagen, to Foreign Office, report of a conversation with Dr Munch, the Danish foreign minister, 18 May 1936. 19. PRO, ADM 116/3928, PD05848/36, Mr Dormer, Oslo, to the Foreign Office, 14 August 1936. 20. Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers, pp. 199–201. 21. PRO, FO 371/19841, A6642/5071/45, British Embassy, Copenhagen, to Foreign Office, 11 August 1936. 22. See PRO, FO 371/20355, N5206/114/45, Foreign Office minutes of 26 October 1936. 23. PRO, ADM 116/3928, PD06252/37, Admiral W. James, 29 June 1937. 24. See PRO, FO 371/19842, A7502/A7503/A7590/7131/45, minutes of first, second and third meetings with the Scandinavian powers held at the Foreign Office, 15 and 17 September 1936. 25. Baron Palmstierna (Sweden), M. Colban (Norway), M. Tilletee (Denmark) and M. Gripenberg (Finland). 26. Captain Öberg (Sweden), Captain J. Bull (Norway), Captain Hammerich (Denmark) and Captain Sundman and Commander Gröndahl (naval attaché) (Finland). 27. See PRO, FO 371/19842, A7502/A7503/7131/45, Baron Palmstierna, 15 September 1936 in minutes of first and second meetings with the Scandinavian powers. 28. PRO, ADM 116/3928, PD05882/36, Admiral Chatfield, 7 January 1937. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

29. PRO, FO 371/19842, A10244/7131/45, Sir Robert Craigie, 3 January 1937. 30. PRO, FO 371/19842, 1936, A7503/A7590/7131/45, all the quotations are from the minutes of second and third meetings with the Scandinavian powers, 15 and 17 September. 31. PRO, ADM 116/3928, PD05882/36, Captain T. Phillips, 18 September 1936 and 7 January 1937. 32. Ibid., Craigie to Phillips, 18 September 1936. 33. Upton, ‘Crisis of Scandinavia’ and Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers, pp. 196–203. 34. A. Berge, ‘The Swedish Navy in the Interwar Period: Strategic Thinking at a Cross Roads’, Militärhistorisk tidskrift (1983), pp. 101–14, and his Sakkundskap och politisk rationalitet. Den svenska flottan och pansarfartygsfrågan 1918–1939 (Stockholm: AWI, 1987). The three Swedish coastal defence ships were Sverige (1915), Drottning (1917) and Gustaf V (1918). 35. Berge, Den svenska flottan, pp. 117–20. 36. PRO, ADM 116/3928, PD05882/36, Captain Phillips, 8 June 1937. 37. Berge, Den svenska flottan, pp. 125–8. Oddly, Baron Palmstierna, who had in 1923 expressed the wish to bring about an alignment between Britain and Sweden based on the exercise of joint naval hegemony in the Baltic, took little interest in the naval talks. See Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers, p. 189. Perhaps the Anglo-German naval agreement of 1935 and the rise of German sea power had altered his views? 38. PRO, ADM 116/3928, A170/170/45, Craigie, 10 February 1937. 39. David G. Thompson, ‘Neutrality and Neglect: Norwegian Naval Policy, 1905–1940’, in McBride and Reed (eds), New Interpretations in Naval History, p. 146. In January 1938, at the final meeting of Anglo-Scandinavian naval representatives, M. Colban, the Norwegian minister in London, told the British that ‘in this year’s budget nothing had been provided for Naval construction of these [capital ships]. Norway was, therefore, prepared to accept the whole Treaty …’. See the record of the meeting in PRO, ADM 116/3928. 40. F. E. McMurtrie (ed.), Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1939 (1971 reprint) and Berge, Den svenska flottan, pp. 138–53. 41. PRO, FO 371/19842, A10244/7131/45, Craigie, 4 January 1937. 42. PRO, ADM 116/3928, A2056/170/45, Craigie, 11 March 1937 and FO 371/20657, A2061/170/45, Eden to Stockholm, 15 March 1937. Also see Berge, Den svenska flottan, p. 224, fn. 69. 43. PRO, ADM 116/3928, NID2028/36, see director of naval intelligence, minute, 21 January 1937. The request did not become ‘official’ until 21 January 1937. 44. PRO, ADM 116/3928, NID2028/36, Sir Robert Craigie to Director of Plans, 4 November 1936 and FO371/21109, N3542/N4584/216/42, minutes by Craigie and other Foreign Office officials, 6 July 1937. 45. PRO, ADM 116/3928, NID2028/36 and PD06252, Plans Division, ‘Advice to Swedish Naval Attaché – Appreciation of Sweden’s Problems in War’, 27 May 1937. The Swedish government eventually agreed with the Admiralty planners. See Berge, Den svenska flottan, pp. 138–9. 46. PRO, ADM 116/3928, PD06252, Captain Phillips, 20 December 1936. 47. PRO, ADM 116/3928, NID2028/36, meeting between the Swedish naval attaché and the Director of Plans, 8 September 1937. 48. Berge, Den svenska flottan, pp. 134–5. The Ericson quote is from an undated marginal note. 49. PRO, FO 371/20657, A2161//170/45, Craigie, 6 March 1937. In Stockholm, Captain Ericson feared that Craigie was hoping to use the Anglo-German and Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Anglo-Soviet agreements to force Sweden into accepting a speed limit for its new class of armoured ships. See Berge, Den svenska flottan, pp. 224–5, fn. 73. 50. PRO, FO371/21536, A557/323/45, record of a meeting with the Scandinavian delegates held at the Foreign Office, 18 January 1938 and ADM 116/3928, PD05882/36, Director of Plans, 24 January 1938. The British representatives were A. Holman and J. Balfour (Foreign Office) and Captain T. Phillips and Commander L. H. Bell (Admiralty). The Scandinavian representatives were as follows: M. Tillitse (Denmark), Commander Gröndahl (Finland), M. Colban (Norway) and Captain Boldt-Christmas (Sweden). 51. For the details of the signature see PRO, FO 371/21537, A9728/323/45, 21 December 1938. 52. PRO, ADM 116/3928, PD07284/39, Captain Danckwerts, director of plans division, 12 May 1939.

Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Part V: The Cold War and Beyond, 1945–2000

Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

10

The Superpowers and Secondary Navies in Northern Waters during the Cold War E R I C J . G R OV E

During the Cold War the northern waters of the Baltic, Norwegian and Barents Seas were a major focus of the global superpower confrontation. These waters formed the most important maritime boundary between the two Cold War power blocs, the area in which the West could apply maritime pressure on the Soviet Union and through which the Soviet Union might mount its maritime offensives against the West. From the early 1950s US and NATO maritime strategy emphasised the Norwegian Arctic and the Baltic as crucial points to apply maritime power to attack the Soviet Union’s offensive submarine and maritime bomber capability at source, as well as to prevent the USSR acquiring forward bases and secure exits. By the 1980s this had developed into a fully fledged forward maritime strategy that did much to increase the pressure on the Soviet Union that contributed towards its collapse. Local NATO navies were integrated in this process, while the neutrals transformed their fleets to use new technology to protect their maritime interests from the Cold War combatants.

THE EARLY COLD WAR

As Michael Palmer has shown, in the late 1940s the US Navy considered operations in the Arctic as part of their concept of forward carrier operations against the USSR in the event of war.1 These were not adopted wholeheartedly – the Mediterranean tended to dominate at first – but they, and similar British thinking about forward carrier operations, laid the foundations for the early NATO maritime exercises.2 Maritime support was also a necessity if NATO’s northern allies, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Norway and Denmark were to be defended. In autumn 1952 NATO held its first large-scale exercise, ‘Mainbrace’, which concentrated on the ability of the newly created Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic to provide support on the northern flank of Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s land battle.3 Carriers operated off Vestfjord against notional Soviet forces moving into northern Norway.4 Landings were carried out to counter Soviet forces moving into Denmark. As Palmer has shown, this marked ‘a shift from the Mediterranean as the primary area of operations during a war. American adherence to the North Atlantic Treaty, the Navy’s capability to operate in Arctic regions, and the Soviet build-up in the Kola Peninsula directed the strategic focus northward.’5 He quotes a significant October 1953 study by the Strategic Plans Division, which argued that: The Northeast Atlantic-Norwegian Sea – Barents Sea area may well be the area of decision with respect to the success of any United States operations to maintain the flow of supplies to our European Allies and to our US forces in Western Europe. This area is of two fold importance – first as an avenue for the movement of U.S. shipping; secondly, as the area from which the Soviet submarine threat may be stopped at its source. … Of further importance is the fact that the northwestern and northern coasts of Norway are extremely attractive sites for submarine bases. The fjords are ideal places to construct sub pens tunnelled into cliffs rising from the sea. Were the Soviet [sic] to capture these coastal areas by amphibious operations, they could construct submarine bases in the fjords that would be all but invulnerable to air attack. Another critical aspect of this area is the fact that the Barents Sea is the attack route to the only significant submarine base for Atlantic submarines now available to the Soviets. With the Bosphorous and Baltic exits sealed, Soviet submarines must be operated from their northern bases.6

MASSIVE RETALIATION

It was, however, in the Baltic that the main Soviet naval strength lay. The Baltic Fleet was in the 1950s the largest of the four Soviet fleets. With about 12 cruisers, 50 destroyers and between 100 and 150 submarines it was deemed to pose a threat both of an amphibious offensive against West Germany and Denmark and breaking through the straits to attack NATO shipping.7 The Swedes were reportedly very concerned at Soviet activities from 1950 and conceded that the USSR had acquired overall maritime superiority in the Baltic by the middle years of the decade. Although Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Soviet submarines could be contained in the Baltic in the waters of that sea itself, especially in areas close to Soviet bases and covered by Soviet aircraft, sea control was highly contestable and in some areas would have to be conceded.8 Sweden’s fleet was the only major local counter to Soviet capabilities and, indeed, the Swedish Navy had ‘dominated the Baltic’ in the late 1940s and early 1950s.9 In the mid-1950s Sweden still had a powerful force of two old 11-inch gun-armed armoured ships, two fast 6-inch gun cruisers, an older but modernised AA cruiser, four larger destroyers, 20 smaller destroyers of 700–1,150 tons (of which six had already been converted into fast anti-submarine frigates), over 20 submarines and about 50 fast attack craft.10 These could form three task forces based around the heavier units but, in 1958, after the scrapping of the armoured ships the concept of a ‘light navy’ was adopted.11 This saw a limited number of destroyers as the heaviest future units forming the cores of light task forces also composed of the smaller frigates, not all of which received ASW conversions. Two of the larger 2,650-ton Halland-class destroyers were cancelled in 1958 leaving six modern destroyers commissioned between 1955 and 1959. The older cruiser was stricken in 1960 and the other cruisers followed in 1964 and 1971. The later 1950s and early 1960s did, however, see significant modernisation of the submarine force with 12 modern fast battery-drive coastal boats of 720–770 tons being commissioned between 1957 and 1962. Holding the ring locally for NATO were the navies of Denmark and, building up from 1956, the new Federal German Bundesmarine. The Danish Navy had virtually ceased to exist by the end of the war. Replacement came from former German torpedo boats both large and small (some of the latter via Norway), together with British frigates and a corvette. Two small destroyers laid down in 1939 were completed and supplemented by three Hunt-class frigates lent by Britain in 1953. Six 400-ton torpedo boats were built in Copenhagen in the immediate postwar years and were rebuilt as anti-submarine patrol vessels in the early 1950s. These were supplemented by four Italian 800-ton corvettes built with US funds and commissioned in 1955–57. More motor torpedo boats were built in the early 1950s based on the German vessels already operating while the four older small submarines scuttled during the war and raised afterwards were replaced by three British U-class units on loan. These were returned to Britain when a Danish designed flotilla of four 600-ton boats built with US funds was commissioned from 1958.12 The build-up of the Bundesmarine was a major increment in alliance strength in the Baltic and its approaches, although it was not until the early 1960s that the results became apparent. Plans for the new fleet had evolved from the first proposals of autumn 1951 but by the end of 1955 the German planners were envisaging a fleet of 18 destroyers, ten frigates, 40 MTBs and 12 coastal submarines. Plans for the larger vessels Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

were reduced with six old US destroyers on loan from 1958–60 and four new gun-armed destroyers of relatively conservative design built in the 1960s. Six former British frigates were acquired for training duties and given grand traditional names that belied their actual fighting value. Of more combat potential were the six 2,090-ton Köln-class frigates commissioned for anti-surface and ASW duties in the early 1960s. Plans for smaller craft were fulfilled by the Jaguar and Zobel-class MTBs launched between 1957 and 1963. The U-boat force was reinstituted with three raised Second World War vessels used for trials and training. Serious corrosion problems were faced with the new Type 201 boats, and 11 420-ton Type 205s were commissioned in the 1960s. An interesting feature of the Federal German fleet was the provision of 13 well-armed support ships for smaller craft. These allowed German squadrons to be flexibly based, an important feature given the likelihood of the loss of territory in a future conflict.13 The Bundesmarine had purely defensive functions: denial of Soviet access to the Danish straits, of Soviet maritime supply of their land armies advancing through Germany and of the ability to give maritime close support and protection to the seaward flank of the advancing forces. The Germans voluntarily accepted a range limitation of 24 hours sailing time from the Baltic approaches. This restriction was only lifted in 1980.14 The local NATO navies had the function of maintaining sea control in coastal waters in the initial stages of a conflict so that alliance aid could be received. The Norwegian Navy rebuilt itself to fulfil this function in the immediate post-war years. Five British fleet destroyers were purchased from the UK in 1946 along with two Hunt-class escort destroyers. One of the destroyers had served in the wartime Norwegian Navy as had three corvettes also retained by Norway. Five torpedo boats taken over by the Germans were returned and converted to the escort patrol vessel role in the 1950s. The escort fleet was reinforced in the 1950s by two more Hunts loaned by Britain and three River-class frigates from Canada. These were eventually purchased. Five British U-class submarines were taken over along with four former German Uboats transferred via Britain. The British boats were modernised in the mid-1950s. Former German MTBs were operated in the immediate post-war years but by the mid-1950s the flotilla comprised eight wartime British MTBs which had always operated with Norwegian crews, ten US boats obtained under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program (MDAP) and six Norwegian-built boats built 1951–55.15 These local forces were originally allocated to NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) as part of the naval components of Allied Command North and Centre but in 1963 an important change occurred when the Baltic Approaches Command was set up. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

COMBALTAP was placed subordinate to CINCNORTH and controlled the entire Bundesmarine, both in the Baltic and North Seas, as well as the Danish Navy. As Sokolsky explains: The officially stated purpose of COMBALTAP was to create a combined defence against Soviet submarines attacking Allied shipping, and to prevent the movement of Soviet ground and supporting naval forces. NATO expected the Soviets to attempt to capture the 30-mile strip of land between East Germany and Hamburg as well as the Danish narrows, thus opening the way for safe passage of submarines into the North Sea. … The other component of CINCNORTH’s naval responsibilities involved the immediate protection of the Norwegian coastal waters. Here there would be a great deal of overlapping with SACLANT’s responsibilities which included protection of the sea lanes to the northern flank and projection of force ashore. However, since SACLANT’s striking forces might take time to arrive in Norwegian waters, it would appear that NATO wanted a command in the region that would initiate naval activities.16

FLEXIBLE RESPONSE

This reorganisation reflected an important strategic trend. During the early 1960s the emphasis on conventional forces in NATO’s overall strategy became greater as Soviet capacity to counter NATO’s nuclear threats in kind increased. From 1964 exercises began to be held in the Express and Teamwork series that implied at least a phase of conventional resistance in the north for the purposes of crisis management and controlled escalation. Maritime, air and amphibious forces were key components in these events. This process led to the NATO decision of 1967 to adopt the declared strategy of flexible response which was associated with SACLANT’s evolution of new maritime thinking. An outward and visible sign of the latter was the creation of the Standing Naval Force Atlantic in which both Norway and Denmark could play a part.17 The latter’s major surface ships were modernised at this time with six new US type frigates replacing the older destroyers and two new 2,200-ton frigates being built with US funds in Denmark to replace older vessels there also. In 1968 maritime implications of flexible response were fully explored in a SACLANT study commissioned by NATO Secretary General Brosio in the spring of 1969. Maritime contingency forces were to be mobilised to provide a controlled response and to deter further escalation. If deterrence failed, however, NATO’s maritime forces would be used to contain or destroy Soviet submarines as far forward as Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

possible. Carriers would support land and amphibious operations ashore. The scenario was based in Norwegian waters in the context of a Soviet airborne and amphibious invasion of northern Norway. Warning time was exploited to bring Anglo-American carrier forces into the Norwegian Sea that attacked the Soviet invaders ashore and were in turn engaged by Soviet naval aviation. The Soviets held back submarines for defensive duties which facilitated NATO’s convoy escorts dealing with the rest. NATO was able to rotate sufficient carriers into the Norwegian Sea to defeat the attacks upon them and to allow the successful defeat of the Soviet invasion. It was assessed that after a three-month battle at sea using conventional weapons alone the Soviets would have suffered a major defeat on the Northern Flank which they would have to accept or mount a major offensive on the Central Front.18

IN THE SHADOW OF THE KOLA BASES

This rosy outlook was only over the short term, however. The growth of the Soviet Northern Fleet coupled with proposed draw downs in Western capability – notably the planned demise of the UK carrier fleet by 1971 – would cede control of vital northern areas to the Soviets by the late 1970s. The increase in capability of the Soviet Northern Fleet in the Kola Peninsula was indeed impressive. In order to achieve more secure access to the open ocean the Soviet nuclear submarine force was built up in the north rather than the Baltic. Between 1959 and 1972 no less than 30 ballistic-missile firing nuclear powered submarines, 12 conventionally powered ballistic-missile-firing sub-marines, 21 cruisemissile armed nuclear-powered submarines, ten conventionally powered cruise-missile submarines and 22 nuclear- powered attack submarines were deployed with the Northern Fleet. The total strength in submarines in the north was 154 by 1972, compared to only 54 in the Baltic, of which none were nuclear powered and of which only two were equipped with cruise missiles.19 By 1972 the Northern Fleet also had the lion’s share of larger surface combatants. Newer types such as Project 1134A large anti-submarine ships, Project 1134 and 58 missile cruisers and Project 61 destroyers went predominantly to the Kola. Total major surface combatant figures in mid-1972 were 28 for the Northern Fleet and 23 for the Baltic, the latter predominantly older types.20 There were 32 smaller surface ships in the north and 20 in the Baltic, although here the balance of more modern units such as Project 159 ASW ships was more even, older vessels like the Project 50 gunarmed patrol ship making the difference.21 Only in fast attack craft did the Baltic show a clear superiority with six Project 1234 larger missile craft, 30 Project 205 missile boats and ten older Project 183 missile Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

craft. No less than 110 motor torpedo boats were also available. This reflected the different operational conditions of the Baltic where such craft had a greater role as the cutting edge of anti-ship capabilities. The Northern Fleet had only 50 fast attack craft, less than half of which were missile fires, as the back-stop of coast defence forces.22 The coming of the missile craft created serious problems for other Baltic navies, although the Finns turned things to their advantage to circumvent the post-war ban on torpedo craft to purchase Soviet missile boats as precursors to further vessels of their own design. These used Swedish missiles, following Sweden’s pioneering development of such systems. The first non-Soviet destroyers to be fitted with anti-ship missiles were the two Halland-class ships in the late 1960s. The move to surface-to-surface confirmed the Swedish Navy’s trend to smaller surface craft: 35 motor torpedo boats and missile boats were built from 1966 to 1981 and the six destroyers were all decommissioned in the early 1980s to be eventually replaced by six missile corvettes. Denmark also moved to smaller craft in the 1970s with ten missile boats armed with Harpoon missiles and three similarly armed 1,200-ton corvettes. The Bundesmarine also acquired 30 Exocet armed fast attack craft to replace its older motor torpedo boats in the 1970s while Norway also built 16 new missile boats armed with the domestically produced Penguin missile. There was also modernisation of the local submarine flotillas. The Danish modernisation programme around 1960 was based to a large extent on a US–Danish programme of 1959, in which the costs were borne 50 per cent by each country. The Norwegian Fleet Plan of 1960 was inspired by the US–Danish programme. Norway built no less than 15 new 370-ton boats in Germany the 1960s, half the cost being borne by the United States. This was a considerable enhancement of capability in both quality and quantity. The West Germans themselves replaced most of their older U-boats with 18 examples of a slightly larger class of coastal submarine in the 1970s while Denmark added two new German built coastal submarines to its existing flotilla. In 1970 these developments aided the first line of NATO’s maritime defence both in terms of surveillance and sea denial capability, given the local crews’ matchless knowledge of their own undersea environment. Sweden also modernised its submarine fleet, adding four new larger 1,125-ton boats in the late 1960s. These meant that the 15 older boats scrapped between 1959 and 1971 had been replaced by 17 more modern submarines.23 The overall balance, however, was swinging the Soviet Union’s way, both in the north and in the Baltic where the East German and Polish Navies added extra margins of Warsaw Pact strength to the Soviet Baltic Fleet. The Polish Navy acquired a guided missile destroyer as its flagship Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

in 1970, and acquired a flotilla of Soviet Project 205 missile boats in two batches between 1963 and 1975. The East Germans acquired Project 205 missile boats in the 1960s and replaced their motor torpedo boat flotilla in 1969–70. In the 1970s as NATO’s strength declined and the Warsaw Pact’s grew there occurred what was effectively a maritime withdrawal to the Greenland–Iceland–UK (GIUK) gap with various expedients adopted to maintain the principles of forward defence in Denmark and Norway. In Exercise Northern Wedding in 1978 the scenario implied carrier operations against amphibious landings in southern Norway. Overall, SACLANT’s strategy now seemed to emphasise barrier operations at the gap and sea control operations in the Atlantic itself rather than forward operations in northern waters.24

WESTERN BUILD-UP

The tide had already begun to turn, however. In 1977 NATO’s defence ministers had ordered a major reassessment of the alliance’s position at sea. Its existing plans were considered to be too reactive and lacking in definition. The GIUK gap was becoming thought of as a ‘Maginot line’, with NATO’s northern allies on the wrong side of it. The successive SACLANTs stressed the need for NATO to take full advantage of warning time to place alliance warships in positions to deter hostile maritime activities. This implied a move back to forward operations. Greater conceptual unity was also required between the major NATO commands. The alliance’s military leaders were therefore ordered to draw up a new Concept of Maritime Operations (CONMAROPS) that would clarify how maritime forces should be used to support deterrence, forward defence and flexible response. CONMAROPS was approved by the Defence Planning Committee in 1981. CONMAROPS outlined five maritime campaigns, including two in northern waters: Norwegian Sea under SACLANT’s control and Shallow Seas under SACLANT, SACEUR and commander-in-chief Channel. The Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic revealed the general architecture of the CONMAROPS in Oslo in 1987. ‘CONMAROPS establishes three operational principles’, he told a conference organised by the Norwegian Atlantic Committee: First – containment, keeping the Soviet Fleet from reaching the open ocean either undetected in tension or unopposed in war; second – defence in depth, being ready to fight the Soviets at the forward edge of the NATO area, along their exit routes, and in defence of the Allied war and merchant shipping; and third – and most important – keeping the initiative.

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NATO’s rethink went hand-in-hand with a key national American reconsideration of maritime strategy. Although the Soviet Northern Fleet had continued to improve with new types of submarine and surface ships, the latter including a large aircraft carrying cruiser and the large missile cruiser Kirov, it began to dawn on US planners that the new ballistic missile submarines of Projects 667B, BD and BDR were built primarily to be held back in defended bastions to be protected by the rest of the Northern Fleet. Threatening these bastions and the Soviet homeland itself might well contain the Northern Fleet and keep it away from the Atlantic. In 1982 a key study was carried out in Washington which integrated NATO’s new thinking with the other plans of the US CINCs, giving the whole a new coherence and force. The ‘Forward Maritime Strategy’ was born that was briefed to Congress in 1985 and published in 1986. Already in 1983, SACLANT had reported to Congress that the way to contain the Soviets was to take offensive actions to keep the Soviet Navy focused on threats to their own forces in the Norwegian and Barents Seas. The following year he stressed the requirement for NATO to ‘be ready to carry the fight to the enemy and not to react to his actions, to deny him sanctuaries [and] to threaten key elements of his warfighting strategy in his home waters’.25 It was no coincidence that Teamwork 84 was the largest amphibious exercise in NATO’s history and the first carried out in Arctic conditions; 150 ships, 300 aircraft and 25,000 troops from seven countries were involved. Landings were carried out near Tromsø. In the 1970s worried NATO commanders had spoken of the need to ‘pre-enforce’ Scandinavia before fighting started. Now they stressed the need for early deployment. The mid-1980s saw further revision of CONMAROPS with the emphasis on seizing the initiative and forward operations confirmed. The NATO Striking Fleet was reorganised with four subordinate striking force commands, Carrier, ASW, Amphibious and Marine. A new concept was developed of operating carriers in fjords where geography added to the capabilities of these and supporting surface ships to win the battle against the Northern Fleet’s submarines and missile-strike aircraft. This concept also re-emphasised local navies and NATO standing forces to carry out precursor operations to allow the main fleet’s entry into the fiords as well as coastal convoy operations to supply the forces in the north. All this was fully exercised in Teamwork 88, which this author closely observed and reported upon.26 Some local concerns were expressed that this more assertive approach might undermine the ‘Nordic Balance’ with its subtly integrated elements of both deterrence and reassurance, but the northern waters, the main maritime front between East and West, could not resist the escalation of the Cold War confrontation of the 1980s. While Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Norwegian authorities on the one hand had for some time been concerned about the Russians and pleaded for a certain increase in allied naval presence in peacetime, Norwegian politicians were also worried about what was termed the ‘mediterranisation’ of the Norwegian sea (J. J. Holst) in peacetime through a permanent highlevel US naval presence with Northern Fleet ‘tattle tails’ in company. The Maritime Strategy might thus threaten to erode Norway’s policy of ‘low tension’. They were also concerned about ‘horizontal escalation’ in times of crisis, whereby a conflict in, say, the Persian Gulf where the United States and the Soviet Union were both involved, could spill over into northern waters as a result of US naval posturing through forward deployments to the Norwegian Sea. Sweden complained of Soviet submarine incursions, dramatised in 1981 when Project 613-class submarine S-137 ran aground near Karlskrona, and improved the ASW capability of its forces. There was a reduction in number of Sweden’s own submarines when the dozen boats of the Hajen and Draken classes were replaced by only seven larger units. The Soviets also improved the capabilities of their Baltic submarines. In the 1970s they had transferred six Project 628 conventionally powered ballistic-missile-firing submarines to the Baltic. In the 1980s these were joined by the Project 651 conventionally powered cruise-missile boats, possibly in a land attack mode. The new Soviet conventional submarine, Project 877, proved unsuitable for Baltic operations as it was too large, and after being supplied with one in 1986 the Poles asked for older Project 647 boats, two of which came in 1987–88. Poland acquired a new flagship in the shape of a Project 61MP destroyer after its older missile ship suffered terminal engine problems, while the DDR commissioned three Soviet built Project 1159 ‘coast defence ships’ as well as a new class of domestically designed Parchim-class ASW vessels and Soviet built Project 1241 missile craft. The more assertive NATO strategy had Baltic implications too, however, and there were attempts to demonstrate a greater commitment to forward defence in the Baltic by exercising powerful visiting forces, including cruise-missile-equipped US battleships. All this was part of the pressure that stretched the Soviet Union to breaking point and led to Western victory in the Cold War. The naval confrontation had always been significant but it had assumed cardinal importance by the 1980s. That it was so favourable an ending from the Western perspective had much to do with the success of NATO in developing a coherent and effective northern maritime strategy.

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NOTES 1. M. A. Palmer, Origins of the Maritime Strategy: American Naval Strategy in the First Postwar Decade (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1989). 2. For British thinking see Exercise Trident. 3. J. J. Sokolsky, Sea Power in the Nuclear Age: The United States Navy and NATO (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 21. 4. E. J. Grove, Battle For the Fiords: NATO’s Forward Maritime Strategy in Action (London: Ian Allan, 1991), p. 9. 5. Palmer, Origins of the Maritime Strategy, p. 76. 6. Quoted in ibid., p. 77. 7. Sokolsky, Sea Power in the Nuclear Age, p. 39, quoting a paper presented in 1956 at the US Naval War College by a West German Naval officer. 8. Ibid., quoting a 1955 RAND study based on interviews with Swedish officers. 9. Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1947–1995 (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1995), p. 443. 10. Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1956–57 (London: Jane’s, 1956). 11. Conway’s All the Worlds’ Fighting Ships 1947–1995, p. 443. 12. Ibid. and Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1956–57. 13. Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1947–1995. 14. Sokolsky, Sea Power in the Nuclear Age, p. 40. 15. Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1947–1995 and Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1956–57. 16. Sokolsky, Sea Power in the Nuclear Age, pp. 40–1. 17. Grove, Battle For the Fiords, pp. 13–14. 18. Ibid., pp. 14–15. 19. R. P. Berman, ‘Soviet Naval Deployment’, in M. McGwire (ed.), Soviet Naval Developments, Capability and Context (New York, Washington, DC and London: Praeger, 1973), p. 131. 20. Ibid., p. 132. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. p. 133. 23. Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1947–1995. 24. Grove, Battle For the Fiords, p. 17. 25. Quoted in ibid., pp. 20–1. 26. Ibid.

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11

Major Coastal State – Small Naval Power: Norway’s Cold War Policy and Strategy R O L F TA M N E S

SMALL POWER – GLOBAL INTERESTS

Norway is a small power in a traditional ‘realist’ sense. That is, it cannot obtain security primarily by the use of its own capabilities, and it has to adapt to its environment to survive and prosper.1 In principle, such a state has three security policy options: (1) it can join a collective or bilateral alliance; (2) it can develop functional ties to a more powerful country or to a coalition of countries, and possibly obtain an indirect, informal or tacit guarantee; or (3) it can opt for non-alignment and neutrality, benefiting from the international balance of power or from its position as a state of minor strategic importance. These three alternatives have been the main features of Norway’s security policy since it gained its full independence in 1905. Until 1940, the answer to Norway’s security problem was principally a posture of non-alignment, tinged with isolationism. This policy was based on the assumption that it was in the interest of the Great Powers to keep conflicts away from Norwegian territory. Should this policy fail, contrary to expectations, then Norway’s security policy would be based on the notion of a subsidiary or reserve position of tacitly assuming that Great Britain, with its maritime power, would in its own interest protect Norwegian territory from falling under the control of any foreign power.2 The successful German conquest of Norway in 1940 demonstrated the fallacies in both parts of this dual security calculus and set the stage for an agonising reappraisal of Norwegian security policy. While Norway in the short term entered into a wartime alliance with Britain, long-term defence planning for the situation after the war was based on Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the expectation that Norway would inevitably become involved in the event of a new major war, that it would have to rely on military help from the West, and that preparations for such assistance would have to be made in peacetime. In the years immediately after the war, the question of a Western alliance was hardly on the agenda, and Norway returned to a policy of non-alignment. This was combined with close functional ties to Britain. The cooperation was so extensive that it attained the character of a semi-alliance. With the advent of the Cold War and the danger of open hostilities at the end of the 1940s, the policy of non-alignment came under pressure, and Norway embarked on a vigorous policy of ‘invitations’ to the Western powers. The campaign was launched in late January 1948 and culminated in 1949, when Norway became one of the founding members of NATO. Realism and small-state adaptation capture important aspects of international relations, but should be qualified. Despite their inherent weakness, small powers in the modern international system, according to the ‘small power paradox’, tend not only to survive but also to proliferate.3 Power is relational and multidimensional. Small states can gain influence by benefiting from the competition between major states. Countries that are small in traditional terms, might have assets, or control resources of major strategic importance. These assets and resources can make the small states more exposed to pressure, but they may also be converted into influence in international politics. To illustrate the point, during the Cold War Norway’s geo-strategic location made its territory important for monitoring enemy military activities, for denying the Soviet Northern Fleet access to the North Atlantic, and for projecting power against Soviet military bases and installations; in wartime Norway’s merchant fleet would have been a major asset to transportation across the Atlantic; and Norwegian oil and natural gas production became, from the 1970s, crucial strategic resources. Moreover, complex interdependence characterised by a growing web of organisations, networks and regimes have altered notions of national sovereignty; no state can expect to be completely independent of external authority even within their own territories. Even great powers rely on international organisations, regimes and rules to influence events around the world, and in most cases they abide by norms and rules.4 Superiority in military resources cannot always be translated into influence or decisive victories. The ‘cod wars’ between Britain and Iceland are only one example of the impotence of military power, or ‘the tyranny of the weak’.5 Some small countries, including Norway, have been eager to promote collective institutions and to act as bridgebuilders. This policy can be seen as a kind of small power realism since small states, in particular, can benefit from conflict resolution based on right instead of might, but also it reflects the strong moral or ethical sentiments in Norwegian foreign policy. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

This chapter will focus on Norway’s naval power during the Cold War. This will be discussed within the framework of Norway’s position as a small power with modest defence resources, the strategic importance of Norway’s location in the Cold War rivalry and of its globally oriented merchant fleet, natural resources and ethical foreign policy. With this global orientation as a background, I shall outline Norway’s international engagement in general, and its naval operations on the international scene, in particular. First of all, I shall focus on Norway’s role as a major coastal state, and on the navy’s contribution to regional defence and the protection of Norway’s natural resources. The first part of the chapter concentrates on geo-strategy, resources and priorities in general; the second part deals with the evolution of Norwegian naval power through four phases.

GEO-STRATEGY, RESOURCES AND PRIORITIES – AN OVERVIEW

Norway in the Cold War Cold War rivalry between the two superpowers and blocs made the Northern Region strategically important for the purpose of gathering intelligence and early-warning information, and for projecting power against the adversary. The steady growth of the Soviet Northern Fleet, notably its blue-water capabilities and strategic submarines, helped to underline the geo-strategic position of the region. By the late 1950s, the Northern Fleet submarine force had become the largest of the Soviet submarine fleets. Even more far-reaching was the Soviet decision to rely on nuclear-powered submarines carrying long-range ballistic missiles. At the end of the 1950s the Soviets deployed their first long-range missiles on submarines, and the build-up reached a climax with the introduction of intercontinental missiles on the Delta class in 1973 and on the Typhoon class in 1981. A major part of these assets was based in the north. In the mid-1980s, the Northern Fleet included approximately half of the Soviet Union’s strategic submarines and two-thirds of its total submarine-based strategic nuclear arsenal. In addition, the surface fleet had evolved into a truly blue-water navy. This also led to a marked increase in Soviet naval and air naval activity and exercises in the Norwegian Sea, with the peak being reached with Summerex in 1985. Western military interest in the northern region was dictated in part by the need to monitor enemy military activities, and in part it was a reflection of the favourable position of the region for providing protection for the Atlantic sea lines of communications and the Central Front, and for operating against enemy forces, bases and installations. Norway’s most significant contribution to NATO’s defence was to Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

support these requirements, both by monitoring Soviet military activities, and by allowing allied forces to operate from Norwegian bases. Furthermore, the large Norwegian merchant fleet contributed in a significant way to NATO’s overall maritime defence efforts. Since Norway’s own defence capability was very small, the defence of the Northern Flank and Norway was heavily dependent on military assistance from the alliance. By 1950, the United States had largely replaced Britain as the principal underwriter of Norwegian security, and since then the US military guarantee has remained the essence of alliance politics. Help from the outside included reinforcement forces, NATO-funded military infrastructure, and military assistance, first from Britain, later from the United States. Thus, until the late 1960s almost all of Norway’s defence budget could be spent on running costs. That was also the case in the navy. Most of the guns of the Norwegian Coast Artillery were for many years German leftovers from the Second World War, and most of the ships of the navy proper, the fleet, were of British construction, built during the war. Later, the US military assistance programme provided for most of the naval force structure. With the termination of the programme in the 1960s, the Norwegian defence was faced with a formidable economic challenge. In reality, later it was never capable of coping with the problem in a rational way, as there was a fundamental imbalance between ambitions and resources, and between funds allocated to investments and running expenses. Hence Norway had also to return to the normal pattern whereby large investment in new weapons systems, such as modernisation of the fleet of warships or aircraft, had to be made sequentially. During the Cold War, the strong Atlantic orientation was indeed the most conspicuous aspect of Norwegian security policy. At the same time, NATO membership provided not only protection, it also implied involvement and complicity, and it constituted a barrier on the high road of moral rectitude in an immoral world. There was in Norway a fear that alignment might amount to entanglement and a neutralist nostalgia for a freer choice.6 This led to an ambiguity in Norwegian security policy: its policy towards the Soviet Union has been described as a combination of deterrence and reassurance, and its NATO policy as a combination of invitations and integration on the one hand, and a policy of screening on the other. In a peculiar way, a vigorous policy of screening and reassurance went hand in hand with a strong Atlantic orientation.7 Norway’s policy of screening was embodied in a series of selfimposed restraints on allied military activity on Norwegian territory in peacetime. The restraints were all unilateral Norwegian decisions and therefore not codified in international law, and they were all subject to interpretation and unilateral modification by the Norwegian governCopyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

ment. Five of them, in particular, deserve to be mentioned: the policy on bases, whereby Norway came out against having allied forces stationed in Norway ‘as long as the country was not under attack or threat of attack’; the restraints on allied military activity in the very far north, particularly in the county of Finnmark; restrictions on German participation in flank defence; the ban against nuclear weapons on Norwegian territory; and the restraints on port visits by allied vessels carrying nuclear weapons on board. Global interests – international military operations It has been a major objective of Norwegian foreign policy to encourage and support the international community and global institutions with a view to promoting peace and stability, growth and equality. This policy reflects Norway’s global ethical policy, its position as a small, vulnerable state, and the fact that its trade and export industry, which to a great extent is based on natural resources, is operating in global markets. In some segments, such as petroleum and merchant shipping, Norway has major market shares. It is the second largest oil exporter in the world after Saudi Arabia and the second largest exporter of natural gas in Europe after Russia. During most of the period after 1945, Norwegian ship-owners controlled 8–10 per cent of the world’s fleet, and it was hence among the largest in the world in terms of carrying capacity. At the same time, Norway has not been in a position to contribute significantly to the task of maintaining peace and international order, despite the fact that this has been of crucial importance to Norwegian security, trade and industry. Nor has Norway been capable of maintaining an ocean-going or a blue-water navy with the capacity to protect merchant shipping, or to contribute significantly to the protection of the freedom of the seas allowing trade to go on unhindered. Admittedly, in the nineteenth century naval forces were occasionally sent to distant waters to protect Norwegian merchant ships against pirates and to show the flag. With the transition from sail to steam as a means of propulsion, Norway could hardly afford such expeditions any more. Protection of international trade and industry had to rely on the laws of neutrality, on alliances or international or hegemonic organisations and regimes. Norway’s international military participation after the Second World War did not aim primarily at protecting economic self-interest, but reflected the combined ethical and realist ambitions of contributing to peace and justice. That was clearly the case with peacekeeping, in which Norway and the ‘like-minded’ Nordic countries in general were in the first league. Over long periods of time 25 per cent of all UN peaceCopyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

keeping forces came from these countries. The Norwegian contributions came primarily from the army. It was not until 1963 that Norwegian naval forces were assigned to peacekeeping operations, mainly in the form of a frigate.8 The question of Norwegian participation in UN warfighting operations was addressed for a short while immediately after the Second World War, but at that stage the international community failed to create such forces. When the navy in 1967 finally decided to allocate naval forces to sharp operations, it was to NATO’s newly established Standing Naval Force Atlantic (STANAVFORLANT). This was composed of destroyer or frigate-class ships drawn from the navies of the member countries under the command of SACLANT. Norway allocated one or two frigates every year on a regular basis for a period of approximately six months. In addition, Norwegian mine countermeasure vessels took part in the Standing Naval Force Channel, which was formed in 1973 – and replaced by Mine Countermeasures Force North in 1998. Participation gave Norwegian naval officers a good opportunity to improve their skills in operating in larger inter-allied formations.9 However, Norway’s most important contribution to NATO’s overall maritime defence during the Cold War was not its naval forces, but its merchant fleet, as an asset in the plans to ferry supplies to the war theatres in Europe. In war the merchant fleets of the member states were to be pooled. The framework of this cooperation was established in 1950–51 based on experiences in the Second World War. The major institutions were the Planning Board for Ocean Shipping and the Defence Shipping Authority. Norway was the largest net exporter of tonnage, with the United States as the largest consumer, and Norway took an active part in the contingency planning for shipping.10 The sea power of the coastal state While the army was traditionally the dominant service compared to the navy, from the Second World War both services, and particularly the navy, had to compete for resources with the air force as well. This service was established as an independent service in 1944 and expanded rapidly. During the period of massive retaliation, in particular, the air force typified modern warfare, while the navy was in a clearly inferior position. This began to change around 1960, when the fleet and the Coast Artillery were modernised according to the principle of sequential procurement. From the 1970s, there was a growing demand for oceangoing maritime capability to cope with the challenges on the continental shelf and in the 200-mile zones around Norway. This also led in 1977 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

to the establishment of the Coast Guard as an independent, but integrated branch of the navy, in addition to the navy proper and the Coast Artillery. The major role of the Norwegian Navy during the Cold War was to exercise sea power in coastal waters, where it had two essentially different but mutually supporting missions. The first was to contribute to the defence against invasion from the sea. This would serve as a deterrent and if necessary as a trip-wire to release an allied intervention. The second mission, which grew in importance from the 1960s, was to maintain sovereignty in territorial waters and to assist in the maintenance of jurisdiction outside territorial waters. By establishing and maintaining a consistent and firm rule in accordance with international and common law, the navy could contribute to preventing or removing potential causes of conflict.11 During the whole period, priority was given to the anti-invasion mission. The main task was to oppose sea-borne invasion and to deny the enemy sea control in the waters adjacent to strategically important areas. An important part of this effort was to secure the safe and timely arrival of allied sea-borne reinforcements and resupply. Another crucial task, which contributed indirectly to the anti-invasion effort and which grew significantly in importance over the years, was the protection of the vital, mainly inshore sea lines of communications to north Norway. The protection of this south–north lifeline made it necessary to have ocean-going vessels, in particular, to cover the open passages along the coastal route. But the most important feature of Norwegian naval strategy was the development of a balanced concept of anti-invasion defence, whereby submarines, surface vessels, coast artillery batteries, torpedoes and minefields were deployed along the same axis in a layered defence in depth. Maritime patrol and fighter aircraft operated by the air force were also included in the scheme.12 The coast artillery was intended to have a channelling effect. Fixed artillery or underwater weapons covered vital fjords and other inlets into central parts of the country, and most major harbours and naval bases also were protected by such installations. Any attempt by an attacker to defeat or pass the forts or underwater weapons would be time-consuming and inflict heavy losses on his forces. He might therefore prefer to disembark his forces in other places that were assumed to be more favourable to the defence forces. This was considered to increase the warning time, make it easier to concentrate available mobile forces, and hence to counter the assault with vigour. The navy could also draw on civilian resources. The total defence concept played a significant role in war planning during the Cold War. Enormous civilian resources would according to the war plans support the military campaign. In the case of the navy, this included navy yards Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

along the coast and hundreds of requisitioned fishery boats and ferries armed with light weapons and manned by a great number of reservists. Their primary tasks were local surveillance, reporting, guard duties and transportation. Some of the requisitioned vessels were equipped as minelayers and minesweepers, and a few – along with the bulk of the coast guard cutters – as auxiliary escorts in coastal waters. Within this broad framework, there was considerable disagreement about defence concepts and priorities. As in the interwar years the main controversy was over the requirement for an ocean-going capability. For many years after the Second World War, the dominant naval school of thought was that Norway should not base its force planning fully on the assumption that allied forces would be capable of or willing to take the initial brunt of the battle in Norwegian littoral waters. Norway should therefore have the capability to counter an initial naval and amphibious assault on the open sea before the enemy reached the coast. This would require major surface forces such as light cruisers and particularly destroyers as the core of independent and balanced task forces. The political leadership and the other armed services opposed this concept. The tug-of-war about it went on for many years. The navy fleet plan of 1960 temporarily brought the struggle to an end, when it was decided to go for a new D-day fleet, with a large number of smaller units, including ASW frigates as the main surface vessels. In the 1970s the debate about major surface vessels was reopened when defence analyses did not give priority to a new generation of frigates. Again, it was assumed implicitly that allied forces would cope with the war at sea, and priority was given to countering an initial assault on Norwegian soil after an attack had taken place. The navy emphasised the need to have sufficient means to handle the whole range of events that could occur along the entire scale of conflict. In this case, the navy in the end won the battle for the frigates. The second mission, the maintenance of sovereignty in territorial waters and of jurisdiction outside territorial waters, reflected broader national interests, mainly in peacetime. In 1963 Norway formally claimed a continental shelf. In the 1970s the new law of the sea allowed for the establishing of 200-mile exclusive economic zones. This led to a redistribution of vital resources to the benefit of the coastal states. With its 2,650 kilometres coastline, Norway was among the most privileged countries. With the establishment of an exclusive economic zone out to 200 nautical miles off the mainland and of fishery zones around Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Norway came into possession of an ocean area of some 2 million square kilometres, more than six times the area of its mainland territory. The possession of these resources made Norway one of the richest countries in the world, but the territorialisation of the sea also raised a Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

series of new defence questions. It was decided from the outset that in times of peace the maintenance of sovereignty and jurisdiction and the defence of petroleum installations would have to be first and foremost a national responsibility. What extra police and military capabilities would Norway need in order to defend these national interests offshore? In the decades to come, the resources at sea proved to have a strong impact on Norwegian defence priorities, to the benefit of the navy. There were a number of new intricate foreign and security policy questions as well. Where should one draw the boundary delimitations between adjacent zones, particularly between Norway and the Soviet Union in the Barents Sea? What was the legal status of the continental shelf and the waters around Svalbard and Jan Mayen? What role should Norway play in the struggle between Western oil consumer nations and the oil cartel OPEC? And how should Norway respond to the US policy of confrontation in the early 1980s to limit further Russian exports of natural gas to western Europe; the Americans expected that Norway should increase its exports to Europe as a compensatory step.

NORWEGIAN NAVAL POWER – FOUR PHASES

While the navy was an obvious junior partner to the army before the Second World War, it was the winner in the restructuring of the Norwegian armed forces after the end of the Cold War. This development reflected fundamental changes in the international environment and the evolution of Norway as a major coastal state with vital natural resources to protect. Great expectations Norway joined the grand alliance in the Second World War. The government-in-exile gave priority to the navy and the air force, while the army for the first time became less important. The navy took part in operations on all oceans, and many officers acquired blue-water experience. They served on destroyers, frigates, corvettes and minesweepers under a Norwegian or British flag. The main mission of these classes of ships was as convoy escorts protecting the trans-Atlantic shipping – of which many ships were manned and owned by Norwegians – carrying war equipment and supplies to the European theatre. In addition, quite a few officers were embarked on even larger navy men-of-war for shorter or longer periods. In 1945, when the navy, the largest of the national services, returned home after five years in exile, its leaders had great expectations regardCopyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

ing the size and importance of a future navy. There was in naval circles a widespread belief that the traumatic lessons of 1940 in combination with the contributions of the merchant fleet and the merits of the navy proper in support of the allied war efforts, would create a new willingness to give priority to defence in general, and to the navy in particular. Policy and planning in the late 1940s indicated that this would be the case.13 The navy’s force structure of 1945 included as many as 58 ships, some Norwegian and ex-German, but mostly of British origin. These came to symbolise the close functional cooperation and integration with the Royal Navy even after the war. There was an impressive number of more than 300 artillery and torpedo batteries; 65,000 Germans had manned them. In the early post-world-war period, Norway aimed to maintain more than half of these. This was not realistic, and the plans were modified substantially in the years to come, but Norway was to spend much money on maintaining and modernising the coast artillery structure during the whole Cold War period. Defence planning shortly after the war was based on a threat scenario that was by and large similar to the German attack in 1940, that is on the idea of an initial Blitzkrieg as the most dangerous possibility, followed by a large-scale invasion. Shortly after the war the possibility of a vengeful Germany was still part of the picture, but this faded away very soon in the emerging Cold War scenario, which meant that the Soviet Union would be the aggressor, and that Norway would have to rely heavily on Western assistance. The major role of Norway’s own armed forces was to concentrate its modest resources with a view to countering a surprise attack by air and sea forces against strategically important areas, including possible bridgeheads for Western reinforcement forces.14 Based on this threat assessment and these overall defence priorities, the Norwegian three-year defence plan of 1946 underlined the need to give greater relative emphasis to the navy and the air force. The government supported the idea of having a sizeable navy. During 1946– 49, the period covered by the plan, it turned out that the navy received even more resources in relative terms than anticipated in the plan. Forty warships of various sizes were acquired from Britain and the United States, most of them on favourable terms. Four large destroyers and three submarines were purchased from Britain in 1946– 47. However, the government and Parliament rejected the admirals’ vision of establishing an ocean-going navy. In the navy plans the main idea was to build a fleet having a core of three independent, balanced task groups. Each of these should consist of one light cruiser, a couple of destroyers and ships equipped with torpedoes as their main armament. In the defence plan of 1946 the navy mission was reduced Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

to taking part in the anti-invasion effort, in particular by countering landings from the sea in areas of strategic importance. The navy should also defend the sea lanes along the coast, but this task was clearly a secondary consideration. The creation of ocean-going tactical balanced task groups based on light cruisers and destroyers did not fit into this picture, neither conceptually nor economically. The question was highlighted in a debate in 1946– 47 about whether or not Norway should buy or lease the light cruiser Arethusa from Britain. Their offer was rejected by Parliament. Although the navy’s inventory still included destroyers – and submarines – policy clearly pointed towards a concept of defensive operations in littoral waters.15 Years of crisis The dramatic Western military build-up in the wake of the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 created an environment of budgetary plenty. The new defence efforts included a large number of infrastructure programmes funded by the alliance. The Norwegian Navy benefited from this programme when it was decided in 1953 to build a completely new main naval base, Haakonsvern, in a fjord in the vicinity of Bergen in south-west Norway. The base was opened officially in 1963. The navy gathered most of its training facilities and integrated them at the new naval training establishment on the base premises. The various weapons schools were assembled under one command with a coordinating authority and common administration, and this turned out to be a very efficient solution. Moreover, the material command also moved to the new base location, and the Naval Academy was established on a campus just outside Bergen, but still close to the main base at Haakonsvern. This enabled the navy to develop a solid cluster of competence. On the whole, however, the 1950s developed into a period of crisis for the Norwegian Navy. In a decade characterised by enormous investment in platforms and weapons systems, the navy received only a couple of new destroyers which were hired from Britain, three frigates hired from Canada; some new motor torpedo boats and minesweepers were also built, but the navy’s share of the US military assistance programme was very modest. The main reason for the debacle was the impact of revolutionary steps in NATO’s overall strategy. The navy was heavily affected by the Norwegian government’s interpretation of the concept of ‘collective balanced forces’, and, later, by the introduction of the strategy of massive retaliation. Moreover, the navy was also weakened by a struggle over the role of the coast artillery and by internal rivalry over the naval defence concept.16 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Burden-sharing and integrated defence were established as the key aims of Western cooperation from the very beginning, in 1949–50. In its Strategic Concept of December 1949, the alliance detailed the principle of ‘self-help and mutual aid’. In practical terms this meant that the European powers should be responsible for the hard core of ground forces and for the bulk of tactical air support and air defence. This policy was pursued further through the principle of ‘balanced collective forces’, which was approved by Congress in October 1949 and by the NATO Council in May 1950. The idea of balanced collective forces ran contrary to traditional notions of the requirement for so-called national balanced forces, and the Norwegian government initially had its doubts about the new principle. However, in 1950–52 it came to champion it as a means of securing allied reassurance: the government interpreted the principle to mean that naval defence, even in local waters, would be entrusted primarily to the Western powers and not to Norway. The admirals reacted extremely strongly against this idea of burdensharing. They argued that the government had misinterpreted the concept, and that in any case it was a game of chance to rely so heavily on reinforcements that might not arrive. Although the major Western powers had command of the sea, they would not necessarily put their large ocean-going warships at risk in littoral or narrow waters because of the potential threat from land-based aircraft, shore batteries and minefields. Again the admirals rejected a national defensive strategy of countering an initial assault only after the aggressor had set foot on Norwegian soil. In their eyes Norway should, as far as possible, take responsibility for defensive measures in the coastal zone out to 200 nautical miles, something which would require larger surface warships such as light cruisers and destroyers. In the end, the navy leadership expressed lack of confidence in the defence minister, but the rebels failed to gain political support. The navy’s chief of staff resigned, while the government removed the chief of the navy. He had been the most highly regarded and merited naval officer of flag rank during the war, and was highly respected in the naval service.17 The term ‘collective balanced forces’ disappeared from official Norwegian documents as early as 1953. Later, the term ‘national balanced forces’ became one of the key elements of the Norwegian defence concept. This change was not merely a question of rhetoric. Firstly, the official Norwegian interpretation of the term ‘national balanced forces’ met with opposition within the alliance. In its basic document of November 1951, Division of Responsibilities in Wartime between the National Territorial Commanders and the Supreme Commanders and Subordinate Allied Commanders (MC 36), the alliance established that coastal areas were the responsibility of the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

respective nations, unless otherwise agreed upon between the nations and the appropriate NATO authority. In the short term and after strong Norwegian pressure on the Standing Group, the alliance accepted that the Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Northern Europe (CINCNORTH) should be responsible for Norwegian coastal waters pending a definition of territorial boundaries between SACLANT and SACEUR. However, the Standing Group later reaffirmed the principle of national responsibility.18 Secondly, throughout the 1950s the Norwegians gradually came to realise that they themselves had to bear the initial brunt of protecting their country from invasion from the sea.19 US carrier battle groups which were part of the Strike Fleet Atlantic were not expected to reach forward operating areas in the Norwegian Sea until 15 days after outbreak of war. The Norwegian government tried to persuade Britain to allocate British forces belonging to the Strike Fleet at the earliest stage of a crisis or war, but the British authorities were unwilling to accept such commitments, and after the reappraisal of British strategy in 1957, any hope of a British change of mind disappeared.20 The navy was also heavily affected by NATO’s introduction in the mid-1950s of the strategy of massive retaliation. NATO’s strategy document MC 48, of November 1954, and the strategic concept (MC 14/2) of May 1957 emphasised that the primary source of deterrence and defence was the nuclear air offensive. The heavy reliance on nuclear weapons remained the essence of the strategy until the introduction of flexible response in the 1960s, when conventional options were gradually upgraded in NATO planning.21 Norway accepted that the new strategy of massive retaliation was of crucial importance in maintaining a credible Western deterrent, and, in the event of war, Norwegian bases and installations would play an important role in rendering support to the fulfilment of the joint strategy. Moreover, in the late 1950s Norway accepted some measures that could facilitate the use of nuclear weapons in its own armed forces. Thus, some units obtained limited training in the use of these weapons, and Norway accepted the building of so-called Special Ammunition Storage Sites in Norway. The building projects included sites for fighter bombers and ground-based missiles. But the Norwegian government in 1957 turned down all suggestions of storing nuclear ammunition in the country in peacetime. Norway’s negative attitude to incorporating nuclear weapons was reaffirmed as official policy in 1961. Massive retaliation meant first of all the primacy of air power. That was the case even in Norway. The air force developed further an offensive air power doctrine, using conventional ammunition against enemy targets since the government rejected the idea of incorporating nuclear weapons in the armed forces.22 The navy did not play any role in the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

nuclear strategy, something which contributed to giving the service a low priority in the resource allocation. The navy also was weakened by internal rivalries, and by conflicts about the role of the coast artillery, which had been a branch of the navy since 1934. The coast artillery and the navy proper represented two different cultures, those in the artillery felt they were not treated as equals, and there was hardly any overall, integrated doctrine for the whole navy. Early in the 1950s British advisors recommended, mostly for cost-effective reasons and because it corresponded to the British tradition, incorporating the coast artillery in a unified artillery corps within the army. The coast artillery, which had been part of the British Royal Artillery during the Second World War, sympathised with the idea, while it met with strong opposition from the navy proper. In 1953 Parliament decided to establish a unified artillery, but the decision was reversed four years later, and the coast artillery formally returned to the navy in 1960. Another challenge to the coast artillery was the impact of the nuclear and missile age. In 1955 the Military Capabilities Committee (the Boyesen Committee) recommended reducing the fixed coast artillery substantially, and closing all forts between Oslo and Narvik in north Norway. However, this recommendation was rejected by the government in 1957. From that stage, and as long as the Cold War lasted, the existence of the coast artillery was not in question. In the decades to come the coast artillery expanded substantially as part of the antiinvasion effort.23 The turn of the tide In 1960 Norway made a decision to renew the inventory of its navy proper. Judged on any account the Navy Fleet Plan of 1960 was a great success. It led to a building programme in cooperation with the US government, which covered half the costs, which amounted to around $58.6 million. Coastal-type submarines, frigates, motor torpedo and gunboats, along with minesweepers and minelayers, became the backbone of a more standardised, D-day Fleet. Destroyers disappeared from the inventory, and hence the offensive potential of the surface fleet. The force structure detailed in the Navy Fleet Plan remained basically the same for the rest of the Cold War. The programme represented an ambitious effort to acquire a suitable and affordable navy, with a large number of smaller, less-expensive vessels, better capable of defending Norway’s coastline. The planning process also provided the navy with a clear mission and a feasible and affordable operational concept. On the tactical level, the new navy operated in close cooperation with the coast artillery, and with maritime Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

patrol aircraft operated by the air force. In the late 1960s it was also decided to procure modern patrol aircraft and transport aircraft. Again the United States gave economic and material support.24 The decision in 1960 was nourished by the Soviet build-up of its Kola bases, and also by the emerging ideas of limited warfare, exposed flanks and flexible response. These events underlined the need to provide the Northern Flank of NATO with a more credible inshore coastal protection, and for a navy that could maintain a regular pattern of presence outside north Norway.25 The existing navy could hardly cope with these challenges. Towards the end of the 1950s it was apparent that most ships in the inventory of the navy were outdated or worn down. The need for a replacement programme was urgent. Admittedly, the navy had a rather large number of defence installations and ships. However, there was hardly any overall policy of procurement which fitted an overall defence strategy. Most of the ships had been built during or shortly after the war, and most of them could not remain operational beyond 1966–67. It was a sort of mobilisation fleet, since less than one-third of the ships was normally under command. The situation was most unsatisfactory in the area of electronics, and efficient anti-submarine and anti-air weapons were in short supply. Because the ships had been acquired from a variety of sources, maintenance of diverse and ageing equipment was both difficult and expensive. Already in 1955 the Norwegian government approached the Americans to investigate the possibility of receiving support from the United States. Both the US administration and SACLANT responded favourably, but it was made clear from the very beginning that a US contribution was dependent on further Norwegian appropriations, over and above existing defence expenditure; secondly, Washington wanted to avoid a piecemeal approach to the modernisation of the Norwegian Navy. The inspiration came from a US–Danish programme, in which the costs were borne 50 per cent by each country. The debate about modernisation led to a new controversy about what kind of navy Norway should have. Strong opinions for or against a blue-water ambition continued to divide the naval community. Most of the navy leadership, or ‘the traditionalists’, advocated with vigour a destroyer-oriented navy with a certain blue-water capacity. According to this school of thought, the lack of larger ships prevented the navy from fulfilling its ambition of creating the envisaged powerful anti-invasion task groups with endurance and seaworthiness for operations off the coast. In the late 1950s, before the new plan materialised, an offer of two to four Fletcher-class destroyers by the United States whetted the appetites of the destroyer-minded. This would have led ultimately to a destroyer force of eight ships, and meant that the Norwegian Navy Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

would have concentrated the bulk of its resources in terms of money and people in destroyers and destroyer-type operations. On the other hand it was realised, not least among younger officers, that the odds were against the navy’s vision of establishing tactical units based on destroyers as core elements. They were also influenced by the US Navy’s experiences in the Korean War, especially in the area of mine warfare. The ‘modernists’ wanted to build greater numbers of smaller, less expensive ships, capable of better defending Norway’s coastline. The Navy Fleet Plan of 1960 brought the struggle to an end on the premises of the ‘modernists’. The new plan had two focal points. The first bunch of ships should as their main task cover the seaward part of the anti-invasion task. Based on the concept of layered defence the coastal fleet should consist of various craft designed to operate in littoral waters in close tactical cooperation with minefields, torpedo batteries and gun forts of the coast artillery. The plan included two types of patrol craft both of Norwegian design. One class of eight ships – the Tjeld class – was equipped with torpedoes as its main weapon; the other class of 20 ships – the Storm class – was equipped with 76-mm guns as their primary armament.26 From 1970 this was the first boat to have installed Penguin anti-surface-ship missiles, a milestone in improving the fire power of the warships. The next generations of patrol craft, which were not part of the fleet construction programme of 1960, were largely modelled on the updated Storm class. The Snøgg-class missile torpedo boats, which were built around 1970, were based on the same hull design as the Storm class and equipped with both torpedo tubes and launchers. So was the Hauk class, which was delivered in 1977–80. The last class of ships that was part of the Navy Fleet Plan and that had anti-invasion as its primary task, was 15 Kobben-class coastal submarines of German design and construction. In an agreement signed by Norway and Germany in 1960, Germany committed itself to compensate for the purchase of submarines in Germany by buying Norwegian defence products in the order of five to three in favour of Norway, something which amounted to about $60 million. The agreement turned out to be a milestone in the development of closer Norwegian defence and security policy cooperation with the former enemy.27 The second focal point was the escort task, especially the antisubmarine part of it. Even here the plan put emphasis on littoral operations, more specifically on coastal sea lines of communication. The purpose was to master the challenging littoral environment and make that a comparative advantage. The escort part of the programme counted two types of ship. The Oslo class consisted of five frigate-type units. The ships were built in Norway, but were based on a US design – Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the Dealey class. The Sleipner class – an anti-submarine corvette type ship – should also count five units, but only two ships were built due to funding constraints. This was a complete Norwegian enterprise in both design and construction. The units of both classes of escort vessels had the same primary suit of anti-submarine sensors and weapons. The main weapon was the Norwegian-developed Terne system. The result of this major undertaking was a significantly improved situation for the service. A new navy, composed almost entirely of new and modern ships, required a tremendous learning process, a morale booster to the naval community, and it helped the service to overcome deep internal disagreements. The new inventory of modern ships was an inspiration and challenge to the young officers. Procedures had to be prepared and tactics developed within a whole range of warfare areas, technical fields and specialities requiring skills not available from other sources. As a common background and reference, the Cold War scenario provided a very real and easily understood threat. During the latter half of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the navy developed into a competent fighting force with high readiness. On completion of the work-up period, all units under command as a rule deployed to northern Norway, normally for 5–6 months at a time. The submarines, which made frequent patrols in the Barents Sea as a major part of their deployment pattern, were subject to operational requirements at a level of alert status that came as close to wartime conditions and strains as probably is possible short of war. Since the navy proper and the coast artillery were integral parts of the balanced concept for anti-invasion defence, modernisation of the coast artillery was deemed necessary as well. The first major step was taken in the late 1950s, with the reception of mine equipment from the United States and with the coast artillery force plan of 1959. This plan established the size and shape of the branch for the rest of the Cold War. Protection of the Oslo fjord and inlets into north Norway was accorded highest priority. The inventory was standardised on ex-German torpedoes and guns of three calibres only, something which was a tremendous leap forward for efficiency, notably because it simplified maintenance and education. More systematic efforts were now also made to develop an integrated doctrine for the whole navy, based on the concept of layered defence against sea-borne invasion. The second major step came with the coast artillery plan of 1968. At that stage the coast artillery structure included some 40 installations. The main objective of the new plan was to replace the ex-German gun and torpedo batteries with new equipment. This modernisation was to continue for the rest of the Cold War. Although the coast artillery had only some of its forts fully manned, the alert readiness of the units was extremely high – at all times half an hour. These forts were all used to educate the complements of the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

mobilisation units not on permanent readiness in peacetime. The mobile and the stationary parts of the navy frequently exercised together on a regular basis, not least in order to try out the tactics of layered defence against sea-borne invasion. Likewise, the crews of the maritime patrol aircraft operated by the air force cooperated closely with the navy’s submarine and anti-submarine warfare communities. Maritime patrol aircraft also took an active part in all major exercises and quite frequently also exercised with the escorts of the navy on a more ad hoc basis, especially when they operated in the waters off northern Norway. Moreover, maritime patrol aircraft supported the submarines in their patrols acting as communication relay stations between the submarines and the navy’s operations centres ashore. New challenges – new demanding tasks With the advent of the so-called ‘Second Cold War’ from the late 1970s, the further build-up of Soviet naval forces in the far north, and the more ambitious maritime strategy of the Reagan administration, the arms race moved nearer to Norway. This coincided with new international competition for energy and fishery resources at sea, which led to the new Law of the Sea and the establishment of 200-mile exclusive economic zones. This territorialisation of the sea raised intricate questions about where to draw the maritime boundary delimitations between adjacent zones in northern Europe. As a large exporter of oil and natural gas Norway was also faced with a series of new foreign policy dilemmas. From the perspective of defence, the navy in particular had to cope with new demanding tasks, and in a longer-term perspective these developments gave the navy a higher priority compared to the other services. During the Second Cold War, the anti-invasion effort remained the most important task of the Norwegian Navy. Surprisingly, in the defence planning of the 1970s the priority of the navy proper was not seen as the most adequate response to the growing military threat. In 1978, the Defence Commission of 1974 published its report about future missions and force structure. Most of its recommendations were accepted by the government in 1979. Even though the development of the new Law of the Sea and the rapid rise of the Soviet Northern Fleet had been important reasons for appointing the Commission, it recommended a strengthening of the army, the air force, the coast artillery, but not the navy proper. The toughest blow for the naval community was that the Commission not only recommended phasing out the corvettes by the mid-1980s, but also failed to give priority to allocating resources to a new generation of frigates. Most of the arguments in the debate were well known from the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

earlier conflicts about the size and shape of the navy. The Commission assumed implicitly that the war at sea – to some extent even the protection of the coastal sea lines of Norway, could be left to the major sea powers in the alliance. The naval community underlined the need for a broad approach in defence planning which included a wide range of scenarios and missions. The conflict was nurtured by the navy’s dissatisfaction with the methodology used in defence planning. The Defence Commission’s most influential advisor was the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (NDRE). The Establishment based its advice mainly upon the results of the system analysis work of its operation research branch. After having defined a range of possible attack scenarios considered to be the most likely and dangerous to occur, the NDRE focused on a couple of scenarios and used them to develop a set of antiinvasion models. The selection of the scenarios, as well as the way the results of the analysis were applied, revealed fundamental differences in opinion and approach in how the issue of creating an efficient Norwegian defence force should be solved. The scientists at the NDRE tended, as did the army, to operate in two modes – peace or war – and they gave priority to countering an initial assault on Norwegian soil after an attack had taken place. The scientists and the army also shared the assumption that the stronger the defence was in this early phase of a conflict, the better the armed forces would work as a deterrent against a possible attacker. This approach helps to explain why the Defence Commission gave strong priority to the coast artillery. It was regarded as an important part of the anti-invasion effort. Although the ambitious plans of the Commission were not fully implemented, something which led to strong reactions in the branch, the modernisation process continued. New forts were built in north Norway and even in mid-Norway, and most of the permanent minefields and the torpedo batteries were also updated and some new batteries constructed. To cope with the threat from precision weapons, all the tubes from the torpedo launchers were placed safely under cover of a layer consisting of metres of solid rock, terminating far below the surface and thus allowing the torpedo to enter the water without visual detection possibility. The very same approach by the NDRE helps to explain why the navy proper in general, and the frigates in particular, were not given priority. In its criticism of the recommendations, the naval community underlined, not only the navy’s anti-invasion role, but also the important constabulary and diplomatic missions of the navy in times of peace and tension as a means of preventing war. The navy agreed that fighting power was necessary, but emphasised in addition that in order to prevent the outbreak of hostilities, it was imperative to have sufficient means to handle the whole range of events that could occur along the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

entire scale of conflict. If Norway failed to respond properly in less demanding situations, it could convey the message that it was not serious in taking care of its interests.28 In the short term, the recommendations of the Defence Commission and the subsequent decisions by the government were serious setbacks for the navy, but around 1980 the climate and the priorities had already begun to change in favour of frigates. One important factor was an increasing number of unknown foreign submarines reported in Norway’s territorial waters. Another factor was that the task of protecting the communication lifeline to north Norway was accorded higher priority. This requirement was clearly underlined by an agreement in 1981 to prestock the heavy equipment for a US Marine Corps expeditionary brigade in Trøndelag in mid-Norway. North Norway was its most likely area of deployment, and therefore forces and equipment had to be transferred northwards in a crisis or war. A reassessment of the requirements led to a decision to keep the corvettes in the inventory and in due course not only to modernise the five Oslo-class frigates, but also to order a new generation of frigates. In the very last part of the Cold War, funds were made available also to modernise the Kobben-class submarines, the service acquired six new Ula-class coastal submarines from Germany, and nine new mine countermeasure vessels were ordered. The evolution of the new Law of the Sea and the management of maritime resources also helped to bring about a gradual change in the understanding of the need for maritime capabilities that could cope with a variety of missions. The first great leap in the territorialisation of the sea came in 1963, when the Norwegian government, based on the 1958 Convention on the Continental Shelf, claimed exclusive sovereign rights to explore for and exploit the natural resources of the sea-bed and subsoil. Later in the 1960s the North Sea states agreed on the boundary delimitations; they were drawn according to the so-called median line principle. In reality, however, the oil age did not start until 1969 when the first commercial discovery of oil was made in the North Sea, and until 1973, when the oil prices increased dramatically. Since then, the Norwegian economy and the wealth of the nation have to a very large extent been based on income from ‘the black gold’. In the year 2000, for example, more than 25 per cent of central government income and almost 40 per cent of export income came from oil and gas. The second great leap in the territorialisation of the sea came in the mid-1970s, with the de facto acknowledgement of the principle of the 200-mile Economic Exclusion Zone. Norway played an influential role in making and shaping the new Law of the Sea, particularly in the Evensen group in the years 1973–76. In 1977 Norway established a 200-mile zone off the mainland, and later the same year a Fishery Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Protection Zone around Svalbard. Finally, in 1980, the Fishery Zone around Jan Mayen came into being. The new Law of the Sea was codified in the Third UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 3) of 1982.29 One of the most difficult challenges in connection with the territorialisation of the sea was how to define the boundaries of the continental shelves and the exclusive economic zones.30 The 1,696 kilometre boundary between Norway and Russia in the Barents Sea, a strategically sensitive area, remains to be settled. Norway has advocated the median line principle; Moscow has used as a basis an extended interpretation of the ‘special circumstances’ concept, which in practical terms has justified the sector principle, and which means that the boundary is to be drawn up further to the west. A very large shelf area of about 67,000 square miles is disputed. Informal discussions started in 1970, but there was hardly any progress in the negotiations during the Cold War. That changed for a short while in the Gorbachev period, when the two countries made great progress. Since then, however, Russia has not been ready to make substantial concessions. Much is at stake. The southern part of the area contains some of Europe’s richest fish stocks and substantial reserves of oil and natural gas. Furthermore, the Russians have argued that the area is of major strategic importance, and that a boundary delimitation far to the east will make it easier for the Western powers to collect intelligence information about the activities of the Northern Fleet. Because of opposition from various countries Norway did not establish ordinary exclusive economic zones around Jan Mayen and Svalbard. Both Iceland and Denmark (Greenland) contested the Norwegian stand concerning the continental shelf and the zone around Jan Mayen. In this case, the questions were solved in the end partly by arbitration and partly by bringing the case to the International Court in the Hague. The treaty of 1920 placed Svalbard under Norwegian sovereignty, subject to certain restrictions providing equal access for purposes of economic exploitation, and a ban on certain military activities. Russia has historically had a very strong position on Svalbard, and during the Cold War the Svalbard question was one of the most difficult in the bilateral relationship. The Russians were the only ones who protested against Norway’s legal interpretation of the status of the continental shelf and the zone around Svalbard, but in this case Norway had in reality little support in the international community. Only one country, first Finland and later Canada, gave explicit support to the Norwegian positions, and the question remains unsettled. A second challenge for Norway was the economic and foreign policy implications of its large petroleum production. In the eyes of the major Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Western consumer nations, Norway was a friend and an ally, and it was also, in contrast to the Middle East and the Caucasus region, a sound and stable society that could guarantee long-term supplies of petroleum. For these reasons Norway was in a position to influence stability in the oil and natural gas markets.31 The question of guaranteed and predictable supplies was highlighted during the oil crisis in 1973–74, when the Arab oil-producing countries threatened to limit production and to boycott the friends of Israel. The crisis led in 1974 to the creation of the International Energy Agency (IEA). The Norwegian response to these events illustrated its double interest structure as being both a Western-oriented and a petroleum producing country, and this pattern has prevailed. On the one hand, Norway did not enter into any formal cooperation with OPEC, but it has on a number of occasions – on a unilateral basis – reduced its production after such decisions have been made by OPEC. On the other hand, Norway did not join the IEA as a full member, but in 1975 signed a special agreement with the agency. Norway has not committed itself to join the IEA if it decides to activate its mechanism for reductions in oil consumption and for a fair distribution of oil among its member nations. The crisis in the Gulf in 1990–01, when the IEA made preparations for activating the mechanism, came to illustrate Norwegian policy in this field. Norway did not take part in the deliberations and decisions in the IEA, but it made a unilateral decision afterwards to abide by the regulations if they were implemented. The US campaign in 1981–83 to limit further Russian export of natural gas to the western European markets was motivated by a concern that the Russians would get access to hard currency and high technology, and that NATO-Europe would become dependent on supplies from its main adversary in the Cold War. There was fear on the part of the Reagan administration that the Russians would take advantage of this dependency to exert pressure on western Europe. The US administration argued that the so-called Norwegian option – increased export from the Norwegian sector in the North Sea – was the most interesting alternative to Russian natural gas. The question was discussed extensively in bilateral talks between the United States and Norway. Norway hesitated to accept the US approach to the problem. Overall, the US policy was seen as too confrontational. Moreover, it would take time to develop oil fields further with a view to obtaining increased production, and Norway was not prepared to abandon a fundamental principle in its export policy: that oil and gas should be sold primarily on commercial terms. The outcome of the negotiations was a rather non-committal IEA study in 1983 in which the governments involved committed themselves to encouraging the oil companies to start negotiations about buying more natural gas from the Norwegian sector.32 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

A third challenge for Norway, connected to the territorialisation of the sea and the oil age, was the requirement for police and defence capabilities which were tailored primarily not for traditional war-fighting, but for the enforcement of sovereignty in territorial waters, the maintenance of jurisdiction outside territorial waters, and for the protection of petroleum installations. The navy has for centuries carried out fishery protection tasks on an ad hoc basis. In 1908 this became an official task of the service when it established a Naval Fishery Protection Service. With the growing importance of energy and fishery resources to the Norwegian economy and its foreign relations, Norway decided in 1977 to replace the old fishery protection service with a larger and better-equipped coast guard. Its core elements were three new ocean-going ships of the Nordkapp class fitted with Lynx helicopters supported by Orion maritime patrol aircraft.33 Since then the coast guard has been of crucial importance in the protection of Norwegian interests at sea. This is illustrated also by the fact that whereas the armed forces in general were reduced and restructured after the end of the Cold War, the coast guard actually grew in size and importance. The overall area protection of the strategically important, but extremely vulnerable, petroleum resources and installations would in the case of war or a serious crisis be the responsibility of the alliance. During the Cold War this was a rather theoretical responsibility, since Norway aimed to close production and evacuate the platforms if a threat manifested itself against the personnel and the environment, and a war in the region would, beyond doubt, have represented such a threat. The first NATO and national policy and strategy guidelines for the security and protection of petroleum installations were formulated in 1975. They addressed primarily peacetime situations. A major concern was the threat from terrorism and sabotage. Such acts, for example, could be led or inspired by Moscow or by groups affiliated to the conflicts in the Middle East. In addition to the ordinary policy and defence resources, Norway established in 1975 a separate anti-terror unit within the police to cope with these threats. Six years later it was decided to create a Defence Special Command to assist the policy, and this became operative in 1984.34 These steps reflected the importance of maritime resources, both in the Norwegian and international economy and politics.

CONCLUSION: NORWAY AS A MAJOR COASTAL STATE

I have pointed out in this chapter that in traditional realist terms Norway is a small power with limited defence resources. But I have also emphasised the strategic importance of Norway’s location, of its Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

merchant fleet and of its natural resources. During the Cold War, Norway’s geo-strategic location made its territory important for earlywarning and intelligence purposes, for protecting the Atlantic sea lines of communications and the central front, and for projecting power against the adversary. Norway’s merchant fleet would in the event of war have been a major contributor in transportation across the Atlantic, and from the 1970s the large Norwegian oil and natural gas production became crucial strategic resources. The maintenance of peace and stability has therefore been of vital importance to Norwegian security, trade and industry. However, Norway has not been capable of contributing significantly to maintaining international order. This task lay in the hands of the international community in general and of the great powers in particular. During the Cold War, the major role of the navy was to exercise sea power in littoral waters, where it had two different but mutually supporting missions. The first was to contribute to defence against invasion from the sea and to protect the communication lifeline to north Norway; the second was to maintain sovereignty in territorial waters and to assist in the maintenance of jurisdiction outside territorial waters. The second mission grew in importance, first, with the territorialisation of the continental shelf and the establishing of 200-mile exclusive economic zones and, later, with the end of the Cold War. The new international environment after the end of the Cold War led to a reduction and restructuring of the Norwegian armed forces. Participation in international operations has become an important task even in the case of Norway. However, the most striking feature in the post-Cold-War era is the extent to which Norwegian defence priorities are being shaped by the importance of northern and maritime dimensions. This has given the navy, including the coast guard, a higher relative priority compared to the other armed services. Although the new Russia does not represent any military threat to Norway, Russia is still a major regional military power which gives high priority to its Kola bases, and major legal questions at sea in the far north remain to be settled. Of equal importance, the maritime resources are vital to the wealth of the nation. In a broader international perspective, Norway is a large exporter of fish and petroleum. The international community’s need to reduce its dependency on energy resources from politically unstable regions has as its corollary the need to protect production and supplies from Norwegian installations against sabotage and terrorism. In a world in which a rapidly growing population is depleting major fish stocks at an alarming rate, the need to conserve the stocks in Norwegian territorial waters and zones, and to protect against both pollution and over-fishing has implications which transcend national boundaries. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Norwegian defence planning thus includes both naval participation in peacekeeping and peace enforcement on the international scene, naval requirements to cope with potential military conflicts in the far north, and the maintenance of sovereignty and jurisdiction. The broad range of missions has made flexibility a key element in the doctrine and force structure of the navy, while detailed war scenarios and focus on specific invasion routes have been downplayed. Large resources are therefore being spent on new mobile platforms. While the static installations of the coast artillery will be mothballed, the navy is developing mobile coast artillery missile units. Furthermore, there is a requirement for larger ocean-going units in order to protect maritime resources and to take part in international operations. Five new ASW frigates of the Fridtjof Nansen class have been ordered, and six newly developed fast, seaworthy missile boats of the Skjold class, with a hull design based on stealth technology, will be built. The navy has also established, on a cadre basis, a sea-going Task Group planning staff attached to the organisation of the Commander Sea Training with a competence to lead both Norwegian and inter-allied operations. This permanent command arrangement is regarded as important to assert national interests, particularly in situations short of war. The growing importance of the coast guard is reflected in the establishment in 1996 of the Inner Coast Guard for territorial waters equipped with cutters. The coast guard will also acquire a new, large icecapable vessel with helicopters, while the old Lynx helicopters will be replaced by new helicopters of considerably better performance. All these investments reflect a widely accepted realisation among politicians and the public that Norway has become a major coastal state.

NOTES I am deeply indebted to Roald Gjelsten who helped me to shape the article. I also wish to thank Jacob Børresen and Tor Jørgen Melien for many valuable suggestions. 1. R. L. Rothstein, Alliances and Small Powers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 29. 2. O. Riste, ‘The Historical Determinants of Norwegian Foreign Policy’, in J. J. Holst (ed.), Norwegian Foreign Policy in the 1980s (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1985). O. Riste and R. Tamnes, ‘Norway’, in Bruce W. Watson and Susan M. Watson (eds), The Soviet Naval Threat to Europe: Military and Political Dimensions (Boulder, CO, San Franciso, CA and London: Westview Press, 1985). O. Riste, ‘Isolasjonisme og stormaktsgarantiar: Norsk tryggingspolitikk 1905–1990’, Forsvarsstudier, 3 (1991). 3. N. Amstrup, ‘The Perennial Problem of Small States: A Survey of Research Efforts’, Cooperation and Conflict, 11 (1976), pp. 163–82. N. Petersen, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

4.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

‘Adaptation as a Framework for the Analysis of Foreign Policy Behavior’, Cooperation and Conflict, 12, 4 (1977) and ‘The Alliance Policies of the Small NATO Countries’, in Lawrence S. Kaplan and Robert W. Clawson (eds), NATO After Thirty Years (Wilmington, DE: Scolarly Resources Inc., 1981). See also D. Vital, The Survival of Small States: Studies in Small Power/Great Power Conflict (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). See, for example, R. O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). D. Baldwin (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1993). J. Goldstein and R. O. Keohane (eds), Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). U. Lindell and S. Persson, ‘The Paradox of Weak State Power: A Research and Literature Overview’, Cooperation and Conflict, 21 (1986). J. J. Holst, ‘Lilliputs and Gulliver: Small States in a Great Power Alliance’, in Gregory Flynn (ed.), NATO’s Northern Allies: The National Security Policies of Belgium, Denmark, The Netherlands and Norway (London: Croom Helm, 1985). The terms deterrence and reassurance were introduced in a Norwegian context by Johan Jørgen Holst (see J. J. Holst, ‘Norsk sikkerhetspolitikk i strategisk perspektiv’, Internasjonal Politikk, 5 (1966)), while the terms integration and screening were introduced by Rolf Tamnes (see R. Tamnes, ‘Integration and Screening: The Two Faces of Norwegian Alliance Policy, 1945–1986’, Forsvarsstudier (1987)). Government Bill, No. 61, 1963–64, p. 4. I. Tjøstheim, ‘Sjøforsvarets hovedoppgaver: Illusjon eller virkelighet? Sjøforsvaret i et sikkerhetspolitisk perspektiv, 1945–2000’, Forsvarsstudier, 3 (1993), pp. 33–4, 80. L. Chr. Jenssen, ‘Skipsfartens plass i det vestlige forsvar. Etableringen og konsolideringen av skipsfartsberedskap i NATO og Norge 1949–1967’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Bergen, 2001). J. Børresen, ‘The Seapower of the Coastal State’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 17, 1 (1994). Ibid. A. Lydersen, ‘Kryssere under norsk flagg? Oppbyggingen av Marinen 1944–46’, Forsvarsstudier, 6 (1990). T. P. Dahl, ‘Sjømaktsdoktrinene og den norske marinen’, in Roald Gjelsten (ed.), Verktøy for fred. Sjøforsvaret og sikkerhet i 90-årene (Oslo: Europa-programmet, 1993). Government White Paper, No. 32, 1945–46, p. 3; Defence Commission of 1946, Part I, pp. 43, 68, 92. Lydersen, ‘Kryssere under norsk flagg’. K. Sørli, ‘Fra krise til konsensus: Marinens anskaffelser og krigspålagte oppgaver 1950–1960’, Forsvarsstudier, 2 (2000), pp. 17–20. O. P. Araldsen, ‘Norwegian Defense Problems: The Role of the Navy’, US Naval Institute Proceedings (October 1958). Tjøstheim, ‘Sjøforsvarets hovedoppgaver’, Sørli, ‘Fra krise til konsensus’. Government Bill, No. 57, 1, 1951, pp. 9ff. Sørli, ‘Fra krise til konsensus’, pp. 25–39. R. Tamnes, The United States and the Cold War in the High North (Oslo: Ad Notam, 1991), pp. 80–1. O. Berg, ‘Oversikt over utviklingen av vårt forsvar i dette århundre’, Norsk Militært Tidsskrift (1956), p. 229.

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20. K. Skogrand and R. Tamnes, Fryktens likevekt: Atombomben, Norge og verden 1945–1970 (Oslo: Tiden, 2001), p. 63. 21. G. W. Pedlow (ed.), NATO Strategy Documents 1949–1969 (Mons: SHAPE, 1997). 22. Skogrand and Tamnes, Fryktens likevekt, pp. 197–206. 23. O. T. Fjeld (ed.), Klar til strid: Kystartilleriet gjennom århundrene (Oslo: Kystartilleriets Offisersforening, 1999), pp. 277–82. 24. V. R. Carlson, ‘Rebuilding Norway’s Navy, US Naval Institute Proceedings, 1 (1966). Tamnes, The United States and the Cold War, p. 204. T. Pettersen, Flåteplanen av 1960 (Bergen: Sjøforsvarets forsyningskommando, 1998). 25. Sørli, ‘Fra krise til konsensus’, p. 78. 26. Using national funds, the navy had already ordered 12 motor torpedo boats of the Tjeld class. The number of Storm-class gunboats was 23 in the original plan, but the number actually built was reduced to 20 due to cost increases during the construction phase. 27. A. Jølstad, ‘Det tyske problem: Norsk sikkerhetspolitisk samarbeid med VestTyskland 1955–1965’, Forsvarsstudier, 5 (1995), pp. 89–104. 28. R. Gjelsten, ‘Simulert forsvar? Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt og Sjøforsvaret – unlike tilnærminger til forsvarsplanlegging’, Forsvarsstudier, 3 (2001). 29. F. Laursen, Small Powers at Sea: Scandinavia and the New International Marine Order (Dordrecht, Boston, MA, and London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1993). 30. R. Churchill and G. Ulfstein, Marine Management in Disputed Areas: The Case of the Barents Sea (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). 31. O. G. Austvik, Norge som storeksportør av gass (Oslo: Europa-programmet, 2000). B. Kibsgaard (project leader), Strategi – Sikkerhetspolitikk og Energiproduksjon (Oslo: Europa-programmet, 1998) and Norge i energiens geopolitikk (Oslo: Europa-programmet, 2000). 32. R. Tamnes, Norsk Utenrikspolitikks Historie, Vol. 6, Oljealder 1965–1995 (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1997), pp. 207–11. 33. J. P. Jansen and Per Chr. Blichfeldt, Havets voktere: Historien om Kystvakten (Oslo: Schibsted, 1998). 34. See, for example, Kibsgaard, Strategi – Sikkerhet, pp. 148–57.

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12

Coastal Power: The Sea Power of the Coastal State and the Management of Maritime Resources JAC O B B Ø R R E S E N

This chapter will present a theory of the sea power of the coastal state1 – or what one might call coastal power – and in that context discuss the preconditions for and the limits to the ability of the coastal state to protect and defend itself and the resources in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and on its continental shelf. Finally, the theory will be applied to the role and missions of the Royal Norwegian Navy (RNoN). This theory is not based on an analysis of the navies of the more than 100 coastal states around the world that has identified common denominators among them. The theory of coastal power is therefore not primarily descriptive, although it contains descriptive passages. On the contrary it has a clearly prescriptive or normative bias. Based on the experience of the Norwegian Navy, the coastal power theory suggests how small states with an ocean coast may think about sea power, may apply naval force in order to increase their own freedom of action and thus further and protect their own interests. The coastal power theory should therefore hopefully apply to all coastal states. The order of battle of the individual coastal navy, its doctrine and concept of operations will of course vary widely with its concrete role and tasks, which again will be a function of the peculiar characteristics of the individual coastal states and the challenges to their security.

THE COASTAL STATE – A DEFINITION

With the third UN Convention of the Law of the Sea of 1982, UNCLOS 3, coastal states were given increased influence in terms of territorial Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

rights out to 12 nautical miles, and in terms of certain sovereign and jurisdiction rights in the EEZ out to 200 nautical miles and on the continental shelf. This development of the international law of the sea amounts to what has been termed ‘a gradual territorialisation of the sea’,2 a marked modification of the principle of the freedom of the seas to the benefit of the coastal state, at the expense of the naval powers. This increased legal authority on the part of the coastal state comes at a time when the exploitation of sea-borne resources, primarily petroleum and protein, has become more important to international society than before, both economically and politically. In the 1982 UN Convention the term ‘coastal state’ includes all states that have an ocean coast with adjacent territorial waters, EEZ and continental shelf. The definition used here is narrower. It signifies a small or medium-size state that is situated by the sea and whose national interest to a considerable extent is connected to the sea. This could be because either its geographical location, or the geographical location of its adjacent seas, are of maritime-strategic significance to a naval power or to a competing coastal state, or that because its sea areas, the adjacent EEZ and/or continental shelf, contain natural resources of considerable importance to her economy, or both. The importance to the coastal state of its EEZ, continental shelf or coastal waters thus generates a need for some sort of naval power in order to protect its territorial waters from undue or illegal encroachment and its natural resources from illegal or uncontrolled exploitation. Yet the coastal state does not have the wherewithal, or has chosen not to, challenge or compete with the naval powers on the high seas. The narrower definition of the coastal state aids comparison with the naval power that rules the adjacent sea. The only remaining global naval power is the United States. Regional naval powers might include for example Russia, China, France and Great Britain. Typical coastal states, on the other hand, are Norway, the Baltic states, Poland, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Chile and South Africa, to mention only a few. The coastal state has full sovereignty within its territorial waters, and, as mentioned, it enjoys certain sovereign rights on the continental shelf and in the EEZ. However, it is only in times of peace and in lowintensity conflicts, or where the opposition is another coastal state, that the coastal state has the capacity to maintain and protect its sovereign rights both within its territorial waters and in the EEZ. Confronted with the deliberate use of force by a naval power, the coastal state can normally hope to do no more than put up a defence in coastal waters. In these waters the navy of the coastal state may find natural shelter and protection from behind which it may be able to get a shot at its superior opponent without immediately having to face the consequences, or it may be able to offset some of the imbalance in force by operating with Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the support of land-based fighter aircraft, behind minefields or under the shelter of shore batteries. The exception is the submarine. A coastal state that operates submarines may represent a serious threat to the units of the naval power both in coastal waters and on the open ocean. The ability of the coastal state to exercise sea power in times of peace, crisis or war is, nevertheless, limited both in intensity and scope. The naval units of the coastal state operate primarily in coastal or adjacent waters. In relation to the naval powers its operations have a limited and primarily defensive purpose. In relation to competing coastal navies, however, it could, of course, if needed adopt an offensive posture. The coastal state will, in many instances, have opposing interests to the naval power. This is also the case with regard to its view of the development of the international law of the sea. The coastal state seeks to maximise its rights under the International Law of the Sea with regard to exploitation and management of natural resources and protection of the environment in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), outside its territorial boundaries. The naval power, on the other hand, enjoys protection as a result of its might and wants to prevent a development of international law that may contribute to reducing its freedom of action in international waters. It has been the destiny of coastal states, with their prolific coastal or adjacent sea areas or their strategically significant geographical locations, that potentially hostile naval powers or competing coastal states due to the flexibility of sea power and the concept of ‘a fleet in being’ are always potentially present off their coasts. If one studies naval history from the ascent of global naval power in the seventeenth century until today, there is hardly an ocean area where a naval power has not at one time or another appeared for shorter or longer periods of time and with profound, shorter- or longer-lived effects on the adjacent coastal states. A remotely located coastal state with limited resources cannot be expected to maintain a coastal navy of significant proportions only in the expectation that a naval power might emerge on its doorstep once every 50 years. On the other hand, where rich oil or gas resources or abundant amounts of fish are in evidence, international oil companies or floating fish factories may operate at great distances from home and still make a profit. Unless they are persuaded or compelled to do so they may not necessarily see it in their interest to pay their dues to the local coastal state, pay attention to the environment or to a sustainable exploitation of fish. With UNCLOS 3 the coastal state has been provided with a sound legal basis to protect its interests. With a coastal navy tailored to its specifications it will also have the means necessary to implement the law and to protect and defend its interests, even if – as we shall see – it may not always be a sufficient means. Coastal states are often themselves states that depend on trade and Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

transport by sea, and that consequently will want to secure the right of innocent passage for merchant shipping and the principle of the freedom of the seas. It is therefore not uncommon for coastal states to use their navy to show the flag in foreign ports and to operate in support of the merchant fleet in foreign waters and off foreign coasts in accordance with the principle of the freedom of the seas. The interests of the coastal state qua coastal state and the interests of the coastal state as a seafaring nation may thus draw in opposite directions. A coastal state may become dependent on the protection of a naval power, or could find itself in a situation where it would want the protection of one naval power against another. This may make it necessary for the coastal state to grant the friendly or allied naval power access to its local or territorial waters for the purposes of naval presence or logistic support. A naval power is not only an aggressive practitioner of gunboat diplomacy. It may also, by its presence, contribute to addressing a potentially destabilising regional imbalance of power. Also, in this respect it becomes evident how the need of the coastal state for local authority and control may come into conflict with another need, this time the need for protection. Yet, the need for control over its own resources and environment and the principal need for protection by international law against encroachment, are lasting and principal needs that should underlie the long-term policy of the coastal state. Since a coastal state faced with armed pressure, or aggression from a major power, by definition does not have the ability to protect itself militarily, a development towards a more universal respect for international law, also by the major powers, based upon a relevant, vital and efficient United Nations with the authority and the power to initiate sanctions against those states, organisations or individuals who break the law, is in its interest. A coastal state whose primary opposition comes from another coastal state may nevertheless find it tempting or even necessary to adopt an offensive posture in order to actively pursue its own interests versus, and to effectively deter, the competing coastal state. In general, and in the long run, however, coastal states are best served by adhering strictly to international law whereby the use or threat of use of force is prohibited other than in self-defence. Coastal states are thus normally not advised to pursue an aggressive and offensive policy towards other coastal states, even if they had it in their power to do so, lest such a policy could contribute to undermining the very law they depend on for protection from more powerful states. With their perspectives on the security issues at sea, coastal states should instead contribute to the work of steadily reducing the geographical areas and the number and types of situations where use of force appears to the actors on the international stage as a worthwhile course of action.

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THE SEA POWER OF THE COASTAL STATE

A coastal state cannot, unless the enemy is another small or medium-size state, hope to achieve victory in war in the strictly military meaning of the word. If the coastal state chooses to go to war against a naval power it is not because it hopes to win, but because it hopes to come out of the situation in a better way than if it just gave in without a fight. The main purpose of the armed forces of the coastal state should therefore be to prevent the threat or actual use of force against it by others. The purpose of the armed forces of the coastal state should, in other words, primarily be to avert military crisis or war, and not necessarily to fight. There are significant differences both in doctrine, structure and operational pattern between a military organisation, a navy, which is designed primarily for war fighting and one which has adopted a doctrine designed primarily to avoid war. Perhaps the most important difference is in the relationship between quantity and quality. In a naval power the role of the navy is that of an active instrument of diplomacy and foreign policy in order to pursue and protect the interests of the state, if necessary by use of force, by going to war. This role calls for an offensive doctrine of taking the initiative at the strategic level. In the force structure of the naval power there is little room for compromise with regard to quality. If the naval power goes to war it is to win a naval victory. In the coastal state confronted with a naval power, on the other hand, the role of the navy is primarily that of defending what has been achieved by diplomatic or political means. The role of the coastal navy confronted with a naval power calls for a predominantly defensive doctrine where initiative is taken only at the operational, and more often than not, at the tactical level. The role of the coastal navy in a crisis situation is to constitute a threshold that an aggressor must step over or back down in front of. If he wants to step over the threshold he must do so at the price of having to fire the first shot. In order to constitute a proper threshold the coastal navy must have units at its disposal which together cover the entire conflict spectrum from peacetime through crisis and limited conflict to full war. Or in other words: the navy of the coastal state must be flexible enough to allow a series of courses of action between the two extremes; total submission and total war. The coastal navy must contain therefore capabilities that can deal with violations or incursions both surface and subsurface. In short, the navy of the coastal state must be a balanced navy. This is a point to which I shall return from another direction. The combination of limited resources and the importance of a quick reaction to violations and intrusions before they are allowed to develop into major incidents or crises, and in order to buy time to solicit support from allies, also leads to an emphasis on quantity over quality. It is more Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

important to be able to cover one’s own area of interest with units in order that one may react quickly, issue a declaration, fire a shot of warning etc., than to have the ability to survive a confrontation with an intruder. For the coastal state where the only chance of winning a dispute against a naval power is at the negotiating table and not on the battlefield, a magnificent and spectacular rout may come in just as handy as an unexpected victory. This is especially so in our time when the coercion of a small state by a larger neighbour cannot happen without being recorded and broadcast world-wide on prime time television. Publicity inevitably brings international society into the conflict in a way that tends to limit the freedom of action of the superior party and thus to offset the purely military force ratio between the contestants in the direction of the weaker. In order not only to catch the attention of the world audience but also to keep it interested over time in order that political pressure on the naval power may build up, the coastal navy must have a certain perseverance built into it. As part of the calculus of gain and loss an aggressive naval power will count on a short war. The armed forces of the coastal state must therefore have the ability to make the war drag on. This kind of staying power in a coastal navy translates into a larger number of lower-quality hulls supported by a distributed logistic system and thus less base dependency, rather than into units of higher quality and therefore fewer in number and more base dependent. Again we see how the coastal navy, as opposed to the naval power, invariably comes down on the side of quantity at the expense of quality. The armed forces of a coastal state contribute to the prevention of crisis or war principally by two methods: by incentive and deterrence. Firstly, by incentive through legitimate, efficient, predictable and even-handed enforcement of sovereignty in territorial waters and of jurisdiction in the EEZ, based upon the minimum and strictly proportional use of force and meticulously in accordance with international law, so that the other actors in the region see their interests best served by adhering to the rules and regulations laid down by the coastal state. Acting in a manner that persuades competing major powers, and coastal states in its region, that their interests are best served with letting the coastal state get on with it, is probably the only way in which a coastal state that enjoys an abundance of much sought after resources within its EEZ, in the long run can assure a minimum of freedom of action and control, and thus regional peace and stability. The key word here is legitimacy. Enforcement of sovereignty and jurisdiction is a task for the coast guard supported by the navy and the air force. Secondly, by deterrence through a credible ability to inflict economic, military and diplomatic cost on an aggressor that in his view would exceed any probable gain from the aggression. Deterrence is a task for Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the combined armed forces of the coastal state. If the potential aggressor is another coastal state the armed forces of coastal states may be able to deter aggression directly and on their own. If the potential aggressor is a major power, the coastal state could seek protection by indirect deterrence through alliance with another major power. Indirect deterrence consists of a credible ability by the coastal state to make sure that an attack upon it would mean war with its major power ally. Indirect deterrence was Norway’s formula for deterrence of the Soviet Union during the Cold War: through the ability to put up a robust military defence and thus avoid a fait accompli, Oslo tried to persuade Moscow that an attack on Norway would inevitably lead to war with the United States. The key word here is credibility – credibility in the eyes of the beholder. An important contributor to deterrence is the small conventional submarine that is currently being operated by an increasing number of coastal navies. The submarine may operate in areas where the naval power enjoys sea control and air superiority and is thus capable of inflicting cost by ‘bringing the war to the enemy’. While small or medium-sized landlocked states are generally not well advised to invest in arms in order to be able to actively pursue or advance their interests by use of force outside their borders, the coastal state is well advised to invest in a credible coast guard and navy in order to do just that. The reason is that EEZs and continental shelves by definition lie in international waters. And if the coastal state does not venture out into these waters and establish a presence there in order to uphold its legal rights and obligations, a power vacuum will ensue that someone else is bound to want to fill sooner or later, with potential political instability and crisis as a result. The primary purpose of sea power has traditionally been to protect merchant shipping; to protect and enforce the ‘freedom of the seas’ whereby sea-borne trade could go on unhindered. Also, the establishment of sea control outside the coasts of an opponent enables the naval power to project force onto the territory of that opponent or beyond. The primary purpose of the sea power of the coastal state, of ‘coastal power’, on the other hand, may be distilled into the following three points: • to protect and control the exploitation of the natural resources in the EEZ and on the continental shelf. This includes the protection of the environment, since a clean and healthy environment is a necessary precondition for the production of seafood; • to defend against and repel violations of its territorial waters; • in cooperation with the army and the air force – and hopefully also in cooperation with allies, to defend against an invasion from the sea. While sea power is regional or global, coastal power is local. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

THE COASTAL NAVY

The ability to exercise coastal power translates, as already mentioned, into a requirement for a ‘balanced navy’, the definition of which is a navy where synergy makes the total capability of the navy greater than the sum of the capabilities of its single services or branches. The opposite of a balanced navy is a function, or role-specific navy where emphasis is put on one or a few key elements, while other elements are more or less completely lacking. As part of an alliance a coastal state could use its entire naval budget to build a capacity in areas where it had comparative advantages, and the remaining areas could be left to one or more allied coastal navies who enjoyed comparative advantages in areas other than one’s own, or to the blue-water navy of an allied naval power with regard to more resource-intensive tasks like area air defence, anti-submarine warfare, submarine operations etc. A coastal state could also contemplate doing away altogether with a navy and its men-of-war and rely instead on a coast guard, leaving all warfighting tasks to the allied navies. This would mean that the coastal state more or less abandoned the idea of using deterrence to protect its own interests, and to avoid crisis or war, and relied primarily on incentive, with deterrence only at the very bottom end of the conflict scale. This, for example, is what Iceland has done, not so much out of choice as out of necessity. A burden-sharing scheme along the above lines could clearly come out as considerably more cost-effective both to the alliance as a whole as well as to the individual navies. But alliances are normally relatively short-lived in that they tend to emerge in response to concrete threats or specific political situations or circumstances. When the threat disappears or political circumstances shift, alliances have a tendency to fall apart or become irrelevant. And the reconstruction of a force element that was removed or the re-establishment of a professional environment that has disappeared as part of a cooperation scheme with other navies normally requires much more time to reconstruct or put into place than it takes for new security challenges to emerge. Should a crisis arise and the alliance be dissolved, the coastal state could find itself in a situation where it was forced to choose between one of two options; either drastically increase its defence budget in order to acquire the missing capabilities, or accept a state of one-sided dependence on a naval power. The former would hardly be feasible, the latter hardly desirable. And in the event of a crisis under development, it could mean that the coastal state would need allied reinforcements at a much earlier stage and thus increase the risk of inadvertently escalating the crisis. Even within the context of an alliance, unless the coastal state retains a capability within the warfare areas where it may receive support, it Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

may neither be able to know what it needs nor to gauge what it gets. Without such capabilities and know-how the coastal state would also have little chance of influencing plans for and execution of allied naval operations in its own or adjacent waters. In peacetime where maintaining sovereignty in its own territorial waters is likely to remain a national and not an alliance responsibility, a function-specific navy could find itself in a situation where it did not have the capacities needed to respond adequately to a violation that occurred. A function- or role-specific navy could thus contribute to restricting the freedom of action of the coastal state and its control over its own destiny in a way and to an extent that could easily become politically unacceptable. A solution along these lines could, for example, easily make the coastal state vulnerable to pressure or even put it at the mercy of competing coastal states or naval powers in its region that possess the very capabilities it did away with. If only for political reasons, it is important that the coastal state retains a spread of naval capabilities, lest it degenerate into being a mere client in the hands of a naval power, whether allied or not, or open up windows of opportunity to competing coastal states. Iceland, an island with a population of 270,000, cannot afford a military defence force of meaningful proportions. To advocate the Icelandic solution of a coast guard instead of a navy, would be to make a virtue out of necessity. Iceland is allied to the United States. If it were to persuade the Americans to leave or if they chose to leave on their own account, Iceland might find itself in the uncomfortable situation of being courted by the regional sea power, Russia. The operations of the coastal navy should be closer and more directly connected to those of the army and the air force, than traditionally has been the case for blue-water navies. This will have consequences both for the tasks and the operational concepts of the coastal navy. For example, it hardly needs a dedicated fleet air arm, as the airspace above its principle areas of operations may be covered by the air force. It will normally also be more cost-effective to have the air force, in its capacity as ‘the biggest user’, maintain and run navy helicopters and maritime patrol aircraft on behalf of the navy. And the coastal navy will not need a marine corps as the army may cover its bases on the land front. The army, on the other hand, may require the support of the navy for protection of its coastal flanks and rear, and for amphibious operations if the coast of the coastal state in question lends itself to amphibious warfare, as well as for transportation and naval gunfire support. Finally, command, control and communications between the units of the three services should be interoperable, at least within the areas of intelligence and surveillance, air defence and mutual gunfire support. One of the characteristics of the typical coastal navy has traditionally been the predominance of small craft or coastal units that have the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

ability to utilise the topography along the coast for cover, deception and surprise. Operations in narrow and sometimes shallow waters, often at high speed, the ability for maximum utilisation of the topography of the coast for its own protection, for tactical manoeuvre in order to reach a firing position or in order to evade counter-attack, require intimate local knowledge and great skill in navigation and in boat or ship handling. With modern long-range, precision-guided munitions and the associated reconnaissance and C3I capabilities which give the naval power a capability for stand-off precision attacks against targets in the littoral, or with modern stand-off amphibious techniques that make it possible to mount an amphibious assault from well outside the weapon range of the units of the coastal state, one would think that such small craft have become obsolete. But if the objective of the naval power is to exercise sea control in the littoral for the purpose of using it as a basis for its own operations it will sooner or later have to venture into the coastal waters in order to defeat these coastal units. In coastal waters where numerous islets and skerries may offer shelter to the locals but constitute navigational hazards to the intruder, that could be a highly risky and therefore potentially costly operation. The coastal state should therefore continue to develop units that are especially adapted to the peculiar environment and operating conditions along its coasts. An important aim of the peacetime operations of the coastal navy should be to develop and maintain the skills necessary to fully utilise these conditions. Modern technology such as radar, satellite navigation and electronic charts makes it potentially feasible for vessels to navigate at high speeds in restricted waters and under weather conditions and visibility where formerly even the most experienced navigators had to give up. However, in war these systems make you vulnerable to detection or they may be rendered inoperable. A man-of-war with hull, engines and weapons intact should be able to deliver weapons and to navigate and manoeuvre – in short to fight – even if parts of its electronic kit have become unserviceable. The ability to navigate and operate in waters and under conditions where the enemy may not is the concrete expression of the comparative advantage of the coastal navy over the blue-water navy. Another typical characteristic of the coastal navy is the relative priority that is given to all forms of mine warfare, with an emphasis on shallow-water operations with the associated techniques of mine hunting based on a mixture of mine clearance divers and mine countermeasure remotely operated vehicles or robots, the so-called MCM ROVs. Mines are designed to protect one’s own areas of operation or to deny areas of operation to the enemy. Mine countermeasures, the mirror image of mining, are designed to secure safe access to harbours and operation areas for one’s own units. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Inshore or coastal submarine operations, and its mirror image, inshore ASW, is another area where the coastal navy may develop an advantage over the naval power. Shallow seas with a highly undulating bottom, now rocky, now muddy, often characterise littoral waters. So too does high ambient noise levels due to human activity, marine life and waves breaking against the coast. Littoral waters also frequently see significant local variations in water salinity and temperature due to sun heating, tidal streams or rivers emptying into the sea; in other words, the very difficult conditions for sound propagation with multiple and constantly shifting sound channels and layers. For submarines that are designed for such conditions with crews trained in exploiting them, the littoral offers an abundance of opportunities for shelter, surprise attacks and escape. A submarine that does not have to expose itself by using speed, or active sensors or by exposing parts of its superstructure above water can avoid detection for as long as it pleases. To the trained ASW unit, accustomed to and equipped for inshore ASW, an attacking submarine, on the other hand, will provide detection opportunities. The point is that ASW sensors and weapons developed for use on the open ocean are not ideal, and sometimes even useless, in confined littoral waters. Also, other techniques and procedures are required in order to get maximum performance out of sensors such as active or passive sonar and radar. The old fashioned lookout – ‘Eye ball Mk. 1’ – together with radar, plays a much more significant role in inshore or littoral ASW than on the open ocean where they, in the age of low-frequency passive sonar arrays, long-range convergence zone detections and stand-off attacks have become more or less irrelevant. The ASW helicopter with its dipping sonar and the hull-mounted variable depth sonar capable of transmitting from under the sound layer are indispensable in inshore or littoral ASW. With the abundance of false submarine contacts one invariably experiences in in-shore or littoral ASW, a cheap ASW weapon that one can afford to expend in large quantities is a must. If the state of maintenance and the quality of the crew of the only Argentine submarine that operated among the British task force during the Falklands war in 1982 had been of the same general standard as – let us say, its opponent the Royal Navy – the British could easily have lost the war. A sixth characteristic of the coastal navy is the potential role for fixed or mobile shore batteries with missiles, guns, controlled minefields or torpedoes, for the protection of important harbour or base areas and vital portions of the coastal sea lines of communications. The main characteristic of a fixed coast artillery installation is just that: it is fixed. This has the disadvantage that it can only be used for one purpose, defence, and only at the location where it is situated. The development of modern precision-guided munitions has also increased the vulneraCopyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

bility of coast artillery installations, although that should not be exaggerated. Again, it is probably the fact that its location is fixed and therefore known, so that the enemy can target it with special forces at a time of its own choosing or simply bypass it, that constitutes its most important weakness. On the other hand, placed where the coastal state demands full control and security for its own operations, fixed coast artillery does represent a significant threshold and contributes to freeing mobile units for other tasks. Mobile shore batteries, on the other hand, are more flexible and therefore also less vulnerable to counter-attack. Where the topography of the coast lends itself to it, mobile coast artillery batteries for defensive purposes may constitute an efficient and cost-effective supplement to the naval vessel. Base dependency may not necessarily limit the operations of the coastal navy the same way it sometimes does blue-water navies operating far from home. The coastal navy operates relatively close to base in any case. The bases are also always situated on home territory and are therefore secure in the sense that their availability is not restricted by the political constraints in foreign countries that naval powers sometimes experience. The coastal navy may exploit this advantage by investing relatively less in the action radius of their ships, and in onboard ammunition and stores. Their ships may thus be relatively cheaper. Coastal navies with long coasts may compensate for the reduced radius of action of their ships by the establishment of a distributed logistic system based upon the civilian coastal infrastructure. Where there is no such supportive infrastructure, and where the characteristics of the coast and the coastal waters allow for it, the coastal navy should develop a distributed logistic system based on a fleet of dispersed and mobile supply vessels, for example mobilisable coastal merchant vessels to be commandeered in times of crisis or war. This solution also contributes to reducing the vulnerability of the coastal navy. An enemy will not be able to neutralise it simply by occupying or destroying its base. Many aspects of the operations of the coastal navy require intimate knowledge of the environment along the coast. In many situations, and in spite of the development of sophisticated electronic sensors, the local population along the coast may act as the eyes and ears of the navy. The judgment of a situation by the local fisherman or sailor may constitute a valuable supplement to its own assessments and a timely contribution to its own situation awareness, especially in crisis situations. In many coastal states there is close contact between the coast guard and the navy; in some coastal states, as for example Norway, the navy runs the coast guard. In some coastal states the navy is the coast guard. When you add the coastal navy’s dependence on local harbours, civilian fuel depots and stores it becomes apparent that the coastal navy benefits Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

from as close a contact with the population along the coast as possible. Coastal states with large merchant fleets that are manned mainly by their own nationals may find it worthwhile to cooperate closely with the institutions of the merchant navy for the purposes of recruitment and training. Ideally the coastal navy should be regarded as an integral part of the ‘coastal culture’ of the coastal state in the sense that its personnel, especially the officers, are recruited mainly from among the coastal population of sailors and fishermen, and in the sense that it enjoys common and widespread confidence and support, is regarded by the population along the coast as ‘their navy’. All of these eight specialities that have been mentioned: fast patrol boats or missile craft, coastal submarines, inshore ASW, coast artillery, the prominence of mine warfare, the close coordination between and mutual dependence of army, navy and air force, the comparative advantage of being able to effectively exploit the conditions in own littoral waters and the dependence of civilian infrastructure along the coast, are expressions of the fact that the coastal navy predominantly operates in its own local waters and that this is where it will fight. It can afford, therefore, and may find much to gain, by developing weapon systems and tactics that are tailormade to its local conditions. There are two important exceptions: firstly, the new rights and obligations of the coastal state under the auspices of UNCLOS 3 have contributed to pulling the coastal navy out to sea. This development has also resulted in increasing the importance of the coast guard of the coastal state relative to its navy. Secondly, the dependence of small and medium-size states, and thus of the coastal states, on general respect for international law and thus on a vital and relevant United States, and on regional organisations for collective security established under the auspices of the United Nations or in consonance with the UN Charter – in the Euro-Atlantic area organisations such as OSCE, WEU, EU – has created a requirement for the coastal state to contribute with forces for peacekeeping and peace enforcement overseas, away from home. Unlike the naval power, as a small or medium-size state the coastal state will not normally be seen to represent a potential threat to any of the actors and it will not normally have a colonial history. Consequently, there will not be any basis for suspicion that it has selfish interests where UN peace support operations take place. As small or medium-size states, coastal states may thus be seen as particularly well suited for UN-led peace support operations. Coastal navies may also have just the capabilities that are sought after in order to secure, control and operate a harbour, carry out surveillance of coastal waters or contribute to embargo operations in the form of a close blockade. The strategic concept and role of post-Cold War NATO has created a similar requirement for the coastal states of that alliance, such as Norway, to Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

contribute forces overseas or abroad. The advantage of being a small state may, however, disappear when small or medium-size states participate in peace operations led by any of the major powers, as in this case by the United States in NATO. Where NATO is engaged in peace support operations there is always the probability that the small or medium-size troop contributing countries may be regarded as instruments of US policy and thus not necessarily completely impartial or even-handed. One consequence of this pull towards operations overseas is an increased requirement for larger seagoing units in the coastal navies also. Another consequence is an increased requirement for communications equipment that is interoperable with that of allied navies and for tactics and procedures that are similar, or at least compatible, with those of the navies with which one may find oneself operating. Yet another is the fact that it is more difficult to compromise on quality with regard to units or forces that are earmarked to go abroad to take part in peace operations that at the tactical level may come close to or be indistinguishable from war. The requirement for coastal states to make units available for international operations may therefore result in a force structure composed of a mix of high- and lower-quality forces. A coastal navy is unlikely to be able to give its officers command at sea after the age of 30 with the rank of lieutenant commander, or the age of 35 as commander. So what kind of officers is it likely to end up with? And how much real sea time is the coastal navy able to give to its officers, given that its fleet consists mainly of small, fast surface ships with relatively more hours alongside per sailing hour than larger vessels? Captain K. R. Menon, Indian Navy, asked these very relevant questions in a thoughtful essay in the US Naval Institute Proceedings 18 years ago.3 If one studies the many naval battles through history, one will find a general trend: victory more often than not went to the party with the longest sea time, to the ships’ companies who were the most used to and confident with living, working and fighting on board ship, and therefore able to utilise the often demanding circumstances to their advantage. There are also numerous examples of how technological or material superiority did not bring the victory one would have thought was certain, because the commanding officer, for lack of experience, and therefore self-confidence, did not master the situation.4 In his theory on war, Clausewitz puts great emphasis on the ‘inspired leader’ who turns the uncertainty and unpredictability of the battlefield to his advantage by his ability intuitively to assess the situation correctly in spite of the confusion surrounding him, and who therefore maintains his composure and determination. War, says Clausewitz, is an art, a task in leadership where, above all, intuition derived from experience plays Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

a key part.5 It is obvious that it takes many years of experience of navigating coastal waters under different conditions of weather, visibility and light, in order to develop the kind of skill that Clausewitz calls for. Compared to a frigate, a missile boat will spend many more hours alongside per sailing hour.6 A general experience navies that operate fast patrol boats, missile craft or the like have, is that it is generally more difficult for the crew of these small units to achieve the same high standard of proficiency, consistently over time, as you may find in a tightly run larger ship. The operations that are performed and the conditions they are performed under are often too demanding relative to the amount of sea-time it is possible to give the ship’s company. Another problem is that the officers of coastal navies tend to leave sea duty for staff duty ashore at a fairly young age. It may take a long time until they are back in an operational environment, perhaps tasked with directing naval forces at sea. In the meantime, they may have lost the touch, the intuitive feeling for and understanding of naval operations that is necessary to become an aggressive and creative commander. The development that has pulled the coastal navy further out to sea in the EEZ, and abroad to take part in international operations, has also contributed to reducing even more the amount of time available for operations in the coastal environment where the coastal navy at the outset should have a comparative advantage over the naval power. It is possible that the development of modern simulator technology may contribute to alleviating some of these problems by making it possible to practise navigation techniques in restricted waters while the ship itself is alongside. Coastal navies must be ready and able to operate and fight under circumstances that are very different from the circumstances in which blue-water navies are designed to operate and fight. By definition, coastal navies must be built and run with much more limited resources than the larger blue-water navies. A coastal navy should therefore not be built as a scaled down copy of a larger blue-water navy. Neither should its recruitment policies or career pattern be modelled on those of the naval power. It should instead, as in fact blue-water navies are, be tailored to its specific conditions, roles and tasks. It is conceivable that there may be situations, especially relative to a competing coastal navy, where a coastal navy as part of a declaratory policy or as part of its deterrent posture may benefit from investing in one single or a very few spectacular or potentially very powerful units. There are consequently coastal navies that use larger parts of their resources to operate one single aircraft carrier, one single heavy cruiser or the like. There are also coastal navies that have acquired advanced missile systems in spite of the fact that they cannot afford to buy more Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

than a very small number of missiles, and consequently cannot afford to regularly fire missiles, which is a necessary precondition in order to maintain a credible operational status for the system. The operation of one or two capital ships, usually second-hand units purchased from a naval power, may, in the eyes of some, earn such coastal states status as regional naval powers, a status that could come in handy in a limited, local conflict. Large naval vessels acquired from a naval power may also be well suited for naval visits as part of a declaratory policy directed at competing coastal states. They may at one and the same time communicate will and the potential ability to use overwhelming force if necessary, as well as the implicit support of the supplying naval power. But the implication that the naval power that supplied the highvalue unit might come to the recipient’s support in case of conflict may quickly disappear with the changing political cycles as time since the purchase goes by. And the symbolic value of sinking such a unit, and thus the political cost to the government from its loss may be considerable. In case of conflict the enemy will therefore immediately target it. The sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano in the Falklands war is a case in point. From then on and for the duration of the war, the Argentine surface navy did not put out to sea.7 And, more often than not, efficiently run smaller modern units tailormade to the local or regional operating conditions, may deter the decision-making bodies in the target state in a much more credible and thus more effective way, even though it may not look as spectacular to the inexperienced eyes of the general public as a larger unit does. And both the economic and the political price of losing one of several smaller units is less. Again, the coastal navy, ideally and if it can afford to do so, should look to its own tailormade solutions, develop its own specifications rather than copy the solutions of the naval power by acquiring its second-hand matériel. Technological development has impacted upon the coastal navy in three principal ways: firstly, it has made it possible to pack enough firepower into even the smallest of units in order that they may constitute a potential threat to even the most powerful units of the naval power. The development of the small coastal submarine equipped with long-range wire-guided torpedoes and submarine-launched cruise missiles, and fast patrol boats equipped with long-range surface-tosurface missiles, are cases in point. Secondly, technological development has hit the coastal navy in the same way as it has hit all navies: the cost, unit by unit, has sky-rocketed with the result that the number of units have dropped significantly, while the capability of an individual unit has significantly increased. Finally, the development of modern command, control, communication, intelligence and surveillance equipment and techniques has improved the ability to conduct effective combined Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

operations, a requirement that traditionally has been more important to the coastal state than to the naval power, but that after the Cold War has attained increased importance also to the naval power. But there is one thing that technological development has not done, despite sophisticated simulator technology, and that is to reduce the importance to the commanding officer of intuition as a result of hands-on operating experience. 8

THE CASE OF THE ROYAL NORWEGIAN NAVY

On developing my theory of coastal power I have drawn heavily on my own knowledge and experience from almost 40 years of service with the Norwegian Navy, as a commander of submarines and ASW frigates and as an operational and strategic planner. In the following, for the sake of clarity, when I refer to the entire RNoN I will use the expression the ‘navy’ or the ‘RNoN’. When I refer only to the fighting ships of the navy I will use the expression ‘the navy proper’. ‘The coast guard’ and ‘the coast artillery’ are self-explanatory. The RNoN fits the description of a typical coastal navy. It consists of a fleet of approximately 45 regular navy ships and nine coast artillery installations of which some 20 fast patrol boats, and six coastal submarines together with nine ultra-modern MCM vessels constitute the core. The remaining three old frigates of the Oslo class do not have much fighting potential left in them. They are currently being operated mainly in order to maintain frigate know-how and to produce crews for the five new Fridtjof Nansen-class anti-submarine (ASW) frigates that will start arriving from Spain from 2005 onwards. The coast guard, which in Norway is part of the navy, consists of 11 ocean-going vessels, three of them equipped with an organic helicopter, and seven coastal cutters for inshore operations. A new large ice capable coast guard cutter, also helicopter fitted and specially constructed for operations in the arctic north, was launched in 2002. The RNoN is a balanced navy in that it contains capabilities within the three major naval types of warfare: anti-air, anti-surface and antisubmarine. It can operate, and thus present Norway’s political leaders with possible courses of action, over the entire spectrum of conflict from peacetime episodes and incursions to full war. In case of the former the coast guard is the prime actor. In case of the latter the submarine is the most potent and survivable weapon. The RNoN is also an example of how the coastal navy compromises on quality in order to maintain a meaningful minimum quantity of units relative to the tasks. To get five new frigates, a number the inspector general of the navy had defined as his meaningful minimum, it was, for example, necessary to Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

refrain from investing in only the most modern equipment. The frigates represent a sober but sufficient standard where manning levels have been cut to a minimum in order to reduce operating costs. With regard to submarines, however, there has not been much room for compromise in quality. Norwegian submarines are state-of-the-art boats that can compete with any conventional submarine there is. Thus, in order to maintain the high quality, the RNoN has chosen to reduce the number of boats to less than half, from 15 in the 1970s and 1980s to six today. The mission and tasks of the Norwegian defence forces and thus of the RNoN are functions of Norway’s primary security policy goals. These are: • to prevent war and contribute to stability and a peaceful development; • to attend to Norwegian rights and interests and protect Norwegian freedom of action when under political or military pressure; • to maintain Norwegian sovereignty.9 These goals are translated into the following tasks for the Norwegian defence forces: • • • • •

naval presence in areas of priority; intelligence and surveillance of Norwegian areas of interest; enforcement of sovereignty and jurisdiction; crisis management in Norwegian areas; defence of Norwegian areas and preparations in order to meet challenges to Norwegian security together with allies; • the securing of functions vital to society; • international operations; • to conduct tasks in support of civilian society.10 To the RNoN this means that it must contribute to or perform the following missions: • • • • • •

intelligence and surveillance; enforcement of sovereignty and jurisdiction; crisis and conflict management; defence; international operations; rescue and environmental readiness.

Intelligence and surveillance The first of these missions, intelligence and surveillance, in many respects constitutes the basis for the other missions. An important task under this heading is to assemble information about the movement and Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

activities of all foreign warships in Norway’s adjacent ocean areas, both allied and others. This task is important because the sum of such information lays the ground for a complete picture of the naval situation in the region and thus a better point of departure for an accurate assessment of the acts and motives of the different players in the ocean areas adjacent to Norway. Another important task is the gathering of information regarding expected ship movements to and from Norway’s territorial waters and expected fishery activity within its EEZ and the Svalbard fishery protection zone. Such information is routinely reported to the authorities in accordance with the rules and regulations for innocent passage of Norwegian territorial waters and fishing in waters under Norwegian jurisdiction. This kind of information is also necessary for a cost-effective allocation and deployment of the Navy’s resources for reconnaissance and reaction. In addition to the Navy’s own resources, primarily ships and coastal radars, it has established a close cooperation with the air force and the Defence Intelligence Staff as well as with civilian authorities and the general public along the coast and on board ships that traffic the area, for exchange of information. Enforcement of sovereignty and jurisdiction Under the heading ‘enforcement of sovereignty and jurisdiction’, comes a whole portfolio of tasks for the RNoN related to control of access to and activities on Norwegian territory and within the EEZ by foreign citizens. With regard to exercising Norwegian jurisdiction in the ocean areas subject to Norwegian law, this is in times of peace and on the high seas, almost exclusively the realm of the coast guard. The navy proper in this context acts more like a ‘fleet in being’ in that it represents a capability to reinforce the coast guard if need be. In this respect it may also contribute to raising the authority of the coast guard in the eyes of potential violators of the law. In coastal waters the coast guard is supported and reinforced by the navy proper on an ad hoc basis. In addition, a close coordination has been established with the police, the customs and pilot services etc. And in situations where naval or other state-owned ships violate Norwegian territorial waters, the navy proper very quickly comes into play. The fact that the Norwegian defence forces, here represented by the navy proper and the coast guard as integral parts of the RNoN, is used to enforce the law and to exercise jurisdiction not only towards foreign citizens but also towards Norwegians, represents a departure from a principle that in all other respects is held dear in Norway: the principle that the armed forces of Norway are never directed at or used against Norwegians. That is the prerogative of the civilian enforcement agencies like the police and the customs service. This has not, until now, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

represented any practical problems or been an issue at all, and that is due to the following three factors. Firstly, the coast guard is not only a law enforcer, it also to a large extent offers vitally important services, free of charge, to the fishing fleet; services such as rescue, medical evacuation of fishermen from remote areas and a broad variety of other kinds of assistance such as the clearing of fishing nets from propellers or the fixing of defunct radars or radios etc. This means that the fishermen depend on the coast guard for their safety, have confidence in its personnel and respect for its professionalism. Secondly, the fishermen generally acknowledge the importance for their future income and existence of the work the coast guard carries out in making sure that quotas are not over-fished and that the catch does not contain an overabundance of fry overgrown fish. Thirdly, the coast guard personnel in general conduct themselves professionally and it is clear to all that they enforce the regulations even-handedly. It makes no difference whether you are Spanish, Russian, Icelandic or Norwegian. Everybody is subject to the same treatment, based on firmness but respect, but first and foremost on the rule of law. A special case is the enforcement of Norwegian rules and regulations in the fishery protection zone around Svalbard, where the basis for Norwegian jurisdiction rights is disputed by all the foreign nations that fish in the area, most notably by the Russians. Norway is thus wary of the use of force in its enforcement of the rules and regulations it has laid down for the area. Nevertheless, and although, for instance, Russian fishermen in principle routinely refuse to sign the inspection protocol, Norwegian directives are normally abided by. An important precondition for the kind of positive interplay between the control agency and the fishermen that is necessary for this kind of enforcement to be efficient, is a certain stability and continuity over time in the fishing fleet. Such stability is the case in the Norwegian EEZ and especially in the fishery protection zone where a relatively constant number of the same fishing boats with the same crews return year after year. This forms the basis for mutual knowledge and recognition that again is conducive to mutual respect and confidence and, not least, legitimacy in practice and in the absence of a mutually agreed legal basis. Everybody recognises that they will all lose in the long run if unrestricted fishing is allowed in the area. This, in addition to the way the coast guard behaves, the fishermen’s dependence on the coast guard for their safety, and the spontaneous feeling of community among sailors who find themselves together in a remote and otherwise empty piece of ocean under extreme climatic conditions, apparently results in an inclination to abide by the directions of the coast guard. When the inspector and the fisherman meet at 80 degrees North and over a cup of coffee exchange opinions about when the ice – which constitutes a potential Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

menace to both of them – may come drifting in from the east, it feels uncomfortable to be exposed as one who violates the rules.11 Crisis and conflict management With regard to crisis and conflict management, it is primarily the coast guard that will be engaged as long as the crisis occurs in the very low end of the spectrum of conflict. But if the crisis drags on or starts to escalate, it may be convenient or necessary to call upon the navy proper to reinforce the coast guard. And if a situation arises where a foreign power in one way or another violates Norwegian sovereignty, for instance, by unauthorised or unlawful passage through or activities in Norwegian territorial waters, or where a foreign power, or organisation threatens or targets any of the petroleum installations on Norway’s continental shelf, the navy proper will immediately be involved. Norway is the second largest exporter of oil in the world and a major producer of natural gas to markets primarily in western Europe.12 All of the Norwegian oil and gas is produced from offshore installations. It is conceivable that in a crisis situation involving Norway directly, but also in a crisis situation that at the outset only involved one or more of Norway’s customers, the offshore installations might become targets. Although protection and defence of offshore installations are a purely national responsibility, a ‘watertight’ defence against all kinds of attack ranging from terrorist assaults to stand-off precision guided-air or missile attacks is far beyond the capabilities of Norway’s defence forces, given the size of the ocean areas and the number of offshore installations in question.13 Such an effort is only possible within the context of the NATO alliance, and perhaps not even then. Defence of individual platforms against isolated attacks or sabotage, on the other hand, lies within Norway’s capabilities, especially in cooperation with other interested states bordering the North Sea basin. It is important to Norwegian authorities that a multinational operation to defend or protect a Norwegian offshore petroleum installation be under Norwegian command and control. The frigates of the RNoN serve this purpose as they have the capability both to establish area surveillance around an installation and to act as scene of action commander of an operation comprising several ships and aircraft, as well as special forces, while at the same time communicating with the naval operations centre and, if necessary, with the political authorities in Oslo in real time. Management of crises and conflict constitutes the navy’s greatest peacetime challenge. The ability to properly manage crises rests on three important premises: firstly, the ability to see and understand what goes on and the ability to draw the correct conclusions from what you see. Secondly, the ability to react in time with appropriate means, or in Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

this case when there is a question about a crisis at sea; the ability to establish a timely and appropriate naval presence. Thirdly, the ability to communicate with the political leadership in real time about what is happening and about what could and should be done. A key word in this respect is naval presence. Naval presence is important for four reasons: • regular naval presence signals to the other actors in the region that this area is important to Norway. Anybody who might contemplate activities in the area in violation of current law, rules and regulations will have to count on the possibility that they will be found out, and thereupon be confronted with Norwegian naval units; • regular naval presence contributes to granting the political leaders a larger degree of flexibility in dealing with a crisis. An important point in this respect is that the other actors in the region regard Norwegian naval presence as the norm. Thus deployment of naval units to the area cannot easily be regarded as an escalatory measure, which in turn contributes to greater freedom of action with regard to engaging naval units in the handling of the situation; • regular naval presence contributes to giving the officers and men on board a thorough knowledge of the area, its prevailing conditions and regular activities. They will thus have a better foundation on which to judge situations that arise and to give advice as to what can or should be done to resolve them; • finally, regular naval presence constitutes a higher degree of readiness and thus ability for timely reaction to situations as they develop. Rescue and environmental readiness Rescue operations are led by the police and the navy contributes vessels that are put at the disposal of the police rescue control centre, but remain under the operational control of the navy. For assistance in the event of environmental accidents, the cleaning up of oil spills etc., the responsibility belongs to the State Oil Pollution Agency. With regard to rescue and environmental readiness, more often than not it is the coast guard that is the prime actor on behalf of the navy. These four missions, intelligence and surveillance, enforcement of sovereignty and jurisdiction, crisis and conflict management and rescue and environmental readiness, together constitute the quintessence of naval presence. Together they contribute to reducing the probability that a situation will arise, and increasing the ability of Norwegian authorities to react in a timely and relevant manner if something should occur. For the time being, naval presence is almost exclusively taken care of by the coast guard. The ability of the navy proper to be present Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

over time outside its immediate base area is limited due to a combination of shrinking budgets and substantial and far-reaching restructuring. It remains an important goal of the navy to reverse this trend and increase the presence also of Norwegian fighting ships along the coast and in the adjacent ocean. Defence The RNoN primarily contributes to the defence of Norway in three principally different ways. Firstly, by securing its own sea lines of communication in order to facilitate the arrival of its own and allied reinforcements and the steady flow of logistics to the front. The majority of Norway’s population and the bulk of its resources for defence are found in mid-and south Norway, while north Norway, bordering on Russia, for the foreseeable future is the militarily most exposed part of our country. The topography of Norway is characterised by mountainous terrain cut up by deep fjords and narrow, steep valleys separated by high mountains. The lines of communication on land are thus few and vulnerable to military attack. There is, for instance, only one railway line between mid-Norway and north Norway. And even if the landlines of communication were intact, the volume of transport in war would be larger than the capacity of the landlines of communication alone. In war, therefore, the ability to keep the sea lines of communication between north and south Norway open will be an important criterion for success. Current plans for the defence of Norway continue to be based on the assumption that NATO will come to its assistance with military reinforcements. A successful anti-invasion defence thus rests on Norway’s ability to keep the harbours and their approaches open and available to allied shipping for reinforcement and supply. Secondly, it is necessary to have an amphibious invasion defence for the purpose of protecting the flanks and rear of the army, or, where the land front faces the coastline, to constitute a forward line of defence. Key players in the Norwegian anti-amphibious invasion scheme are submarines, fast missile torpedo boats, fixed and mobile coast artillery, together with the F-16 fighters of the air force armed with air-to-surface missiles. In addition, the navy can assist the army in carrying out tactical movement across fjords or with naval gunfire support. Thirdly, offensive operations are necessary for the purpose of cutting the enemy sea lines of communications and as a contribution to continued deterrence by ‘bringing the war to the enemy’ and thereby causing him to incur unexpected costs and risks. Military operations are at least as resource intensive for an attacker as they are for the defender, and the landlines of communication in Norway will pose the same challenges to the attacker as they do to the Norwegian armed forces. An Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

important mission for the navy, therefore, is to try to cut the attacker’s sea lines of communication. The most important unit in this respect is the submarine, the only unit that has the ability to attack hostile shipping in sea areas where the enemy, otherwise, enjoys sea control. With the end of the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, our plans for anti-invasion defence no longer have the same importance, nor are they exercised with the same regularity and seriousness as during the height of the Cold War. But the operational concepts, capabilities and tactics that underlie the plans, with the possible exception of static coast artillery, are still highly relevant and may be put to use in a whole range of missions that could result from NATOs new strategic concept for peace support operations. International operations This brings us to the last of the missions for the RNoN that will be discussed in this chapter: participation in operations abroad under the auspices of the UN, OSCE, EU or NATO. In the words of the Norwegian government in its recent proposal to Parliament: This will become a central task for the Norwegian armed forces in the years to come. Through active participation in international operations Norway may contribute to international peace and stability, while at the same time it will contribute to strengthen and secure Norway’s military strategic situation. By demonstrating the will and ability to stand up for our allies we contribute to strengthening their will to come to our assistance when there is a crisis in Norway. International defence cooperation also contributes to further developing Norwegian military capabilities and interoperability. There is therefore a close connection between Norway’s contribution to international operations and her military activities at home with regard to furthering the primary defence- and security-political goals of our country.14

To the RNoN, participation in international operations is nothing new. During the major part of the Cold War Norwegian frigates at regular intervals operated with NATO’s Standing Naval Force Atlantic (SNFL), and Norwegian MCM vessels were regular members of NATO’s MCM force North, or Standing Naval Force Channel as it used to be called. From 1998 to 1999 Norway also provided the commanding officer of that force. After the Cold War the RNoN contributed to the coalition against Iraq with a coast guard cutter on embargo patrol from 1990 to 1991, with frigates to Operation Sharp Guard, the NATO/WEU embargo in the Adriatic against the Former Republic of Yugoslavia in 1993 and 1994 and with MCM ships to the multinational mine clearCopyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

ing operations in the Baltic off the coast of Estonia in both 1999 and 2000. And when the new Spanish-built frigates arrive from 2005 onwards, the intention is that the RNoN will be permanently present with a frigate in SNFL. At that time Norway for the first time will also offer up a candidate to command that force. The point about Norway providing the commander of an international force is mentioned deliberately, because an opportunity like this is the only way in which the small coastal navy may provide its officers with command experience at this level. Which again brings out another point, namely that participation in international operations constitutes an invaluable source of training and competence to a small navy that otherwise does not have the resources needed to produce those kinds of challenges for the commander. Participation in international operations also constitutes a gauge of where the unit stands with regard to proficiency, so that the unit when it returns home may represent a benchmark for other units to measure themselves against. The requirements of international operations represent a point of reference, and participation in international operations represents a point of contact to the coastal navy that is of the greatest value if it wants to stay abreast of international naval development. Participation in international operations also represents a unique arena for networking with colleagues in other navies. Contacts, acquaintances and friendships and the memories of operational experience together with colleagues from naval powers, that are formed as a young officer, may become valuable as the officer of the coastal navy grows in rank and responsibility, and may later, through personal acquaintance, result in influence on plans and operations to an extent that would otherwise be quite out of proportion with the general standing of his navy.

FINAL REMARKS

The armed forces of any state are an expression of that state’s power and wealth, its aspirations and goals and thus its position in the hierarchy of states. The armed forces of the state are also a concrete expression of its will and ability actively to pursue its interests and protect its assets. As the late Raymond Aron put it: ‘Underlying the relationship between sovereign states is the possibility of war.’15 The most important role of the armed forces of the state is thus their peacetime role as an arrow in the quiver of the diplomat. To a coastal state which owes a considerable amount of its wealth, and thus political influence, to the resources in its EEZ, on its continental shelf or in its territorial waters, but also to a coastal state whose strategically important geographical location constitutes a challenge to its security, its navy Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

will rank among its most relevant peacetime instruments of power, among its most valuable pieces of diplomatic real estate. An efficient and well-run coastal navy makes an important contribution to local and regional stability. This is especially so if it is inherently defensive in orientation in that it does not represent a threat to anyone who does not venture into its local area of operations, while at the same time it has the capacity to maintain law and order, to prevent potentially destabilising attempts by external actors to take the law into their own hands. Coastal navies should not be modelled on the navies of the naval powers. Instead they should be tailormade to fit the local environment. Different coastal states should also look for different solutions to their own individual naval challenges. There is really only one common denominator, and that is that in order to be worthwhile the coastal navy must be a relevant instrument of power for the political leaders of the coastal state to which it belongs. NOTES 1. The conceptual basis for ‘The Sea Power of the Coastal State’ was developed in Jacob Børresen, Kystmakt, skisse av en maritime strategi for Norge (Oslo: Cappelen, 1993) and was published in abbreviated form in ‘The Sea Power of the Coastal State’, ‘Seapower Theory and Practice’, special edition of Journal of Strategic Studies, 17, 1 (March 1994). The theoretical part of this chapter builds on and further develops the latter text. 2. Ken Booth, ‘Naval Strategy and the Spread of Psycho-legal Boundaries at Sea’, International Journal, 38, 3 (Summer 1983). 3. K. R. Menon, ‘The Sea Denial Option for Smaller Navies’, United States Naval Institute Proceedings, 9, 3 (March 1983). 4. Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power – German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939–1945 (London and Melbourne: Arms and Armour Press, 1983). 5. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 6. Børresen, ‘The Seapower of the Coastal State’, p. 172. 7. Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983). 8. This part of the chapter is based on a series of previously unpublished lectures I gave at the Norwegian Defence College from 1998 to 2001. 9. St. prp. (Proposal to Parliament) nr. 45 (2000–01). 10. Ibid. 11. Geir Hønneland, ‘Kystvakten – en legitim vaktbikkje i fiskeriene’, in Forsvaret i en Ny Tid. Oslo Militære Samfunns 175-års jubileumsbok (Oslo: OMS, 2000), pp. 302–3. 12. In 2005 Norway will have a market share of natural gas of 40–50 per cent in France and 30–35 per cent in Germany. See Bjørnar Kibsgaard (ed.), Strategi – Sikkerhetspolitikk og Energiproduksjon (Oslo: Europaprogrammet, 2000). 13. Over 20 major installations – the number is increasing as new oil and gas fields are put into production – of which the majority are concentrated in the North Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Sea within an area of about 140,000 square kilometres. Production is spreading northwards and seismic surveillance or exploration drilling currently takes place over the entire Norwegian EEZ, approximately 1 million square kilometres. 14. St. prp. nr. 45 (2000–01), p. 35. 15. Raymond Aron, Paix et guerre entre les nations (Paris: Calman-Levy, 1984).

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13

The Role of Naval Forces in Northern Waters at the Beginning of a New Century R OA L D G J E L S T E N

This article sets out to investigate the changes that have taken place in the navies in northern waters during the 1990s and to evaluate the state of affairs at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In order to do this I shall first examine the situation towards the end of the Cold War, and then investigate the factors characterising the transformation process towards today’s challenges. Key questions are: What is the possible role of the naval forces operating in this area in the current circumstances? What kind of naval capabilities are required for the small states in the region if they still want to be regarded as relevant in the years to come? For analytical purposes, it seems suitable to divide the northern waters into two main areas of interest: the Baltic Sea and the ocean areas north and east of the GIUK gap (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom). For most of the countries in the region and from an economic and political point of view the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea and their adjacent waters attract most interest.

THE LATE COLD WAR

The protagonists in the Cold War battle were the superpowers in both the political and military arenas. At sea, the Soviet Navy had two fleets operating in the northern waters. The Northern Fleet was partly global in reach and had two main missions: firstly, to secure the second strike capability of the Soviet Union, and secondly, to establish sea denial in the North Atlantic in order to break the trans-Atlantic lifeline. The main Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

mission of the Baltic Fleet and its allied navies was to establish sea control in the Baltic Sea to safeguard the Northern Flank of the Warsaw Pact land forces in the event of an attack being launched. Even though the two fleets had widely differing missions, together they constituted a functional unity – their task was to support the land operations on the central front in a favourable manner for the Warsaw Pact. Towards the end of the Cold War, the central front was still regarded as the decisive battlefield arena in a conventional East–West conflict. In the late 1980s Soviet sea power was still perceived to be a serious threat to the Atlantic sea lines of communications (SLOC) of the Alliance. In particular, the Soviet Navy’s diversified inventory of potent nuclear powered attack submarines (SSN) and guided missile submarines (SSGN) was considered to constitute a challenge to NATO’s sea control ambition.1 However, in order to secure the second strike capability of the Soviet Union in the event of hostilities, the main objective of the Kola-based fleet was not to attack the Atlantic SLOCs, but to defend the sanctuaries where the nuclear-powered ballistic-missileequipped submarines were deployed (SSBN). Hence, all other competing missions of the fleet including the anti-SLOC operations came second to ensuring the survival of the SSBNs. At the time, the Soviet Union also promoted initiatives to put naval arms control on the agenda. The Soviets proposed the establishment of zones in which naval activity would be prohibited. These proposals concurred with the bastion strategy aimed at securing safe havens for the SSBNs which had been a Soviet strategy since the long-range submarine-launch ballistic missiles became operational in the 1970s.2 There were two main reasons why this deployment pattern was introduced. Firstly, submarines are exposed to detection and vulnerable to attack while they are transiting. Shorter transits could significantly reduce the probability of being picked up by stationary sonar barriers while under way to the assigned patrol areas. Secondly, operating in sanctuaries fairly close to home waters made it easier to concentrate efforts on defending the bastions of SSBNs on patrol. Aircraft, surface units and submarines could easily be employed to carry out this highpriority task. Furthermore, the ambient noise generated along the edge of the permanent ice cap could be utilised to mask the self-noise radiated by the SSBNs and other submarines when operating in sanctuaries in the vicinity of this zone. Furthermore, the systematic research and practical efforts to reduce the noise levels produced by the submarines themselves, including the construction of less noisy propellers, finally started to pay off in the early 1980s. The introduction of the Akula-class SSN which turned out to be much quieter than the preceding generations of submarines, represented a tremendous leap forward in this field for the Soviet Navy. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Simultaneously, it created a headache for the Americans who felt that their ability to keep track of Soviet submarine deployments was deteriorating.3 These developments contributed to an increased US focus on naval capabilities and priorities that in turn resulted in a new naval doctrine. In the late 1980s the northern waters could be considered a main front in the areas of maritime nuclear warfare. Also with regard to air defence of the Kola base facilities as well as the protection of the Soviet Union itself, the northern waters and the surrounding rim land, like the coast of Norway including Svalbard, had significant military value. In addition to the threat posed by the fact that the great circle route for aircraft operating from the mainland of the United States crossed these areas, the introduction of cruise missiles added importance to these waters. Cruise missiles launched from submarines operating here would in the event of hostilities have constituted a serious threat to the facilities of the Kola base infrastructure and airfields. The situation in the Baltic Sea was different. Here the Soviet Union and its allies were seeking sea control in order to secure the Northern Flank of the main land warfare theatre. The ability to use the Baltic Sea for transport purposes would have been crucial for providing logistic support to the fighting armies. Presuming sea control, the Baltic Sea flank could furthermore have furnished opportunities for launching amphibious assaults both during offensive and defensive operations. In the Baltic Sea the Soviet Union would have had the advantage of having allied navies and air forces as well as its own air power close at hand to support the operations of its Baltic Fleet. The main threat would have been Nato’s fighter-bombers, submarines and mines. In addition, an important goal of the Western alliance was to ‘bottle up’ the units of the Baltic Fleet to prevent them from reaching the North Sea and Atlantic waters. The German and Danish navies had this mission as one of their main tasks. Hence, the NATO forces, at least in the first phase of hostilities, would have had sea denial as their objective to prevent the arrival of enemy resupplies and reinforcements. If the Western powers had succeeded in halting such an assault and managed to regain the initiative and counter attack, sea control could have become a requirement in the later stages of a conflict. For the Soviet Navy the Leningrad and Baltic coastal areas also had an important logistic function. Naval shipyards and docking facilities situated here represented a significant portion of the repair and refit capacity available to the Baltic and Northern Fleets. If a prolonged conventional war had taken place, the ability to utilise these installations could have become crucial for the Soviet Union with regard to being able to uphold fighting power at sea. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

On the high seas, not least in the Atlantic theatre, the Northern Fleet had to rely on itself to do the job. In the Western alliance, the US Navy on its side supplied most of the naval fighting power, but, in addition, Canada and several of the European members of NATO supplied significant naval forces. Frigates and long-range maritime patrol craft provided by these countries were important assets in the fields of antisubmarine warfare and convoy protection. Hence, these units were especially suited to support and complement the US Navy in solving the common mission of countering the Soviet goal of interrupting the transatlantic SLOCs. Some of the larger European nations also contributed substantial additional fighting power through their own attack submarines and larger surface vessels. Combined, this inventory of European navies was a significant supplement to the US contribution in the Atlantic.4 During the later part of the Carter presidency the administration and the US Navy paid a lot of attention to naval matters and worked hard to improve naval strategy and operational concepts. In parallel, under the auspices of SACLANT – the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic – Nato’s Concept of Maritime Operations – CONMAROPS – was drafted in 1979. In January 1982, NATO’s Defence Planning Committee approved the document as a Tri-MNC concept and as such it became the basis for naval contingency planning and operational orders.5 When President Ronald Reagan took office, he continued to give priority to naval matters. In January 1986 The Maritime Strategy was published.6 The strategy was based on having the capability to act with vigour along the entire spectrum of conflict: Peacetime presence, crisis response and warfighting. The concept of warfighting was divided into three phases: deterrence or transition to war, seizing the initiative and carrying the fight to the enemy. The three stages of the strategy had striking similarities with NATO’s CONMAROPS. The pamphlet or ‘White Book’ which presented the Maritime Strategy to the public in 1986 was the end product of years of studies and research. The ambitious building programme of the US Navy as well as the accompanying exercise and deployment patterns, made the rhetoric of the Maritime Strategy credible. Important features of the strategy were the emphasis on the 600-ship navy and the naval presence north of the GIUK-gap.7 In order to contain the Soviet SSNs and prevent them from deploying into the Atlantic, one important aspect of the conduct of the strategy was to emphasise that the main mission of the allied SSNs was to actively hunt down the Soviet SSBNs from the outbreak of hostilities. The idea was that this approach would force the Northern Fleet to use their attack submarines in the defence of the SSBN bastions. However, many saw a great risk in this course of action. They feared that at some unpredictable stage it could provoke the Soviets to respond with nuclear means. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

With hindsight, it seems fair to state that the Maritime Strategy proved itself to be an effective vehicle for the purpose of pursuing the political ends of the United States as well as those of the Western alliance. The emphasis upon the forward deployment and offensive use of all available naval forces added pressure to the Soviet defensive efforts. The European members of the alliance were reassured, the Soviet Union lost its momentum in the naval field and its efforts to challenge NATO’s Atlantic SLOCs were undermined. Even though its inventory of attack submarines both in numbers and capable platforms remained impressive towards the end of the Cold War, it lacked the capability to respond adequately to the challenges posed by the new strategy. Hence, towards the end of the Cold War, NATO and the US Navy had regained the overall initiative. In the event of a conventional war at sea, the Maritime Strategy and the maritime resources available to carry out the outlined operations made it probable that the reinforcements and resupplies required for a conflict on the European continent could be provided in a reliable manner. Actually, it turned out that the Soviet Union did not have enough resources to keep up the arms race in the naval field. This not only affected the building programmes, but also the levels of training, operational proficiency and readiness of the Northern and Baltic Fleets. However, the inventory of the fleets still seemed quite impressive in the late 1980s. The lower number of days spent at sea by Soviet naval vessels compared to Western standards were often explained as being partially caused by a different way of training and operating naval forces. In any case, when confronted with the number and types of ships, especially those belonging to the Northern Fleet, very few in responsible positions were willing to gamble upon the possibility that this apparently mighty fleet would be unprepared and unable to go to sea in the event of hostilities.

THE TRANSFORMATION

During the 1990s the bipolar confrontation and the ideological battles of the Cold War ended. The fear of total war between the two alliances was replaced by concern over conflicts between national states and within states resulting in regional instability. Conflict prevention and conflict resolution became hot issues high on the international agenda for the maintenance of peace efforts. Furthermore, the Soviet Union was dissolved and former members of the Warsaw Pact have joined NATO. Even the former Soviet republics, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are knocking on NATO’s door to become members. The result of this transformation is that the northern waters have ceased to be a focal Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

point of military confrontation. The region is currently an area of low tension and relative calm. The strategic interests of the remaining superpower as well as those of the other major powers in the region require their main focus to point in other directions. This observation has become even more obvious after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC in September 2001. In the northern waters a significant change took place during the 1990s. The conventional fighting power of the once mighty Soviet fleets decreased tremendously along with the deterioration of the Russian economy. The remaining inventory of most types and classes of warships still in a fighting condition is a mere fraction of the fleets’ previous order of battle. Lack of funding has affected all aspects of their activities. Maintenance has been neglected and most of the vessels have for years remained in harbour for most of the time, with strong negative effects on training, proficiency and readiness. Concurrently, the scaling down of the fleets has resulted in unemployment among officers and men. These factors in combination with the fact that officers and sailors have often gone without pay for months, have also affected morale, recruitment and the necessary retention of important categories of experienced personnel. The scale of the Kursk accident of August 2000, exemplifies the catastrophic and traumatic dimensions of the changes that have occurred during these years for those attached to and involved in running the Northern Fleet.8 In addition, almost all building programmes have come close to standstill since the middle of the 1990s. Within the Northern Fleet the remaining SSBNs and their primary protectors and escorts, the SSNs, received priority. These units contribute to upholding the crucial second strike capability of Russia, and also play an important role in securing a seat for the country at the table of high politics in international affairs. Furthermore, more emphasis than in the preceding decade was given to nuclear weapons in the Russian military doctrine that was approved in the year 2000. This priority was also reflected in the subsequent naval doctrine published later the same year. It seems that the Russians feel their conventional capabilities have become insufficient to meet some defensive contingencies they see as possible and hence feel obliged to deal with. To meet these requirements they plan to use their nuclear arsenal as a substitute for their diminished conventional power. As a result the doctrine could lower the threshold for a first use of nuclear weapons in situations perceived as critical for Russian national security.9 The secondary western European navies operating in northern waters have also been significantly reduced in size. Hence, it is not only the Northern Fleet that has diminished. In the Baltic Sea the reduction in the number of operational naval combatants has been even greater. However, most of the remaining inventories of the navies in question Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

have, compared to the Russian Navy, been well maintained, updated and to a certain extent renewed. These navies have also suffered from constraints on operating budgets, resulting not least in less time spent at sea than previously, but they have nonetheless managed to maintain reasonable training standards. One consequence of these developments, however, is that most navies have become more vulnerable to losses. Hence, in future conflicts force preservation could in some circumstances become an important issue. This could result in cautiousness with regard to exposing high-value assets. On the other hand, this situation creates an opportunity for traditionally weaker navies to improve their relative strength if they have the will to invest in the necessary capabilities. During the Cold War the US Navy regularly sailed major surface combat units into the Baltic Sea to demonstrate that these were open waters and were part of the high seas where the principle of innocent passage applied. This pattern of deployment was a deliberate effort on the part of the US Navy to maintain the freedom of the seas and prevent the Baltic Sea from gradually developing into an enclosed sea dominated by the Soviet Union. At the time of writing, the situation is completely different. The Baltic states have regained their independence and, with the exception of the St Petersburg area and the enclave of Kaliningrad, Russia has lost the Baltic Sea port facilities that belonged to the Soviet Union. The present configuration of states and geography is not unlike the situation that existed between the two world wars. Strategically, Russia could in a conflict be exposed along the borders with the Baltic states, while Germany since the Cold War has acquired important forward areas facing the eastern Great Power. The Baltic Sea remains open, to be used freely by seafarers for a variety of purposes including Partnership for Peace exercises sponsored by NATO. Among the most frequent and eager participants are the former Cold War neutrals, Sweden and Finland, which are now members of the EU, and Poland, which has joined NATO. Hence, in a way the situation has become reversed. Western activities dominate the picture both commercially and in the naval field. Since the countries bordering on the Baltic Sea no longer have strong navies, perhaps it has become the Sea of Peace that the Soviet Union strove so hard to realise?

TRADITIONAL UTILITY AND RELEVANCE OF NAVIES

How can the navies in northern waters contribute towards realising a more desirable future? In order to address these matters on a general level, the traditional categorisation of naval missions; the constabulary, the diplomatic and the war fighting, could be used as a point of departure.10 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

The constabulary mission requires controlling the activities taking place in territorial waters, in the exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf. Acquiring the necessary means and capabilities to carry out the tasks associated with this mission will demonstrate the will and ability to promote and uphold national interests. Everyday tasks like controlling fishery and scientific activities can normally be carried out by the coast guard. When more serious episodes and violations occur, the navy proper will be called upon to assist. The establishment of a pattern of firm and fair treatment of commercial actors operating in areas of interest will in most cases contribute towards order and stability in the region in peacetime.11 If a state has appropriate naval forces at its disposal, naval units could be utilised to make port calls, to participate in common exercises or to carry out specific tasks like mine hunting in cooperation with other navies. One specific example of these kinds of diplomatic missions is the efforts made by several north European navies to clear designated areas off the coastline of the Baltic states of old mines. Another example is the conduct of multinational PfP-exercises with units of several regional navies participating. The ability to operate under common command in order to contribute to international operations under the auspices of the UN or under the authority of other organisations like NATO is yet another diplomatic mission which will usually require warfighting capabilities. Carrying out such tasks in consort will promote friendship and build understanding between the countries and navies that participate. Hence, such activities could contribute significantly to confidence-building measures between the states involved. Participation also demonstrates to outside powers a regional will and ability to cooperate and jointly solve matters of importance to the countries of the area. It seems reasonable that capacities representing some sort of deterrent posture might be called for when operating in the upper reaches of the spectrum of conflict. The challenge is to determine what kind of capabilities would be relevant for such purposes. In general, the economies of smaller states will be an important limiting factor. In addition, it may prove difficult under present circumstances to explain the need for this kind of capability, a factor that could compound the problem of gathering national support for necessary investments.

FUTURE CHALLENGES AND NEEDS

It has been a predominant trend during the 1990s that the armed forces of most countries in the northern region have diminished. Fewer and fewer states have the resources to start a grand attack to grab the core Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

territory of another state, and for those few that still possess the required means, it is difficult to see the possible gains or incentives for using their military power to carry out this type of aggression. The political will to use force for such purposes has been reduced and it has become harder to gather public acceptance in support of such actions. It is hard to imagine that the current trend towards peaceful cooperation between Russia and the Western powers of NATO and the EU should suddenly come to a stand-still or deteriorate. The EU seems to be on an unquestionably turbulent, but nevertheless stable path towards enlargement and further integration. Proof of this steady course is the introduction of the common currency on 1 January 2002. Similarly, developments in the relationship between Russia and the United States, with NATO jumping on the bandwagon, could mark the beginning of a qualitatively different relationship between old adversaries on the European continent. Of course, this does not mean that no conflicting interests remain, or that there are no future problems to be faced, but the advantages of solving them by peaceful means ought to be obvious to most participants. In addition to the institutions mentioned, the UN, the G-8 and a number of other forums provide a broad framework for frequent meetings and open possibilities for constructive cooperation. A strengthening of this trend towards cooperation and integration seems the most likely outcome of the current events. However, uncertainty regarding international peace will not disappear. Old obstacles may remain or reappear, and unforeseen ones may surface. Whether or not the promising internal developments in Russia will continue and further enhance stability, is a question of major importance. When undertaking the difficult task of prediction, two aspects seem quite important to take into consideration. Firstly, it is very unlikely that the security environment will develop in a linear manner. It is more probable that unpredicted events similar to the 11 September 2001 acts of terrorism will occur. In some circumstances such incidents could cause new, abrupt changes in security policy. Secondly, it is necessary to realise that one likely consequence of such sudden changes of course will be that future wars will be ‘come as you are parties’, at least at the outset. Hence, the availability of flexible naval means of a size and a state of readiness sufficient to cover the entire spectrum of conflict effectively will be significant for the maintenance of stability in a future crisis situation. The questions that then arise, are: what kind of contingencies might have to be addressed and what sort of capabilities would be required to influence developments and safeguard vital interests? It could be useful to distinguish between the global and the regional, particularly the northern scene, when discussing these matters. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

In a global perspective, a prime peacetime mission of navies is to participate in securing freedom of the seas for economic and trade purposes. In an era when the leading economies of the world are interlocked and global in nature, it is crucial for a functioning world economy to ensure safe transportation. The United States – and its navy – has traditionally given the highest priority to guarding the freedom of the seas. At present, all leading sea powers including Russia seem to share this objective. Hence, generally speaking there seem to be few obstacles to securing freedom of movement on the high seas. This observation is no less significant when it is taken into account that the US Navy is actually the only navy left with a global reach. When the strength provided by the secondary sea powers is added, even though the fighting strength of each individual navy is clearly inferior to that of the US Navy, they can still constitute quite a strong supporting contribution. In the foreseeable future it is only the submarines of a rebuilt and effective Northern Fleet that to some degree could pose a possible challenge to this ‘world order’ on the high seas. On the other hand, the geographical limitations of Russia’s free access to the main international shipping routes and the expanses of the world oceans, particularly in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, underline the immense value for Russia of the exit from the northern waters. The Kola area will remain the most important port facility for the Russian Navy as well as for commercial purposes due to the access it provides to the high seas. Anything that prevents Russian access to the open sea will affect vital Russian national interests and under all circumstances have global strategic implications.12 Hence, it is highly unlikely that Russia will behave in a way that would put these interests at risk. As already mentioned, it is more probable that the Russian Navy will contribute to securing the ocean lanes for safe transport and free trade. In addition, even in the case of a flourishing Russian economy over the coming years, it seems unlikely that the Russian Navy will receive the kind of priority required to develop a submarine force that could constitute a serious threat to the hegemony of the US Navy. The 11 September 2001 terrorist actions in the United States and the subsequent attack on Afghanistan reminded us that the future will quite likely present challenges of asymmetrical warfare. Sabotage, piracy and terrorist activity have to be taken into account and seen in a global context. Some of these threats are hard to foresee. Facing such challenges requires tight security measures, a high state of alert and readiness, flexible means which cover the whole spectrum of conflict – and above all – relevant and efficient intelligence. This means that navies involved have to be present in territorial and adjacent waters to carry out surveillance, show the flag, monitor the situation and gather Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

intelligence to cover their interests in the exclusive economic zones and on the continental shelves – and to be ready to act when necessary. It should not be overlooked that larger and more violent conflicts may also occur between states in the future. Among major regional powers, leaders may exist or appear who under certain circumstances might find it opportune to initiate hostilities on a scale that may have global implications and hence involve the UN Security Council and the Great Powers. Very likely, navies would be asked to participate in operations triggered this way. Hence, in the future the ability to contribute to international power projection missions could also be among the range of capabilities in demand in the repertoire of the minor navies of the northern waters. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the uncertainty represented by weapons of mass destruction is a problem for the international security environment. Not least, the proliferation of these weapons is a significant challenge to global and regional stability. The unilateral US decision in 2001 to abolish the ABM treaty is an example of this. In order to avoid being blackmailed by a rogue state in possession of such capabilities, the United States decided to develop a missile defence system. The problem for international security is that the introduction of such a shield disrupts the impression of balance in the established deterrent posture between the traditional nuclear powers. Some of these states feel that the implementation of a system to shoot down ballistic missiles will erode the protection so far provided by their nuclear deterrence. Such considerations could influence the future naval environment. Seen from a Russian point of view, the SSBNs will probably remain an important means for maintaining a credible second strike capability. The ability of the Russian SSBNs to threaten the mainland of the United States will in all likelihood remain the most important strategic reason for the Americans to keep an eye on the naval situation in the northern waters. Taking into consideration the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to other potential adversaries of Russia, the SSBNs will also constitute a reliable future deterrence against threat of attack from these countries. This will further enhance the importance of the northern waters and the Kola base complex for Russia since the majority of their SSBNs will be based there. On the other hand, considering the age of the Russian SSBNs and the costs of running these submarines and their missiles, it is possible that Russia, mainly for economic reasons, might alter the priorities between sea- and land-based means of delivery. The improved relations between the United States and Russia and the overall reduction of nuclear warheads in their arsenals may make this option more acceptable. Even the level of emotions when dealing with the abolition of the ABM treaty Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

seems to be cooling down. The land-based solution cannot be discarded. However, it is considered that the proven flexibility of the submarine option is more likely than not to save the SSBN alternative. A crucial factor in the decision process could be the relative success or failure of the Borey class, the next generation of SSBN under construction to replace the Delta IV- and Typhoon-classes.13 Taking into account the dependence of the industrialised world upon oil and gas supplies, another unpleasant and possibly dangerous future scenario could arise if oil exports from the Middle East were to be cut off as a result of acts of war in that area. Obviously Russia, being selfsufficient in oil and gas supplies, would be in a favourable situation. However, EU and Asian powers and even the United States, could before long experience serious oil shortages. Very likely, the northern waters with their offshore production facilities would rapidly become the focus of attention as an important alternative source for delivery. It is most probable that the countries suffering from shortages would be able to participate and solve the distribution problem peacefully if such a challenge should arise. This cooperative approach would best serve the national interests of the countries involved due to the interdependence of their economies. On the other hand, in the unlikely case that they were unable to reach an agreement, the alternative could be a rather nasty competition where each country seeks to secure oil supplies without sharing with the others. If such a serious situation should emerge, the outbreak of hostilities could easily become more than a theoretical possibility. On balance, shifting to the regional perspective and considering the optimistic scenarios to be more probable than the alternatives, future naval deployments in northern waters and the adjacent littoral areas seem more likely to be for environmental or economic than for military purposes. Not the least of these problems is represented by the remains of the Northern Fleet and in particular the vast number of obsolete nuclear-powered submarines that are considered to pose a serious threat to the marine environment in the region. It would represent a significant contribution to future stability and cooperation in the area if a solution were found to this problem. A continued US engagement in a common effort to remove this source of possible pollution, will improve the probability of success in solving the problem. Environmental issues probably will continue to be important and may become a cause of future disagreement within the region. Although not a matter of military concern at the outset, the implications and consequences of decisions in this field might have the potential to create conflicts. Even though the major players initially involved in such disputes will usually be private companies, non-governmental environmental organisations and the ministries and agencies dealing with these Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

issues, such incidents could escalate to involve interests at state level. To provide one example, the expected development of oil and gas production facilities in the Barents Sea could become the object of strong commitment and opposition from various environmental protection groups. They are likely to protest and perhaps even use violent means to prevent the building of installations necessary to exploit these resources. Their justification for taking action could be the need to protect the fragile local environment from future pollution catastrophes. Probably their main argument would be to secure the crucial seabed areas where several important stocks of fish have their breeding grounds. The struggle to harvest the living resources from the exclusive economic zones and the riches contained on and below the surface of the continental shelves is quite likely to be a future source of disagreement between states or groups of states with interests in northern waters. Well-known current issues in the Barents Sea are the lack of an agreed dividing line between the zones and shelves of Russia and Norway, and the dispute over the status of the Fishery Protection Zone around the archipelago of Svalbard. Most of the other signatories to the Svalbard treaty have reserved their position on the issue. The economic dependence of fishermen from many countries on the size of the total catch of the several fish stocks which grow and migrate in these waters makes the management and fair sharing of these resources an important political matter. The legal and political issues arising from disagreement among the signatories regarding the rights to exploit the riches on the continental shelf surrounding Svalbard could also pose obstacles to future stability in the region. The navies operating in these areas already have important duties to perform on the regional scene. In addition to the missions that have been outlined, which could include engagement in international operations, there are several other tasks which also need to be carried out. Among them are border controls involving immigration issues and the fight against crime, in particular drug smuggling, but also first-line defence against several categories of possible terrorist acts. Common to these traditional coast guard duties is that they rely on surveillance, intelligence, presence and quick reaction. If these requirements are met, they both constitute a preventive posture and demonstrate an ability to intervene when needed. When summing up the analysis and considering the current tasks of the local navies operating in the northern waters, it would be convenient to classify the capabilities in demand in accordance with the mission types. However, missions often overlap with regard to requirements and naval means are inherently flexible. Therefore, it is difficult continuously to keep the needs for each task apart and classify them Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

separately. Most commonly, overlap in requirements occurs between the diplomatic and war fighting missions. The constabulary mission may also occasionally require more fighting power. When the indicated overlap is accepted, the needs to be met could broadly be referred to as follows:14 1. The constabulary mission requires an ability to take care of national interests by having means and standards of training sufficient to handle the occurrence of probable and likely incidents in the lower parts of the spectrum of conflict in exclusive areas of responsibility such as territorial waters and the exclusive economic zone. 2. The diplomatic and war fighting missions require an ability to: • contribute to indirect security by having some relevant capability to offer to participate in international operations, be it under the auspices of the UN, NATO or the EU; • prevent incidents from escalating into open conflicts and actions of war by having the tools needed for efficient crisis management along the whole scale of conflict; • deter attack by having the means to inflict substantial damage and costs upon an enemy if war breaks out and the staying power to fight for a sustained period of time in order to deny the aggressor rapid victory and prevent a fait accompli.

NAVAL FORCES AND THEIR USE IN NORTHERN WATERS

A state having the relevant military means at its disposal, may under certain circumstances increase the possibility of favourably influencing the outcome of a dispute with other states. Applied to the naval field this means that the more suitable its inventory of warships, the more freedom of action the state will enjoy. Which naval means would it be most suitable to invest in for use in northern waters? The navies operating in the northern waters can in principle be divided into two categories. The first group consists of the navies of the United States, Russia, Canada and the major European maritime nations – the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. The navies of these major and medium powers can provide naval capabilities to carry out a range of operations along the whole scale of traditional naval missions. The ability to intervene will vary, but all of these countries will to some degree have the necessary naval power to play a role in the area, at least in cooperation with others. However, their arguments for acquiring naval means – with the possible exception of Russia – have not been based on requirements necessary to operate Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

in the Baltic or north of the GIUK gap per se. The capability of these navies to operate in the area is a combined function of the general size of their naval power, the range of available, relevant capabilities and the inherent flexibility of naval forces.15 The development of these navies during the 1990s was in addition to a reduction in size characterised by a change of priority in war-fighting capabilities away from the sea control mission towards power projection and expeditionary warfare in support of operations in the littoral and against hostile shores. The increased investments in capabilities for sealift and amphibious warfare are examples of this trend. Still, even the combined ability of larger European navies to carry out expeditionary warfare and power projection missions remains modest.16 The second category includes the navies of the coastal states of the region. To a much larger degree their decisions with regard to the development of naval capabilities and the kind of naval hardware to be purchased is determined by local and regional strategic and security policy considerations. The choices made by these, in most cases, minor states, will also be influenced by the present lack of a visible threat and by economic constraints. Of course, different players may have differing perceptions of the likelihood of foreseeable threats and the utility of naval forces to meet the challenges they see. Furthermore, their ambitions may also vary. But bearing in mind that future armed conflicts probably will be ‘come as you are’ events, a broad, general survey of the present status in the naval field in the area will be the basis for a further focus on what could be useful means to invest in for the minor, local states.

THE BALTIC NAVIES

The situation in the Baltic Sea area is stable. The Russian Baltic Fleet has been reduced to a fraction of its former strength.17 The navies of Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany and Poland have also decreased in power, but to a lesser degree. The three Baltic states have in a modest way begun to build navies of their own. In 1998 they created a combined naval force – BALTRON – the Baltic Naval Squadron. The purpose was to promote cooperation, mutual understanding and interoperability between the three navies. Officers from the different countries are scheduled to command the squadron on a rotational basis. The initial focus of the squadron’s activities was on practical skills in naval cooperation, especially combined operations at sea in squadron formation for the purpose of crisis management. Otherwise, the main effort has been on mine clearance in order to build up a capacity for removing some of the huge numbers of sea bottom mines left behind in Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

their territorial and adjacent waters as a result of the two world wars. The Estonian Navy has in particular concentrated upon mine countermeasures. The Mine Sweeper Division improved its capabilities in 2000 when two ex-German Lindau-class mine hunters were purchased. There is talk of developing a concept to merge the navy with the border guard and the sea traffic control institution into a national navy.18 The Latvian Navy consists of a Coast Guard Squadron, a Patrol Boat Squadron and a Mine Sweeper Squadron. In June 2001, the Patrol Boat Squadron was strengthened by the purchase of two upgraded exNorwegian Storm-class units and one ‘as is’ boat that can also be used as a reserve source of spare part supplies if necessary.19 The minesweepers are of ex-East German Kondor II-class. The Latvian Navy also has an ex-German Navy Type 331 mine hunter. The Lithuanian Navy is made up of a flotilla, which consists of a Combat Vessel Division and a Cutter Group, the Sea Surveillance and Communication Command, and a ship maintenance and support service. It operates an ex-Russian support ship, which has NATO-compatible communications equipment on board and is available to BALTRON as a command ship. Furthermore, the Lithuanian Navy has in its inventory two modernised ex-Russian Grisha III frigates, a mine hunter of the Lindau class, two coast guard cutters and four patrol vessels. In June 2001, the Lithuanians took over two upgraded Storm-class units and a similar support package to that of the Latvian Navy, including an extra vessel. This small navy is characterised as effective with ‘high readiness and the ability to contribute to international operations’.20 In addition to the important mission of the combined mine countermeasure force, the common ambition of the navies of all three countries has been to establish an ability to guard territorial waters and economic zones, and to participate in international operations. In order to develop the latter capability, the navies of the Baltic countries have been eager participants in Partnership for Peace and other multinational exercises. These efforts have paid off. In November 2001, the Estonian Navy led the fourth multinational Mine Countermeasure Operation which Estonia conducted north and west of Tallinn Harbour. NATO’s standing Mine Countermeasures Force North (MCMFORNORTH) and units of the Swedish Navy’s 4 MCM flotilla took part in the operation.21 The former non-aligned countries Finland and Sweden also have modest navies. According to the Military Balance 2001–2002 the inventory of ships in the Finnish Navy consisted of one corvette, nine missile craft, 10 minelayers, 13 mine countermeasure vessels and a number of small amphibious and support craft. Presently, the Swedish Navy has 24 combat surface vessels and nine submarines. By 2005, the number will have decreased to 12 and five, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

respectively. Hence, the capabilities of these navies will remain limited. Despite the comparatively high technical standards of their ships, including weapons and other equipment, they will be suited mainly for operations in coastal and littoral waters. The current and planned inventories of the Finnish and Swedish navies lack units with the endurance, seaworthiness and logistical support on keel required to participate over time in oceangoing multinational combat naval formations for power projection. There is no sign that this situation will change in the near future. Hence, the participation of these navies in international operations is likely to be limited and confined to the Baltic Sea with an occasional diversion or visit to the North Sea and adjacent waters as part of a future European maritime force. The most suitable warfare area to contribute to seems similar to that of the Baltic States, i.e. in mine countermeasure operations.22 The Danish Navy has also become smaller and will continue to shrink. On the other hand, the Danes plan to purchase larger ships to replace 17 of the vessels in the current 2001 inventory, among them the three Niels Juel-class corvettes. The investment plan includes units of a new class of large standard vessels. The first two deliveries, according to plans in 2004 and 2005, displaying 6,000 tonnes at full load, will be used as flexible command and support ships. The ships will be able to operate two Agusta Westland EH 101 helicopters and have an unsupported endurance of up to 28 days at ranges of approximately 9,000 nautical miles. The next group of large vessels will consist of at least two patrol ships (in service by 2005–07). The Danish Navy aspires to buy two more units of this type. This version is based on the same basic design as the support ships and uses the features and experiences gained from having practised the Standard Flex solution developed for the Flyvefisken-class ships. The concept is to adopt the common design to use different containerised modules to equip the ships with the suite of weapons or other capabilities in demand. These plans indicate that Denmark increasingly ‘emphasizes contributing to international peace support operations and NATO standing forces outside the Baltic operating theatre’.23 In addition, the Danish Navy will continue to operate the Flyvefisken-class – a flexible, multipurpose patrol craft force of 14 units24 – and a number of ships in coastguard functions, among them the four 3,500-tonne inspection vessels of the Thetis-class. Denmark not only borders the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, it also has huge territorial waters and economic zones to patrol around Greenland and the Faeroe Islands. After having joined NATO, the Polish Navy is in a phase of transition. In 2001, it had in its inventory of larger surface vessels an ageing Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

destroyer of the ex-Soviet Kashin mod-class, one frigate of the US Perry class with one more to come and four corvettes of the Soviet Tarantul I class. The latter group of ships will be updated in the period 2001–06. Three Okean-class fast missile craft are presently undergoing upgrading in Sweden. Other classes of fast patrol craft will also be modestly refitted in the period up to 2006. The two submarines of the Foxtrot class will be decommissioned in 2002–03 and offered for sale. That will leave the Poles temporarily with only one submarine – an exSoviet Kilo-class. Poland has been offered second-hand submarines on very favourable terms from several countries. The Polish Navy has decided to take over five submarines of the upgraded Norwegian Kobben class. Four of these will go through scheduled maintenance before being transferred during 2002. The additional unit will be used as a spare part source.25 Furthermore, the Polish Navy has two classes of new ships under design, a corvette programme of six units and a nationally developed mine hunter. The keel for the first vessel of this new class of mine countermeasure units is expected to be laid in the near future.26 The commander-in-chief of the Polish Navy underlines the fact that Poland aims to participate fully in NATO’s international engagements at sea. One important area will be to provide a sealift capacity to carry the men and equipment of the Polish Army’s international force contribution to the port of debarkation. The admiral states: ‘remember that Poland at sea means a balanced fleet that carries our flag to every place where NATO interests are represented, not just in the Baltic and the North Sea. Outside these waters our Navy has not been represented as often as is required by Poland’s state interests. The frigate team will fill that gap.’27 Hence, compared to the other Baltic States, Poland seems to have higher ambitions in the naval field. The will to acquire the means needed also seems to be present. Germany will continue to be a strong naval power in the Baltic during the next decade despite heavy cut backs in the 1990s. Originally, the numerous coastal submarines, fast patrol boats and mine warfare vessels in the inventory of the German Navy were acquired for operations in the Baltic Sea. The ships are still very well suited to that purpose. However, the new security policy situation in the area has made it possible to give higher priority to blue-water operations. The building plans include new submarines, a programme to replace the 30 fast patrol boats by 15 corvettes of approximately 1,300 tonnes and a modernisation in the mine warfare field with increased emphasis on mine hunting. The number of destroyers and frigates for blue-water operations will remain at 15. Three Lütjens-class destroyers and eight Bremen-class frigates will be replaced by similar numbers of type-124 and type-125 frigates, respectively.28 Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

When assessing the maritime situation in the Baltic Sea, it can be concluded that the military confrontation that characterised the Cold War period has disappeared. For the foreseeable future the area is likely to have limited military strategic significance. The Baltic Sea has indeed become an ‘ocean of peace’. Contrary to the Cold War period the region is likely to be dominated by countries having membership in the EU and/or NATO. However, the area will increase in commercial importance due to the economic development in the countries bordering on the Baltic Sea, which in turn generates growth in trade and demand for sea transport and efficient port facilities. How do the Baltic navies fit in if the size of the economies and populations of the border countries are taken into consideration? Generally speaking, short of engaging in hostilities at sea, all the states mentioned have acquired a minimum capacity to carry out most tasks of the constabulary mission. Similarly, they are able to show the flag and carry out the tasks of the diplomatic mission, at least regionally. The ability to participate in international operations varies greatly, but most can contribute to regional mine clearance operations and participate in PfP exercises and multinational forces confined to the Baltic and North Sea areas. Several of the countries still possess a number of combat patrol craft for coastal defence. These are useful tools for naval presence in territorial waters, for backing up coastguard units with more power when needed for crisis management, and of course, if something unforeseen should happen that requires war-fighting capacities, these units are within reach and can be used. As always, vessels with combat capacities are excellently suited for undertaking tasks within the realm of the diplomatic mission. In addition, the ambition of some countries is to have a higher profile in NATO’s standing naval forces and to take part in more ad hoc combined multinational formations created in response to, for example, an international peace mission. Presently, and for the period being considered, Germany is the country that has the most abundant means to make substantial contributions in this field, but both Poland and Denmark seem determined to improve their capabilities in the years to come. The constraints caused by population and economic limitations make it highly unlikely that the three Baltic states in any significant way will acquire naval means to change this picture during the coming years. Even though Finland and Sweden will have a wider range of choices, their thinking and traditions are predominantly land and air oriented, respectively. In a budget-driven adjustment of the armed forces at large, it does not seem very likely that the navies will carry the day. In the long run, Poland might decide to expand its naval power if the development of the economy allows, but a substantial change in this field will in any Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

case take time. With regard to the Russian Baltic Fleet, the Russian Federation in the next few years will probably have neither the money to afford an expansion of its navy, nor the political will to give priority to such an enterprise. Furthermore, the existence of local navies capable of upholding sovereignty and protecting the sovereign rights of their countries, introduces a cost for carrying out violations that contributes to the maintenance of stability. At the start of the new century, the countries of the region as well as other seafaring states use the Baltic Sea as a common thoroughfare to promote free trade based on sea transport that contributes to prosperity in a way that has not been the case since the Hanseatic era. It is not inconceivable that a renewed Russian assertiveness could turn this region of rapid commercial development into an area of renewed military confrontation, but at the moment this seems highly unlikely. When considering the requirements for naval power among the countries bordering on the Baltic Sea, there is no urgent need for radical changes to improve the stability of the region. The plans and arguments for replacing current inventories seem basically sound and acceptable. On the other hand, in the unlikely event that Finland or Sweden decided to invest in platforms better suited for participation in a multinational European maritime force tasked to operate outside confined waters, this should pose no challenge to others in the area. Given the history of the region, it would quite obviously be different if Russia started to give priority to a disproportionately large Baltic Fleet, which might be seen as expressing a will to regain naval dominance in the area. A similar move on the part of Germany might also give rise to similar anxieties.

REGIONAL ATLANTIC NAVIES

When attention is shifted to the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea, Norway is the only minor state that borders these waters, in addition to Denmark with Greenland and the Faeroe Islands, which has already been treated as part of the discussion of the Baltic region. Norway, including the Svalbard archipelago and the island of Jan Mayen, has a huge economic zone and continental shelf which, due to the substantial oil and gas resources and the extensive fisheries, have tremendous importance for the economic well-being of the country. Furthermore, the fisheries and fish farming form the very foundation of economic activity and employment in the counties of northern Norway and hence for maintaining the local population. It is a necessity for maintaining the infrastructure required in a modern society that a sufficient number of Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

people continue to live in the local communities along the coast. The situation at sea in the North Sea and the waters north of the GIUK gap remains quite complex. As an example of the magnitude of activity in the area, approximately 950 foreign and 1,050 Norwegian vessels authorised to fish in the waters under Norwegian jurisdiction actually used their licence in 2001.29 The air and sea traffic to and from the offshore installations, the export of oil and gas with ships and pipelines, the shipping connected with import and export to and from north-western Russia, including the use of the North-East Passage, plus military and scientific activity, add up to a diversified picture. It is necessary to maintain relatively tight control to prevent interference and differing interests from colliding – and to protect national interests. The Norwegian Navy presently consists of three old Oslo-class frigates; six modern, conventional coastal submarines of the Ula class; eight modern mine countermeasure vessels – four Oksøy-class mine hunters and four Alta-class mine sweepers; one mine diver unit with a support ship under reconstruction to be finished in 2003; one coastal minelayer of the Vidar class; 14 missile patrol craft of the Hauk class presently undergoing upgrading; a newly established coastal ranger unit equipped with anti-shipping missiles and a number of fast transport craft; a naval commando special unit and a few support vessels of different types including three landing craft of the Reinøysund class, two of which are moth-balled. Currently, plans are being initiated to buy an additional logistic support ship to be delivered in 2008. A prototype of a new stealth type missile patrol craft, the Skjold class has been built and tried out for a year. Since the end of the Norwegian Navy’s test programme, the vessel has since the summer of 2001 been lent to the US Navy for further examination. The Norwegian Navy plans to build five more units of this class. The main weapon of the vessels will be a new medium-range antiship missile of Norwegian design. The same missile will be mounted on the five new 5,000 tonnes frigates of the Fridtjof Nansen class ordered from Spain. The first ship in the series will be delivered in 2005. The frigates will be equipped with the NH 90 helicopter. In addition to the coastal fleet or the navy proper, the Norwegian Navy also has a coast guard branch. It received in December 2001 a new flagship, a helicopter-carrying vessel of approximately 6,500 tonnes named Svalbard, which also has icebreaking capacity. Furthermore, the coast guard operates three units of the 3,500 tonnes Nordkapp-class with navy Lynx helicopters, and leases a relatively large number of cutters of varying types from civilian ship-owners on time charters of five or ten years duration. A couple of the 10-year old vessels are fully manned by navy personnel except for the engine crew, the rest of the chartered ships have mixed crews. However, the military commander is Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

in charge of every aspect of the vessel’s operations with the exception of navigation and ship safety, which are the responsibilities of the civilian master. The navy’s NH 90 purchase includes the coast guard needs. Hence, the programme will replace the navy Lynx helicopters on board the Svalbard and the vessels of the Nordkapp class. The Orion-type long-range maritime patrol craft supplied, equipped, manned, operated and maintained by the air force, is an important asset when carrying out the sea surveillance and coast guard mission. The minor navies operating in the north-east Atlantic, the Danish and the Norwegian, both have the capacity to deal with the constabulary mission in an acceptable manner. These countries also have naval means to participate in international operations and to handle a large spectrum of the tasks under the umbrella of the diplomatic mission, despite limited warfighting capabilities. Both navies will renew and upgrade their inventories. The above presentation of current plans has shown that the Danes are likely to reduce their navy more than the Norwegians in the next few years. Compared to the situation in the Baltic, the Norwegian and Barents Seas potentially still have great strategic value for both minor and major powers. The analysis of the relevant factors has shown that this dormant possibility for conflict in the region could be connected to disagreements and struggle over the utilisation of resources, the production and transport of petroleum products as well as actions taken to secure the waters for military operations. Hostilities could be initiated in peacetime through acts of terrorism targeted, for example, at offshore installations, terminals or pipelines that might in the first instance threaten the energy supplies of major European states. The naval strength of the minor states may attain its highest significance when the states themselves are the objects of threats and political pressure. The naval means at hand may influence the cost analysis of an aggressor. Furthermore, to have relevant naval capabilities may also be a prerequisite for being recognised as a player and hence increase the probability of gaining a place at the negotiation table. Significant naval capacity will also in most cases be a very useful tool to possess when seeking the support of others against a common counterpart even in situations short of war. For Norway this could turn out to be an important factor not least concerning the ability to keep up the deliveries of oil and gas in times of tension. The tasks connected with securing the safe production and deliveries of energy to Europe and other customers could soon exceed the military capacity of Norway. In low-tension conflicts when war has not broken out, it is not without problems to call on foreign assistance if the command and control has to be given to a foreign officer with a mission to take care of Norwegian sovereignty and sovereign rights. Hence, having the necessary means: frigates, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

trained naval commanders at flag level and interoperable communication, command and control facilities, make it politically feasible to ask other nations to participate in such operations since those that contribute can be invited to join a task group under national control. On the other hand, in a shooting war involving the major naval powers it is difficult to envision the navies of Denmark and Norway alone or together playing any significant role in resolving the conflict. If the participation is based on being a partner in a coalition such as NATO or in an alliance with the leading sea power, the contributions could be useful, but not decisive in that case either. Hence, it is not easy to assess whether the minor states, Denmark and Norway, will make any difference with regard to preventing fighting or influencing developments if hostilities break out between the major powers. Presuming that the above observations are relevant, what could then in addition to planned purchases be meaningful for, say, Norway to invest in? Norway is selected as an example because the country has the economic freedom to choose, if it so decides. Hence, the next few years provide an opportunity to improve the relative strength of the Norwegian Navy as against the reduced naval power potential of the regional states. When considering the potential of the Norwegian Navy in particular, it can operate in the entire range of the spectrum of conflict. To face up to the most probable and possible constabulary and diplomatic missions as well as to participate in international operations, the means that are already in the inventory or on order, seem acceptable and relevant for a country of Norway’s size and for the tasks assigned to its navy. However, the only war-fighting capability with significant deterrence value against a medium navy of a regional great power is the coastal submarine. In the next few years, and under the outlined circumstances in the naval field, might it be militarily cost-effective and politically useful to invest in more deterrent power? And if yes, what should that be? Might more submarines be the answer or should cruise missiles perhaps be considered?30 The cruise missile is not common in the inventories of minor navies. However, the price has gone down and the weapon has become more affordable also for smaller states and hence a candidate for procurement. It has been pointed out that the number of capital ships is also diminishing in the larger navies. That may in the event of hostilities result in cautiousness with regard to exposing these assets. Long-range surface-to-surface missiles that could threaten warships belonging to these valuable categories might be a useful deterrent system to possess. Likewise, the land-attack cruise missile might have a similar effect. It could at the tactical level be used on national territory to engage the advancing army of an adversary. At the same time, at the strategic level, Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

the cruise missile would pose a threat through the ability to hit the aggressor on his own soil. The possibility of losing matériel of major importance or being struck on one’s own territory might be a factor in the calculus that could influence the decision-making of a regional great power considering whether to attack a small neighbouring state. In different circumstances in the diplomatic sphere, say if under political pressure, it might be to the advantage of a minor state to have this option available. It should be added that the usefulness of a cruise-missile option for smaller navies in all likelihood would depend on the navy in question having the appropriate means at its disposal to cover the lower part of the spectrum of conflict in a satisfactory manner. If such means are not available, the need for actually using the cruise-missile option in battle could easily arise early in an escalation process. If this situation occurs the deterrent posture could be lost. It also seems paramount if such a powerful weapon is bought that the political system and its decisionmakers are able to treat the question of possible use in a manner that promotes credibility. If lack of determination is communicated to those who should be deterred and they get the impression that the card will not be played, deterrence will fail. Hence, acquiring cruise missiles could represent new challenges to the political leadership of a minor state like Norway. To use the landattack missile to defend against an intruder on national territory is something quite different from using the weapon in other circumstances to hit installations on the attacker’s territory. Furthermore, for the minor navy the cruise missile will always remain a means of deterrence. A small state will never have the resources to fight a war using cruise missiles over time as a main tactical weapon the way the United States has done in the Gulf and Afghanistan wars. Furthermore, purchasing cruise missiles and hence acquiring the potential to threaten important assets of major players, may have a cost from the outset. It may be that the major states dislike such a move because it may influence their freedom of action and reduce the number of available courses of action when incidents occur where they are inclined to use military means to underline political pressure. It seems important that a minor state, apart from considerations of purchase costs, should make a comprehensive study of the pros and cons of adding the cruise missile to the inventory of naval weapons before deciding to buy. Based on the above analysis the option seems affordable and possibly feasible for Norway, but it is not obvious that it is suitable.

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CONCLUSIONS

The navies of the major and medium powers – the United States, Russia, Canada – and the most powerful European maritime nations – the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands - can provide naval capabilities to carry out a range of tasks along the whole scale of traditional naval missions. All these countries will to some degree have naval power to play a role in the northern waters at least in cooperation with others, if or when such a need should arise. The capability of these navies to operate in the area is a combined function of their naval power, the range of available, relevant capacities and the inherent flexibility of naval forces. Lately, the development of these navies has been characterised by a change in priority regarding warfighting capabilities away from the sea control mission towards power projection and expeditionary warfare tasks in support of operations off the littoral and against hostile shores. It has been asked whether the efforts of minor states operating in northern waters constitute a significant contribution to stability in the region? Furthermore, do the capabilities of these navies matter or make a difference with regard to preventing conflict and enhancing peace? It seems – in times short of war – that it is of importance that any coastal state is able to control its waters in accordance with the requirements of the Law of the Sea. Generally speaking, the capacity to take care of these tasks in a proper manner is a stabilising factor, since in a broad sense ‘law and order’ is maintained. In the long run, such a display of will and ability to impose a pattern of behaviour, in accordance with the rules of international law among the users of the area, helps to prevent episodes and keeps the number of incidents down. Obviously, this reduces the probability that serious hostilities develop as a result of a minor episode escalating. Hence, it is a contribution to stability in an area to have the capacities in the naval inventory to carry out the constabulary tasks in a credible way. For the foreseeable future, the Baltic Sea area is likely to have limited military strategic significance. Contrary to the Cold War period the region is likely to be dominated by countries having membership in the EU and/or NATO. However, the area will increase in commercial importance due to the economic development in the countries bordering on the Baltic Sea, which in turn generates growth in trade and demand for sea transport and efficient port facilities. When considering the requirements for additional naval power among the countries bordering on the Baltic Sea, no urgent need has been discovered for radical changes to improve the security policy stability of the region. The plans and arguments for replacing current inventories seem basically sound and acceptable. On the other hand, if Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

for example Sweden decides to invest in platforms better suited for participation in a blue-water European maritime force and for international operations in general, that should not represent any serious challenge to other states in the area. It would be different if Russia started to expand the Baltic Fleet in a way that was clearly out of proportion. The same applies to Germany. Compared to the situation in the Baltic, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea potentially still have great strategic value not only for the local states, but also for the Great Powers. The dormant possibility for conflict in the region could be connected to disagreements and struggle over the exploitation of resources, disagreements about sovereign rights and the extent of economic zones, the production and transport of petroleum products as well as the secure use of the waters for military operations. In general, the situation at sea in the North Sea and the waters north of the GIUK remains quite complex. Hostilities could in peacetime be initiated trough acts of terrorism targeted at, for example, offshore installations, terminals or pipelines. It is necessary to keep relatively tight control to prevent interference, and differing interests from colliding – and to be present to guard national interests. If it is presumed that a minor state bordering on the North Atlantic will allocate funds to make it possible to buy additional naval capabilities and means, what would it be relevant to order? At the outset, traditional coastal state types of weapon systems for littoral warfare such as fast patrol boats equipped with anti-surface missiles, conventional, coastal submarines carrying torpedoes, modern mines against submarines as well as surface vessels, and coastal special forces with anti-shipping and anti-infiltration capabilities, could be useful and affordable tools to have in the inventory in many circumstances. Furthermore, frigates make it possible to provide meaningful contributions to international operations and to back up the coast guard at sea independent of weather conditions that would have hindered smaller craft from operating off-coast. Submarines can operate covertly and quite often also under enemy air supremacy for some time. Hence, the coastal submarine is a very useful tool for maintaining and influencing a combat situation over time. That may, depending on the circumstances, have substantial deterrent value. The minor states Denmark and Norway have sufficient means in their naval inventory or on order to cover the constabulary and diplomatic missions in an acceptable manner. However, since the strategic environment is more diversified than in the Baltic and the challenges may accordingly become more demanding, the need for war-fighting capabilities may be different and larger. At present, it seems highly unlikely that Denmark will invest more than the plans indicate. Hence, Norway was selected to examine the problem further. The analysis Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

focused on the cruise missile being considered a feasible solution within the operational and economic reach of the Norwegian Navy if a capacity to enhance the deterrent value of its inventory was regarded as suitable. There are few clear-cut answers to the questions that have been raised regarding the requirements for naval means and their likely utility value for minor states operating in northern waters. However, the will and ability displayed by minor states to uphold their sovereignty and protect their sovereign rights in a proper manner seems to promote local and regional stability in times of peace. Hence, it also prevents minor incidents or episodes from developing into more serious confrontations. In order to be present and control the waters in question, a minimum requirement is relevant coast guard capabilities, including capable air elements and a navy proper able to provide more platforms and increased power when needed. Furthermore, the available means should cover the whole spectrum of conflict, enabling the navy in question to manage crises and participate in international operations, including the transport of land forces to their destination.

NOTES I want to extend my thanks to Rolf Tamnes for invaluable advice and constructive criticism during several reviews of earlier drafts. In addition I had the opportunity to read his lecture notes related to the topic when I started to work on this chapter. I also wish to thank Arne Røksund whose suggestions helped to improve it. Likewise, I am indebted to the late Bjørnar Kibsgaard at Europa-programmet who allowed me to study the summaries and tables based on Jane’s Fighting Ships 2000–01 that he was preparing to publish later, showing the order of battle of the leading navies. His generosity saved me a lot of work. Finally, I am very grateful for the comments and guidance provided by Gunnar Heløe and the volume editors, Tom Kristiansen and Rolf Hobson. 1. 2.

3.

One of the remedies was to increase the number of NATO’s earmarked reinforcement units and to prestock their equipment. Rolf Tamnes (ed.), ‘Soviet “reasonable sufficiency” and Norwegian security’, Forsvarsstudier, 5 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 1990) and Morten Bomholt Nielsen, ‘Sovjetmarinen i Østersjøen’, Forsvarsstudier, 4 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 1991). Nielsen mentions the traditional Russian and later the Soviet view that regards the Baltic Sea as a mare clausum. The naval arms control agenda was also part of the Soviet efforts to establish such a regime in the area. The yearly routine calls on Baltic Sea ports by surface units of the US Navy were tailored to counter that kind of attempt. See also David B. Rivkin, Jr, ‘No Bastions for the Bear’, US Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1984. An example of US concern regarding this factor was demonstrated in the socalled Kongsberg–Toshiba case where the Americans accused the firms of having contributed to the construction of quieter propellers for Soviet

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

submarines. See Rolf Tamnes, The United States and the Cold War in the High North (Oslo: Ad Notam, 1991), p. 293. In the late 1980s the Federal German Navy as an example undertook greater responsibility in the north-eastern Atlantic. To support this effort substantial support facilities were established in southern Norway. They consisted of ammunition depots, spare part stores and a field hospital as well as agreements with shipyards for the repair of damaged ships. See Jay Wagner, ‘West German Naval Policy on the Northern Flank: Determinants and Perspectives 1955–1988’, NUPI-rapport, No. 117 (Oslo: 1988). See also Tamnes, The United States and the Cold War, pp. 259–60. Tamnes, The United States and the Cold War, p. 261. The three major NATO commands agreed to base the defence of the Atlantic sea lanes upon three principles or major tasks: firstly, containment of Soviet naval forces; secondly, defence in depth meaning deploying forward in order to provide a layered defence along the exit routes; thirdly, keeping the initiative which required quick and bold decision making. Admiral James D. Watkins, US Navy, ‘The Maritime Strategy’, in US Naval Institute, The Maritime Strategy, a supplement to the January 1986 issue of the US Naval Institute Proceedings. The supplement also contains three other articles which explain and amplify the basis of the strategy. This deployment pattern had started before the publication in 1986 of the Maritime Strategy. See Jacob Børresen, ‘USA-marinens operasjoner i NordAtlanteren og Norskehavet’, in John Kristen Skogan, ‘USA og NATO i Norskehavet’, Internasjonal Politikk, Temahefte II, 1985, pp. 109–62, and Tamnes, The United States and the Cold War, pp. 261, 278–86. In December 2001 President Vladimir Putin fired several admirals involved in the Kursk event including the commander-in-chief of the Northern Fleet. Aside from the fact that the circumstances in general are vastly different, the way of handling the situation is not unlike what the United States and NATO did in the early 1950s when they planned to use nuclear weapons to compensate for their inferiority in conventional forces at that time. See the ‘Russian Federation Military Doctrine, Approved by Russian Federation Presidential Edict of 21 April 2000’, http:100.10.1.50/html97/s97is.vts, pp. 5–6. See, for example, Ken Booth, Navies and Foreign Policy (London: Croom Helm, 1977). Booth uses the term ‘role for mission’ and ‘policing’ instead of constabulary. He has a very structured way of presenting the tasks connected to each role. Generalinspektøren for Sjøforsvaret, ‘Sjøforsvaret inn i det 21. århundre’, Atlanterhavskomitéens skriftserie, 171 (Oslo: Norwegian Atlantic Committee, 1994). The Russia Report Principles of RF Naval Policy to 2010, //U:\Strategi Doktrine\Russisk militær doktrine\Russian naval policy 2010.html, p. 2. For a more comprehensive and critical review and discussion of these problems see Ingemar Dörfer, ‘Kola Has Lost Significance’, US Naval Institute, Proceedings (March, 2002), pp. 80–4. Until approximately 2010. An example of this is the UK conduct of the Falklands War. As G. Till has observed, it was never a stated requirement that the ships involved should be able to sail more than 8,000 nautical miles to the other side of the globe and fight a war. This ability is a feature of the nature of naval forces. Joanna Kidd, ‘The Future of European Navies’, IFS Info, 4 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 2000), pp. 5–8.

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17. For a short, comprehensive review see ibid., pp. 13–18. 18. ‘The Navies of the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania’, Naval Forces, 3 (2001), pp. 74–5. See also, ‘MCM equipment on Estonia’s wish list’, Jane’s Navy International, 1 (January/February, 2002), p. 32. 19. In 1994–95 the Baltic countries each received a refurbished Storm-class boat stripped of weapons. In 2001 both Latvia and Lithuania agreed to purchase two more units each while Estonia declined the offer. The receiver countries paid for the upgrading of these boats fully equipped with weapons suite. In addition, each country was furnished with ammunition, spare parts and one extra leftover boat (source: Captain Svein Sakshaug, the Norwegian Navy Material Command). 20. ‘The Navies of the Baltic States Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania’, p. 75. 21. ‘Estonian Navy leads MCOPEST-01’, Jane’s Navy International, 1 (January/February, 2002), p. 8. 22. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2001–2002 (Oxford, London: IISS, 2001). See also Philip Sen, ‘Finland refines its future navy’, Jane’s Navy International, 10 (December 2001) p. 22. 23. Philip Sen, ‘Larger flex for Denmark’s fleet’, Jane’s Navy International, 10 (December 2001). 24. For a broader introduction to the ideas and facts behind the Standard Flex 300 ships series, the Flyvefisken class, see ship profile article in Naval Forces, 5 (2001), pp. 37–44. 25. Information given by Captain Sven Sakshaug, Norwegian Naval Material Command. 26. See Wojciech Luksak, ‘From Orkans to Gawrons, Fleet under Reconstruction’, interview with Admiral Ryszard Lukasik, Commander-in-Chief, Polish Navy, Naval Forces, 3 (2001), pp. 76–86. 27. Ibid., p. 76. 28. Joris Janssen Lok, ‘Surface Solutions for the German Navy’, Jane’s Navy International, 9 (November 2001), pp. 20–5 and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2001–2002. 29. ‘In the range of 1500 foreign vessels currently have a license. However, many of them never utilise their permits. The number of Norwegian units is based on counting active fishing vessels of overall length of 21 meters or more during 2001. In addition to these more or less ocean-going units, there were approximately 8000 minor boats of less than 21 metres in length fishing full or part time off the coast of Norway or in in-shore waters last year’ (source: Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries). 30. The Defence Study 2000 conducted by the Norwegian Chief of Defence and published during the summer of 2000, contains a summary of the consideration regarding the advantages of including cruise missiles in the inventory of the armed forces. However, the study did not find money for investments in this system before 2010. Forsvarsstudie 2000, Forsvarets Forum dokument (Oslo: 2000), para 4.8.4 Kryssermissiler, p. 12.

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Concluding Remarks O L AV R I S T E

The overall theme for this book is navies in northern waters. Unfortunately, the countries – and navies – that have played a role in the northern waters are not all represented. Russia, or the Soviet Union, is the most notable exception. Even so, in regard to naval power as such the countries concerned seem to me to fall into three categories. The first one is what I would call: The naval superpowers – Great Britain, until about 1945, and the United States after that. If I do not include the Soviet Union, this is not principally because it is not represented in this book. I exclude the Soviet Union because I see its naval power from the late 1960s as a short-term challenger to the supreme power of the US Navy, and therefore more appropriately belonging in my second category. The secondary naval powers – who at one time or another sought to challenge the reigning superpower. Beside the Soviet Union, from the late 1960s to 1990, Germany in the two world wars is here the principal example. My third category comprises the minor naval powers – the Scandinavian states and the Netherlands, whose navies basically served the defensive purposes of protecting their coasts and their coastal or near-coastal seaborne trade: the coastal states, to use Jacob Børresen’s terminology. To the extent that these minor powers had overseas trade to protect, they more often than not sought that protection either in the laws of neutrality or in alliances. For the two first categories, the focus of interest has to be that of naval power: the exercise of naval supremacy by those who possess it, and Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

attempts to challenge that supremacy by another power. However, an important aim of this book is to bring into focus the often-neglected role played by the smaller maritime powers. Apart from situations where two or more minor powers engage in limited regional contests for sea control, as Jan Glete has discussed in his chapter, that role has mainly been defensive. But in that defence, neutrality has more often than not been an essential weapon. The issue of neutrality must therefore loom strongly in any consideration of their role at sea. The minor powers’ promotion of the cause of neutrality is often seen in idealistic terms, as a largely altruistic campaign for civilisation and humanitarian progress against barbarism and war. But the picture would be incomplete and misleading unless it is seen also as a challenge to the leading naval power – albeit a challenge of a different kind. The following, then, are my reflections on the role of each of those three categories of powers, as each state in question strove either to maintain or strengthen its position or to ensure its survival in maritime terms.

THE SUPERPOWERS

In the naval power struggle, the first conclusion suggested by the chapters in this book is the pervasive dominance of the superpowers. Great Britain’s long-lasting naval supremacy is the history of successfully defeating one challenge after another: firstly, the eighteenthcentury challenge of neutrality and neutrality leagues, which sought to impose unacceptable limits on the freedom of action of the superpower. In fact, ‘challenge’ may here be too strong a word. The neutrality leagues of the end of the eighteenth century were never a serious threat. One reason for that was the inherent instability of alliances: their common interest in defending neutrality rights could not withstand the pressure of more vital national interests. Then came the threat of excluding Britain from trade with the Continent, by way of the Napoleonic attempt to enforce the ‘Continental System’. This was a much more serious challenge, in view of Britain’s unusually heavy dependence on foreign commerce. The economic crisis that this created in Britain was extremely serious, particularly after its relations with the United States worsened and exports to that important market dwindled. But the effort of maintaining the ‘System’ long enough or systematically enough was undermined in a variety of ways; here also different national interests re-emerged, Spain rebelled, and Russia broke with Napoleon. Finally, Britain’s seizure of the Danish–Norwegian fleet cleared the way for a resumption of its trade with the Baltic and Northern Europe. The final and most serious challenge to Britain came in the First Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

World War. And this came, not from Tirpitz’ Hochseeflotte, but in the shape of the combined threat of submarines and torpedoes. This time Britain was brought to the brink of defeat. It is therefore worth reflecting on the significance of that near-defeat. Did it signify the demise of sea power? In a certain sense it did. Naval supremacy, based on the protection of one’s maritime trade as well as one’s coasts, could henceforth be seriously challenged by a secondary power with a first-class submarine fleet. Furthermore, if such a submarine fleet could in the future be paired with a first-class air force, the traditional naval power would most likely be defeated. This was bad news for Britain, as demonstrated by the outcry when Admiral Sir Percy Scott, in a letter to The Times in June 1914, prophesied just such a development. From the perspective of British sea power, of course, its heyday was already on the wane before it was exposed to the German submarine threat. British naval supremacy in the era of the big battleships had depended on superior economic and industrial strength. It would therefore have ended as soon as the new industrial giants, the United States, and eventually Germany or Japan, decided to build a powerful surface navy, which Britain could not match. When Great Britain could still for a time remain a first-class naval power, this was partly due to alliances or other cooperative arrangements, particularly its ‘special relationship’ with the United States, which arguably had saved it in the First World War and would again do so in the Second.

THE CHALLENGERS

Let us next take a quick look at those secondary naval powers who at one time or another entertained an ambition to challenge the supremacy of the reigning super power. First France, during the Napoleonic Wars: the Continental System was in many ways an ingenious scheme to hit Britain in its ‘soft underbelly’ – its dependence on foreign commerce. And it did so not by mounting a naval challenge, but by attempting to strangle the British export trade by depriving it of the continental European market. The problem was that this could only work as a long-term strategy, since it would require a massive reorientation of European trade patterns. This was bound to be a difficult task in the best of circumstances, as we have seen in our time from the experience of the Common Market. In the more hidebound economies 200 years ago it was almost bound to fail, especially since the Napoleonic inner market was designed to serve France as the centre. In the theories of the jeune école, as analysed in Arne Røksund’s chapter, a group of French naval strategists tried to devise an entirely Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

new and this time naval challenge to British sea power. As they saw it, the protection that the 1856 Declaration of Paris provided for enemy cargo in neutral ships, or neutral cargo in enemy ships, meant that each ship had to be stopped and searched. The kind of sea control that this would require was only available to a superior naval power. In the eyes of the jeune école the Declaration of Paris had thus frozen the imbalance between the strong and the weak. Rightly concluding that it was beyond the means of France or indeed any other European power to match the Royal Navy ship for ship and tonnage for tonnage, the jeune école looked to technological innovation for a new answer. What they came up with was essentially a guerre de course concept based on smaller and faster ships, and armed with that promising new weapon, the torpedo. It was at the outset a sensible concept en principe, according to the French naval historian Philippe Masson.1 But it is probably just as well that it was not put into practice, since it presupposed an utterly ruthless action against merchant ships, putting France at the same risk of universal condemnation as Germany earned with its unrestricted submarine war. The torpedo was essentially a weapon for sinking ships, not for firing warning shots designed to make the cargo ship stop for inspection. The ultimate, and nearly fatal, challenge to British naval power came during the First World War, in the shape of the submarine. Relatively cheap to build, able to move by stealth through the oceans, and particularly deadly when equipped with modern torpedoes, German submarines came within an ace of bringing Great Britain to its knees during the period of unrestricted U-boat warfare; 25 years later, in 1942, history seemed on the way to repeating itself, as allied merchant ship losses in the Atlantic reached catastrophic heights. Were it not for the entry of the United States into the war, in 1917, or the advances made in anti-submarine warfare during the Second World War, history might have taken a different course.

THE ROLE OF MINOR NAVAL POWERS

The first and most important thing to note about the role of the minor naval powers in northern waters is that it has been almost exclusively of a defensive nature. Even in the special case of the Baltic in the eighteenth century, as thoroughly explained in Jan Glete’s chapter, none of them was able to achieve naval supremacy, even on a regional basis. As they were also without the strength to mount a naval challenge to the major powers, the navies of those countries have had two main missions: to defend their territory and their economic interests, and – to the extent possible – protect their overseas maritime commerce. For Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

those purposes they have to a large extent relied on efforts to strengthen the status of neutrality, whether by diplomacy, by the formation of neutrality leagues, or sporadically through defending their merchant ships by force. On the whole, it has to be said, those efforts have not been very successful. In the eighteenth century the Dutch Navy had one important task in protecting the homeward bound East India fleet on the last leg of its journey. The Danish Navy, as we learn from Ole Feldbæk’s chapter, played a role by providing protection for trade under the neutral Danish flag during the Anglo-French wars. But the apparent success of such efforts, and of the 1780 Armed Neutrality League, came about mainly because that trade was not attacked by any major power. Britain and France, for ulterior political motives, refrained by and large from interfering with the Danish convoys. Instead of opposing by force Denmark’s claim to immunity for neutral shipping, the British treated the claim with the contempt that they evidently thought it deserved. Only the Dutch Navy, as it expanded during the 1780s, was regarded by Britain as a potential threat. So, when the Netherlands, in the shape of the Batavian Republic, joined the French side, the British government decided to set an example. As Jaap Bruijn puts it, the Dutch Navy had become enough of a threat that it ‘became worthwhile for Britain to destroy it’. The Armed Neutrality League of 1800 was different. The Batavian Republic was at war with Britain, and now both Denmark and Great Britain decided to put their different interpretations of the rules of neutrality to the test. The outcome – the Battle of Copenhagen, and the unconditional surrender of the claims for neutral immunity that had been the basis of the League – was a telling demonstration of Denmark’s weakness. Then, when Denmark sought revenge by joining with Napoleon, the British added insult to injury by expropriating the entire Danish fleet. It was now the turn of the Danish fleet to have become enough of a menace to make it worthwhile for Britain to destroy it. Half a century later, the smaller, neutral powers found cause for renewed optimism in the future of neutrality. In 1856, at the end of the Crimean War, the Great Powers solemnly signed the Declaration of Paris, which appeared to enshrine the old but never universally recognised rules of immunity for enemy cargo on neutral ships or neutral cargo on enemy ships. Britain also accepted a long-standing demand from the Scandinavians that blockades, to be valid, had to be effective and not just declared on paper. In return the British obtained two concessions: goods declared as contraband could be seized even on neutral ships, and privateering was declared illegal. To all appearances the Declaration of Paris was a major step forward in the effort by the neutrals to mount a legal challenge to the dominant Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

position of the leading naval power. On paper, at least, the cause of neutrality had won a major battle. But it was to prove a hollow victory. As Professor Medlicott has written, ‘legal definition lagged behind economic circumstance’.2 One unsolved problem was the definition of what could properly be classed as contraband in what has been called the age of ‘industrialised peoples’ war’, where almost all goods were of potential importance for war-making. The other problem was the lack of any precise criteria for what constituted an effective blockade. Attempts to codify the respective rights and duties of neutrals and belligerents – at the Second Hague Conference of 1907 and the 1909 London Naval Conference – revealed the contrasting interests of the superior naval power, whose main weapon was the blockade, in whatever disguise, and the secondary naval powers, like Germany, whose only hope of interfering with an enemy’s supply lay in the guerre de course. In that contest neutrality was so to speak caught in the middle, squeezed from both sides. The neutrals had had high hopes that the liberalism of the second half of the nineteenth century would advance the cause of neutrality, which they saw also as the cause of civilisation versus the barbarism of war. But the First World War, and then the Second World War, showed that when great powers deem that their vital interests or indeed their survival are at stake, then the outwardly impressive but inherently shaky edifice of international law becomes a paper tiger, riddled with bullet holes. For the minor naval powers, in particular, the lesson would seem to have been that their room for manoeuvre, as neutrals, would ultimately be determined by the parameters set by the great naval powers. In limited wars political expediency might cause those parameters to be applied leniently or liberally. As Andrew Lambert explains, Britain’s attitude on maritime legal issues was tempered by practical politics. In a ‘limited war’ the views of significant neutrals would be taken into account in the execution of policy. But any sanguine hopes that such liberalism heralded a new era for neutrality would be dashed when the Great Powers’ national survival was at stake. The First World War provided the prime example of belligerent great powers disregarding presumed neutral rights that conflicted with the necessities of war-making. Moreover, that war also demonstrated another thing. In theory, the neutral states possessed two lines of defence: first, the legal framework, and then, when that seemed to be breaking down, their combined political weight and influence. On that score also the First World War brought disillusionment. Initial hopes for a united neutral front in defence of their rights, with the United States at the centre, ultimately rested on an assumption that the maintenance of neutral rights was more important than the question of whichever Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

belligerent won the war. Instead, what happened was that each neutral state sought the kind of accommodation to belligerent exigencies that were dictated by their separate, overriding political and/or economic interests. As we enter the interwar and post-Second World War periods we find ourselves in a new world in many ways. In the perspective of naval power as such, Joseph Maiolo’s chapter shows the former superpower Great Britain seeking to contain its challengers in northern waters, and looking for associates in that effort. In the 1930s this resulted, first, in the British–German naval agreement of 1935 that among other things signified Britain’s withdrawal from the Baltic. This was an event whose far-reaching implications for the naval situation in northern waters were apparently only dimly perceived by the countries in the area. Then, after further treaties with the leading Baltic powers, came the AngloScandinavian naval agreement of 1938. In a formal sense it was a non-event, as only Norway blithely ratified it. But historically its negotiation was an event whose implications even the historians of the period, with the exception of Patrick Salmon and now Joseph Maiolo, have largely neglected. As regards the status of neutrality, it had been dealt a severe blow by the Covenant of the League of Nations. The obligation of all its members to assist in sanctions imposed by the League against aggressors left no opening for abstentions. Then, when Norway and the other smaller powers in the late 1930s sought a return to the formal status of neutrality, they were again cruelly disillusioned, this time by Germany’s assault. An additional lesson from the Norwegian campaign of 1940 was that in sea areas that were within the range of action of bomber or torpedo aircraft, air power could neutralise any attempt to exercise naval power. The four chapters dealing with the period after the Second World War show two things. On the one side, there is Britain, as the former naval superpower, gradually slipping into an adjunct and secondary position to that of the new superpower, the United States, as they both prepare to meet the challenge of that new would-be superpower, the Soviet Union. It was of course only a question of time before the United States would take Britain’s place as the naval superpower. The overwhelming power of the United States after the Second World War was, like that of Britain in the nineteenth century and earlier, based on superior economic and industrial strength. Its crushing superiority also meant that it could achieve and maintain a secure lead in all three sectors that mattered: surface ships, submarines and air forces. The only challenge, such as it was, came when the Soviet Union from the mid1960s began its naval build-up, based primarily on nuclear submarines. Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

This did for a while persuade the US Navy to pull back from the eastern Atlantic. But it was never a serious threat to US naval supremacy. At the same time, however, long-range submarine-launched nuclear missiles have changed the concept of naval power almost beyond recognition: it is not much use denying the enemy access to the oceans near you if he can hit you and destroy you with missiles fired by submarines on the other side of the globe. In the contest for naval supremacy in northern waters, the secondary and minor naval powers have after the Cold War reverted to their traditional mission as near-shore protectors of their territory. Those countries that are members of NATO have defined the parameters of that mission in accordance with the collective, integrated defence concept of the alliance. As Jacob Børresen states in his chapter, a small navy such as the Norwegian one cannot aim for victory if subjected to a major assault: it can only hope to delay defeat. But as both Børresen and Tamnes also note, there is the added mission of serving as a deterrent, and if necessary as a trip-wire to release a major allied counterattack. Sweden, on the other hand, has had to make at least the pretence of maintaining an independent, all-round defence capability. In the case of Norway, the role of its navy has changed somewhat as it has become responsible for the surveillance of vast economic zones in the surrounding oceans. In addition, there is the problem of protecting offshore oil and gas installations from a variety of new threats, such as that of international terrorism. This is also the background for the ambitious plans for an expanded navy, approved by the Norwegian Parliament in 2001. Looking back on the whole period since the outbreak of the Second World War, two trends stand out in relation to the development of sea power. One is the challenge of air power as against surface naval ships. The other and closely connected development is the rise of the submarine, particularly the nuclear-powered boats that stay submerged most of the time. Since the enemies of the latter are almost exclusively nuclear attack submarines, decisive naval battles have become a game that only superpowers can play. At the same time the principal role of sea power has become that of serving as a platform for force projection against targets on land, with submarine-launched missiles and aircraft launched from carriers as the main weapons. Neither of those two trends is particular to northern waters. Also, both trends are principally of direct concern only to major powers. From the viewpoint of a minor power in northern waters, attention needs to be focused on a third trend: the gradual ‘territorialisation of the sea’ – the extension of territorial waters, and the régimes of the Continental Shelf and Exclusive Economic Zones – which since the 1980s has given coastal states new responsibilities and legal rights. This Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

poses a dilemma for a coastal state as Jacob Børresen defines it. Such a state, with Norway as an example, has neither the ability nor the will ‘to maintain a blue-water navy with the capacity to establish sea control outside its own local waters’. Will such a coastal state abdicate those new responsibilities, or will it assume the financial burden of maintaining a meaningful naval presence in its extended territories? NOTES 1. 2.

Philippe Masson, De la mer et de sa stratégie (Paris: Tallander, 1986), p. 63. W. N. Medlicott, The Economic Blockade, Vol. I (London: United Kingdom Civil Series, 1952), p. 4.

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Notes on Contributors

Jaap R. Bruijn is Professor (Emeritus) of Maritime History at the University of Leiden. He has published widely on the history of the Dutch Navy, the whaling industry, the East India Company and the social aspects of seafaring. At present, he is area editor of the forthcoming four-volume Oxford Encyclopaedia of Maritime History. Jacob Børresen is Commodore (R) of the Royal Norwegian Navy. He is the author of numerous publications on strategy, security policy, crisis management and the art of war in Norwegian and international journals, among them ‘NATO i Bosnia – erfaringer fra alliansens operasjoner på Balkan’, in Norsk Militært Tidsskrift, No. 10, 1997, and ‘US Carrier Operations in the North Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea’, in John Kristen Skogan and Arne Olav Brundtland (eds), Soviet Seapower in Northern Waters – Facts, Motivation, Impact and Responses (1990). He is currently engaged by the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies as co-author on Vol. V of the History of Norwegian Defence, 1970–2000. He is a member of the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Advisory Council for Disarmament and Security Affairs. Ole Feldbæk is Professor of History at the University of Copenhagen. He has published extensively on Nordic political and maritime history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among his books are Denmark and the Armed Neutrality, 1800–1801: Small Power Policy in a World War (1980), Nærhed og adskillelse 1720–1814, Vol. IV in the history of the Danish–Norwegian Union 1380–1814 (1998), ‘Tiden 1720–1814’ in Carsten Due-Nielsen et al. (eds), Dansk Udenrigspolitiks Historie, Vol. II (2002), and The Battle of Copenhagen 1801: Nelson and the Danes (2002). Roald Gjelsten is Captain of the Royal Norwegian Navy. He holds a MSc from the Naval Post-Graduate School, Monterey. Gjelsten has published widely on naval and defence issues in Norwegian and international journals. His works include ‘North European Navies in the Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

Future’, Naval Forces, No. III, 2003, ‘Simulert forsvar?’, Forsvarsstudier, No. 3, 2001, ‘Nytte og bruk av maritime styrker – en litteraturoversikt’, Norsk Militært Tidsskrift, No. 11, 2000, and Verktøy for fred (edited, 1993). He is currently a research associate at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies. Jan Glete is Professor of History at Stockholm University. He has published several studies of Swedish industrial and financial history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as studies of Swedish naval and military history from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Among his books are Navies and Nations: Warships, Navies and State Building in Europe and America, 1500–1860 (1993), Warfare at Sea, 1500–1650: Maritime Conflicts and the Transformation of Europe (2000) and War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500–1660 (2002). Eric J. Grove is a graduate of Aberdeen and London Universities. Since 1993 he has been at the University of Hull, where he now directs the Centre for Security Studies. His books include Vanguard to Trident: British Naval Policy since World War II (1987) and The Future of Sea Power (1990). He was also the co-author of the 1995 edition of The Fundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine (Ministry of Defence: BR 1806). His publications were the basis of a Ph.D. awarded by the University of Hull in 1996. Dr Grove has recently begun to appear frequently on television as a contributor to programmes on modern naval history. He has also worked abroad, with a year teaching at the US Naval Academy in 1980–81, and six months in 1997 as a visiting research fellow at the University of Wollongong’s Centre for Maritime Policy. John B. Hattendorf is the US Naval War College’s Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History and chairman of the Maritime History Department in its Center for Naval Warfare Studies. A former naval officer, he earned his bachelor’s degree in history at Kenyon College, his master’s degree from Brown University in 1971 and his doctorate in modern history at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1979. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than 30 books on British and American maritime history. His most recent works include War at Sea in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (2003, co-edited with Richard Unger). He has been awarded an honorary doctorate and the Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and has been elected President of the North American Society for Oceanic History.

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Rolf Hobson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies. He has studied at the universities of Oslo and Düsseldorf and earned his doctorate in history from the University of Trondheim in 1999. He has published several articles in Historisk tidsskrift, as well as Imperialism at Sea: Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power and the Tirpitz Plan 1875–1914 (2002) and Vol. III of the History of Norwegian Defence (with Tom Kristiansen, see below for details). Tom Kristiansen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies where he is responsible for the Institute’s research programme on military theory and strategic studies. His recent works include ‘Russerne ødelægge os; de berøve os vor Næring … Norge og Russland i nord til ca. 1820’, Historisk Tidsskrift, No. 1, 1997 and (with Rolf Hobson), Total krig, nøytralitet og politisk splittelse. Norsk forsvarshistorie 1905–1940, Vol. III (2001). Andrew Lambert is Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. Among his books are The Crimean War: British Grand Strategy against Russia, 1853–1856 (1990) and The Foundations of Naval History, Sir John Knox Laughton, the Royal Navy and the English Historical Profession (1998). He is Hon. Secretary of the Navy Records Society and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Joseph Maiolo is Lecturer in International History in the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London. His is the author of The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933–39 (1998), co-editor of The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues (2003) and co-author of An International History of the Twentieth Century (forthcoming, 2004). He is also assistant editor of the Journal of Strategic Studies. Olav Riste is Research Director (Emeritus) of the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, and was until recently Adjunct Professor of History at Oslo and Bergen Universities. His most recent books in English are The Norwegian Intelligence Service 1945–1970 (1999) and Norway’s Foreign Relations – a History (2001). He has been a Fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters since 1984. Arne Røksund is Captain of the Royal Norwegian Navy. He holds a MA in history from the University of Oslo. After ending his service at sea Captain Røksund has graduated from the Collège Interarmées de Défense, Paris, and served in several planning and applied research positions within the Norwegian defence establishment. He is at present Copyright in collection © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd Copyright in chapters © 2004 individual contributors

head of the section for personnel policy in the Ministry of Defence. Among his works are ‘Vestmaktagent eller god nabo? Norge i sovjetisk utenrikspolitikk 1945–1949’, Forsvarsstudier, No. 6, 1997, and ‘Forsvaret mellom politisk styring og fagmilitær uavhengighet’, in Bent Sofus Tranøy and Øyvind Østerud (eds), Den fragmenterte staten. Reformer, makt og styring (2001). Rolf Tamnes is director of the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies and Adjunct Professor of Modern History at the University of Oslo. Among his books are The United States and the Cold War in the High North (1991) and (in Norwegian) Oljealder 1965–1995, Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie, Vol. VI (1997).

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Select Bibliography

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