Second Hand Liberalism and Naval Strategy

Bernard Semmel’s scholarly examination of the relationship between liberal political and economic thought and British naval strategy during the nineteenth-century Pax Britannica.

Semmel explores how liberal ideology, commercial interests and attitudes towards war influenced British thinking about maritime power during the period when the Royal Navy occupied a dominant position in world affairs. Rather than treating naval strategy purely in terms of military requirements, the study examines the intellectual and political debates that shaped Britain’s approach to sea power.

The book considers the legacy of Britain’s traditional mercantilist naval strategy, the relationship between free trade and maritime power, and the tensions between liberal ideals of peaceful commerce and the strategic advantages provided by naval supremacy. It examines subjects including piracy, the suppression of the slave trade, neutral shipping, private property at sea and Anglo-American disagreements over maritime rights.

Semmel also discusses the ideas of major nineteenth-century thinkers and politicians, including Jeremy Bentham, Richard Cobden, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, showing how questions of commerce, morality, international law and national interest became intertwined with debates over naval policy.

Chapters address sea power and liberalism, Christianity and naval warfare, the maritime revolution, the Cobdenite conception of commercial peace, competing theories of naval strategy, American freedom of the seas and the broader politics of pacifism and military expenditure.

Originally published by Allen & Unwin in 1986, this is the first-edition paperback issue.