Peden G.S. Arms, Economics and British Strategy From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs

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Arms, Economics and British Strategy

This book integrates strategy, technology and economics and presents

a new way of looking at twentieth-century military history and Britain’s

decline as a great power. G. C. Peden explores how, from the

Edwardian era to the 1960s, warfare was transformed by a series of

innovations, including dreadnoughts, submarines, aircraft, tanks,

radar, nuclear weapons and guided missiles. He shows that the cost

of these new weapons tended to rise more quickly than national income

and argues that strategy had to be adapted to take account of both the

increased potency of new weapons and the economy’s diminishing

ability to sustain armed forces of a given size. Prior to the development

of nuclear weapons, British strategy was based on an ability to wear

down an enemy through blockade, attrition (in the First World War)

and strategic bombing (in the Second), and therefore power rested as

much on economic strength as on armaments.

g. c. peden is Professor of History at the University of Stirling. His

publications include British Rearmament and the Treasury, 1932–1939

(1979), and The Treasury and British Public Policy, 1906–1959 (2000).

Cambridge Military Histories

Edited by

HEW STRACHAN, Chichele Professor of the History of War,

University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford

GEOFFREY WAWRO, Major General Olinto Mark Basanti

Professor of Military History, and Director, Center for the Study of

Military History, University of North Texas

The aim of this new series is to publish outstanding works of research on warfare

throughout the ages and throughout the world. Books in the series will take a

broad approach to military history, examining war in all its military, strategic,

political and economic aspects. The series is intended to complement Studies in

the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare by focusing on the ‘hard’

military history of armies, tactics, strategy and warfare. Books in the series will

consist mainly of single author works – academically vigorous and groundbreak-

ing – which will be accessible to both academics and the interested general

reader.

Titles in the series include:

E. Bruce Reynolds Thailand’s Secret War: OSS, SOE and the Free Thai Underground

During World War II

Robert T. Foley German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn

and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916

Elizabeth Greenhalgh Victory through Coalition: Britain and France during the First

World War

Arms, Economics and

British Strategy

From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs

G. C. Peden

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

First published in print format

ISBN-13 978-0-521-86748-1

ISBN-13 978-0-511-29474-7

2007

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521867481

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place

without the written

ermission of Cambrid

e University Press.

ISBN-10 0-511-29474-3

ISBN-10 0-521-86748-7

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls

for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not

uarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or a

riate.

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org

hardback

eBook (EBL)

hardback

Contents

List of tables page viii

Acknowledgements x

List of abbreviations xi

Introduction 1

1 The dreadnought era, 1904–1914 17

2 The First World War 49

3 Retrenchment and rearmament, 1919–1939 98

4 The Second World War 164

5 The impacts of the atomic bomb and the Cold War,

1945–1954 229

6 The hydrogen bomb, the economy and decoloni sation,

1954–1969 272

Conclusion 344

Select bibliography 352

Index 367

vii

Tables

1.1 Defence expenditure as percentage of GDP,

1904/5–1913/14 page 35

1.2 Distribution of defence expenditure by

departments, 1904/5–1913/14 38

1.3 Cumulative totals of dreadnought battleships

and battle-cruisers completed at end of

each year, 1906–16 39

2.1 Aircraft production, 1914–18 69

2.2 GDP and government and consumers’

shares of GDP, 1913–20 74

2.3 Balance of payments on current account, 1914–18 75

2.4 Balance of payments on capital account,

1914–18 76

3.1 Costs of aircraft, 1924–39 117

3.2 Defence departments’ expenditure as percentage

of GDP, 1919/20–1939/40 127

3.3 Indices of GDP for United Kingdom,

France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the

USA, 1913–37 129

3.4 Balance of payments, 1930–8 136

3.5 Military aircr aft production in Britain,

France, Germany, Japan, the USA and

the USSR, 1933–40 138

3.6 Major warships launched (or conversions

to aircraft carriers begun), 1922–35 and

1936–40 141

3.7 Commonwealth navies in 1931 and 1939 149

3.8 Expenditure by the defence departme nts,

1924/5–1939/40 151

3.9 Distribution of expenditure by the defence

services, 1933/4–1938/9 152

viii