Extract from The Command of the Ocean by N. A. M. Rodger
INTRODUCTION
Writing in the Preface to his Naval History of England in 1735, Thomas Lediard lamented the unaccountable neglect of his subject.
I know not by what fatal mistake, or blind neglect, no part of English history has been so little the care of our ablest writers, of ancient as well as modern times; though materials need not have been wanting to those who had the capacity, and would have been at the pains of enquiring after them.
It is not necessary today to deplore the total neglect of naval history, but there is still some work to be done to install it in its proper place. In a recent work comparing the development of government in eighteenth-century Germany and Britain, for example, Britain is treated as a military power directly comparable to Prussia. None of the distinguished contributors to the book seem to be aware that Britain's contribution to warfare, and warfare's contribution to British history, were rather unlike those of Prussia. To describe the eighteenth-century British state, in war or peace, without mentioning the Royal Navy is quite a feat of intellectual virtuosity; it must have been as difficult as writing a history of Switzerland without mentioning mountains, or writing a novel without using the letter 'e'.
The purpose of this, the second of three volumes of a Naval History of Britain, is to put naval affairs back into the history of Britain. It is not to write a self-contained 'company history' of the Royal Navy, but to describe the contribution which naval warfare, with all its associated activities, has made to national history. That certainly includes the history of the Royal Navy as an institution, but it is broader; the intention is to link naval warfare to the many other aspects of history in which it was involved. As far as the limitations of a single work and a single author will allow, this is meant as a contribution to political, social, economic, diplomatic, administrative, agricultural, medical, religious and other histories which will never be complete until the naval component of them is recognized and understood. By the same token it is an attempt to spread the meaning of naval history well beyond the conduct of war at sea and the internal history of the Royal Navy, and to treat it instead as a national endeavour, involving many, and in some ways all, aspects of government and society.
It follows that this is a book which tries to make connections, some of which have not been explored or even noticed, and about which we know too little as yet to reach definite conclusions. Specialists in the many areas of national history on which this book trespasses will doubtless deplore the author's ignorance of them: his hope is that they will be stimulated to do better what he has done first. Readers whose primary interest is in war at sea may be disappointed that almost half the book is devoted to the background rather than the foreground of naval history, but this is quite deliberate, for there is no understanding battles and campaigns otherwise. In practice the book is arranged in four parallel 'streams': policy, strategy, and naval operations; finance, administration and logistics, including all sorts of technical and industrial support; social history; and the material elements of sea power, ships and weapons. Chapters are devoted to each in turn, but they are not meant to be read in isolation. The author's intention is to unite rather than divide.