Theorist of Maritime Strategy

Sir Julian Corbett and his Contribution to Military and Naval Thought

J.J. Widen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409433279
• eBook ISBN: 9781317010951
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: History

Since its publication in 1911, Sir Julian's Corbett's Some Principles of Maritime Strategy has remained a key document within naval strategic thinking. Yet despite his undoubted influence, Corbett's theories have not been subjected to scientific review and systematic comparison with other naval thinkers. In this assessment, Dr Widen has provided a fresh interpretation of Corbett's legacy and his continued relevance as a classic theorist of naval war. Divided into three parts, the book begins with a brief biographical overview of Corbett's life, highlighting in particular his bibliographic history and the influences on his thinking. The latter two sections then describe and assess Corbett's views on military and naval theory, respectively. Together these two parts represent his overall theory of maritime strategy, including his conception of limited war, his intellectual debt to Clausewitz, command of the sea, his critic of decisive battle, as well as the different methods of naval operations. By means of a thorough assessment of Corbett's theory of maritime strategy, Dr Widén highlights the continued relevance of his theories. Both the strengths and shortcomings of Corbett's thinking are discussed and reflections offered on their intellectual, practical and doctrinal value. In so doing, Dr Widen has written a book that deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in the past, present or future of maritime strategy.

Part I
The Man, His Times and Scholarly Achievements

Before we enter into the theoretical worlds of Julian Corbett it is necessary to provide the setting in which these thoughts originated, developed and reached their final form. Although this is a book about theories, no theory can emerge in isolation. Theoretical minds of great ability need not only intellectual gifts of grand proportions, good judgement and a talent for hard work, but also a fertile environment in which to grow. In this Corbett was no exception.

The purpose of this part, as already stated in the introduction, is to provide a historical and biographical background to the more theoretical chapters that follow. What kind of man was Corbett? Who were the people he met and interacted with during his life? What was life in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain like? Part I contains two chapters. Chapter 1 deals with his life and times, and the focus here is on Corbett as an individual and the people around him. What was his life like and what environment was he a product of? How did his professional career develop? What influence did he have on British war planning and policy during World War I? Corbett’s historical scholarship is also reviewed and discussed. What topics and problems did his historical books deal with, and what were the main arguments?

Chapter 2 intends to trace the factors that influenced his theoretical development, from his intellectual character and his history books, via his lectures at the Royal Navy War College, to the “Green Pamphlet”, “War Plans” and Some Principles. To what extent did his historical work influence his theoretical work? What were his theoretical influences generally and to what degree was he influenced by other naval thinkers?

It is important to emphasise that Chapter 1 is largely based on historical research carried out by Schurman and a few others into Corbett’s personal papers. My justification for this is simple – this is a book about Corbett’s theories, not his biographical history or his historiography.¹ Chapter 2, however, on Corbett as a theorist, is original since no scholar has made an explicit and concerted attempt to trace the origins and modes of Corbett’s theoretical outlook, as well as the intellectual factors which guided him in his research on theoretical matters.²

¹ For the best biographical treatment, by far, see Schurman, Julian S. Corbett, 1854–1922. For an assessment of Corbett’s historical scholarship see Schurman, The Education of a Navy, pp. 147–184; and John Hattendorf, “Sir Julian Corbett on the Significance of Naval History”, The American Neptune, vol. 31, 1971, pp. 275–285.

² Some brief attempts are made in Schurman, Julian S. Corbett, 1854–1922; Hunt, “The Strategic Thought of Sir Julian S. Corbett”, pp. 110–135; and Till, Seapower.

Chapter 1
Life and Historical Works

Julian Stafford Corbett was born on Sunday, 12 November 1854, the second son of Charles James Corbett and Elizabeth Stafford. The Corbett family, which also included Julian’s three younger brothers and a sister, was wealthy due to Charles’s successful business in the building trade. The Corbetts believed it of great importance to expose their children to cultural influences and they also liked to travel, both to visit relatives in Britain and later to different places on the Continent. The intellectual curiosity and progressive inclinations that characterised Julian’s father became visible in the children in an intellectual freedom that made them liberal in outlook and in politics. However, this free-thinking attitude, in combination with wealth, tended to foster in the children a “casualness [that] bordered on indolence”.¹

In August 1869, Corbett was sent to Marlborough College, and four years later, in 1873 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, to study law. The years at Cambridge were generally happy ones for him and he excelled in his legal studies and further developed his social talents. In 1877 Corbett was admitted to the bar and he sporadically pursued his legal career until 1882. During this part of his life, besides trying his hand at painting, he found time to travel to India and later to North America. The impressions made on him during his trip to India tended to foster an imperial outlook in Corbett and later served to arouse his nationalism. No doubt, the trips also stimulated and broadened the mind of the potential writer in him. The writing of many letters sent home from abroad constituted useful literary training for Corbett.²

Besides the trips mentioned above, Corbett also found time for regular trips to Norway and Italy. In Norway he met the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and in Italy he became friends with famous writer Mark Twain, who unsuccessfully tried to promote Corbett’s literary work in America. A visit to Algeria in 1890 brought him into contact with Arabs and French colonisers. Not really satisfied with law and painting as potential occupations, Corbett began writing novels. The most important of these books was For God and Gold (1887), which was about piracy and politics in Elizabethan England and which led Corbett to one of the great legends of British sea power, Francis Drake. None of his novels, however, achieved any success.³

At this point, “Corbett the novelist” slowly, but surely, transformed into “Corbett the naval historian”. In the process of writing For God and Gold he developed a liking for the period that was the setting for his book and discovered that some of the historiography concerned with Drake contained deficiencies. When asked in 1889 by Macmillan to produce a brief biography on George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, he agreed. The finished product became Corbett’s biggest success up to this point and both publisher and author were enthusiastic about the end result. Soon Corbett was requested to write a similar piece on Francis Drake and for the same series. This book also became a success. When yet another of his historical novels failed to impress his audience he looked for a new direction in his life. Meanwhile, Corbett had begun to court Edith Rosa Alexander, whom he later married in 1899.⁴

At this juncture Corbett ventured to write a longer piece on Drake, which eventually became Drake and the Tudor Navy (1898), his first scholarly work on naval history. Deemed a towering success by critics and audience alike, and followed by yet another equally successful book, entitled The Successors of Drake (1900), Corbett was now an acknowledged naval historian and his membership of and participation in the newly founded Navy Records Society appeared to settle his destiny in this regard. As will be shown below, many more history books soon followed and they tended to be equally successful. At the age of forty-four he had found his calling.⁵

From 1900 onwards Corbett also began publishing articles on imperial and naval matters as well as naval educational reform. His history books and articles soon caught the attention of senior officers at the Admiralty. In effect, these early publications illustrate the tension between Corbett the scholar and Corbett the doctrinaire. While trying merely to examine British naval affairs objectively, he often indulged himself in passing judgement in complex and controversial matters. In August 1902, he was asked to give a series of lectures at the Royal Navy War College, Greenwich. A prestigious assignment, following in the footsteps of well-known predecessors such as Sir John Knox Laughton and Vice Admiral Philip H. Colomb, both of whom we shall return to later, Corbett accepted with little hesitation.⁶

According to the instructions provided by the Director of the War Course,⁷ Captain Henry J. May, about fifteen to twenty senior officers would attend each lecture and Corbett was free “within reason” to choose his own subjects. However, May recommended him to “treat more particularly of either the tactics or strategy of the period as apart from other considerations” and also “to be so modern that some lessons applicable to present day warfare should be deductable from it”. Finally, May hoped that Corbett would pay proper attention to strategy and present it in such a way that naval officers could appreciate the fact that “expediency and strategy are not always in accord”. Corbett never forgot this piece of advice.⁸ Many years later, reflecting on May’s words, he admitted that he had found it “difficult to know how to handle the subject [of naval tactics and strategy]”, but that these problems had been somewhat remedied by the director’s leading line of “the deflection of strategy by politics”. There is plenty of evidence in Corbett’s writing that he took this inherently Clausewitzian advice seriously.⁹

In 1903, Corbett had his first contact with Admiral Sir John Fisher, an ambitious and dynamic naval officer and soon to be First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy (1904–1910).¹⁰ As both of them were involved in the debate regarding naval educational reform and with similar views, Fisher showed appreciation of Corbett’s sharp-witted pen and started to feed him material for his articles. The resulting article, “Lord Selbourne’s Critics”, soon appeared in the Monthly Review (July 1903) and Fisher was delighted. From then onward Corbett kept close contact with Fisher until the latter’s death in 1920. This partnership resulted in Corbett being branded a Fisher-supporter, a group usually referred to by the First Sea Lord’s enemies as “The Fishpond”. This connection would prove rewarding for his career as an advisor to the Admiralty, but also caused some people to doubt his ability to think independently. For Fisher had fierce and powerful enemies, some of who looked upon Corbett with suspicion.¹¹

In the spring of 1905, at a crucial time in British defence policy, Captain May, director of the War Course, passed away and Captain Edmond Slade became his replacement. Together with Captain Charles Ottley, Director of Naval Intelligence, and George Clarke (Sydenham of Combe), Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), Slade had been instrumental in pressing for giving greater attention to amphibious warfare and combined operations in the operational planning for a possible war (in alliance with France and against Germany). Since the conclusions reached in Corbett’s histories on British maritime policy had stressed the necessity of a combined approach in which naval and military strategy were determined together, Corbett found some allies in high places. With Slade especially, he struck up a close and very productive friendship.¹²

During the same period, Corbett, no doubt inspired by discussions with Slade and Ottley, wrote to Fisher to complain about the “amateurish rubbish” he had encountered in Admiralty papers concerned with strategic thought. Fisher concurred with this assessment, and in order to provide a remedy Corbett was asked to undertake strategic lectures at the War Course, something he agreed to do. For years to come, the War Course became in effect the “General Staff” of the Admiralty. Corbett went about it in no light-hearted manner and aimed to present his students with a “theory in digestible form”. This proved difficult at first since his audience was rather suspicious of his approach to strategy, but the following year he could report that the admirals now seemed more sympathetic and were complementing him after his lectures “which has never happened before”.¹³ As we shall see in the next chapter, these lectures in strategy later became the genesis of his theoretical work, that is the “Green Pamphlet”, “War Plans” and Some Principles.

In the following years Corbett generally spent his time writing new books, lecturing at the War Course and feeding the Admiralty his strategic ideas. Good examples of the last of these include his work as expert in the Committee on Imperial Defence (Sub-Committee on Invasion, October 1907 – February 1908) and participation in Royal Navy war planning (1907). As for his books, The Campaign of Trafalgar, published in 1910, created an extraordinary stir, which lasted well into 1913. Corbett’s controversial views on the tactical manoeuvres of Admiral Horatio Nelson, the great hero of Trafalgar, resulted in the convening of an Admiralty Committee to investigate the matter. According to its verdict Corbett had sufficient evidence to support his case. During most of this public controversy and until the beginning of World War I, Corbett also preoccupied himself with an official naval history on the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 (confidential at the time and not published until the mid-1990s).¹⁴

On the eve of World War I, Corbett was brought in to Government service as a strategic advisor and a chronicler of the war. Although Corbett was a man of letters rather than a man of power, he still wielded some influence over many powerful figures during the war, both civilians and naval officers. He wrote memorandums for Fisher and influential civil servants and politicians such as Maurice Hankey and Winston Churchill. The list of n...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I: THE MAN, HIS TIMES AND SCHOLARLY ACHIEVEMENTS
• PART II: MILITARY THEORY IN A MARITIME CONTEXT
• PART III: NAVAL THEORY AS THE ENDS AND MEANS IN NAVAL WARFARE
• General Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index