Arms, Economics and British Strategy
From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs

An innovative study of British defence policy in the period from 1900 to 1970.

G. C. Peden (Author)

9780521867481, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 February 2007

400 pages, 35 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.76 kg

'Peden succeeds in his aim of providing an integrated account of strategy, technology and economics … the book is an achievement of high order.' Contemporary European History

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.

Introduction
1. The Dreadnought era, 1904–14
2. The First World War
3. Retrenchment and rearmament, 1919–39
4. The Second World War
5. The impacts of the atomic bomb and the Cold War, 1945–54
6. The hydrogen bomb, the economy and decolonisation, 1954–69
Conclusion
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Defence strategy, planning & research [JWK], Warfare & defence [JW], International relations [JPS], Military history [HBW], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], British & Irish history [HBJD1]