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Andrew Lambert, "No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One" (Yale UP, 2025)
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Welcome to New Books in History, a podcast channel, New Books Network. My name is Dr. Charles Catia. I'm a host on the channel. And today we are pleased and indeed honored to have with us Professor Andrew Lambert. President Lambert is Professor of Naval History at the Department of War Studies at King's College, London. He is without a doubt one of the leading historians on British naval history. And today we are discussing his newest book, no More How Britain Managed Europe From Waterloo to the World War to World War I, published by Yale University Press. Welcome, Professor Lambert.
- [01:37]
C
Many thanks and very glad to be with you.
- [01:39]
B
Professor, why did you write this book?
- [01:42]
C
The object of the book is to stop people thinking that what happened in the past is the record that we need to study. We need to study how people are thinking and how they're developing and how they're shaping policy. So this is getting away from event led history. There are events in it, obviously, but those events are in many cases disruptive events which disturb the pattern which Britain has established and which it wishes to sustain. My argument is that after the Napoleonic Wars, Britain left Europe, having ordered it in a way that preserved stability, having created a net of alliances and political structures and any geographical structures which made it almost impossible for France to resume the campaigns of Napoleon, to amass great resources in Western Europe and dominate the continent through alliances with Russia, Prussia and Austria. And yet the British also allied themselves with the French and the Austrians against the Russians, because Russia was also a serious geostrategic threat. And these policies led to the creation of new countries. The one we know as Belgium, that would be an obvious example. And from 1815 to 1914, Britain was able to operate from offshore. It didn't need to have troops in Europe. Unlike in the NATO years post 1945, Britain was not compelled to be a continental power. It was able to be a global maritime power. And that was essential because Britain had spent a king's ransom on winning the Napoleonic wars and it really needed to attend to the economic sinews of war before it could think about any more ambitious policies. So we're looking at plans and policy being made by sophisticated experienced veterans of the Napoleonic era. And their influence will continue long into the 19th century. And it will shape policy that the long term policy is very clearly to be semi detached from Europe and to pursue economic opportunities in and also outside Europe.
- [04:07]
B
Professor, can you expand on a little bit on the statement you made on page 27? Quote in Seal of Britain necessarily viewed Europe through a maritime strategic perspective, unquote.
- [04:17]
C
Yep. So unlike the other European major powers, Britain is not a continental state. It has no continental territory. And in the late Middle Ages the English worked out that they couldn't conquer Western Europe. They tried to conquer France on several occasions. This was not possible. They found an alternative means of security when they built a large wooden battle fleet with ship killing artillery on board so they could defend their country without an army. This enabled them to prioritize overseas trade, which was greatly enabled by having a powerful navy and to reduce spending on the army. That also had political consequences. Small armies make it more likely you will end up with some kind of democracy. So becoming a naval power rather than a military power means that Britain takes a different choice. The British have read Thucydides, they know the difference between Athens and Sparta. And they don't want to be Spartans, they do want to be Athenians. So that's the model that they're pursuing. They want a sea empire of trade and profit. And the maritime turn is essential. You have to make the maritime central to your policy. It can't be something else that you do. And because Britain is so small and so resource dependent, it depends on food imports from the 18th century. It absolutely has to attend to the global maritime dimension. And a stable Europe is a very good basis for that kind of focus.
- [05:54]
B
Why did Bonaparte choose not to attempt an invasion of the UK in 1803, 1804.
- [06:00]
C
And it's one of the great myths of the Napoleonic wars that Napoleon Bonaparte had a great army at Bologne and that he was just waiting for the right moment to invade England. Much of this legend is created by Napoleon. He's trying to bounce the British into surrendering if they're willing, much as Hitler did in 1940. But he's also doing something which is more sophisticated. He's deceiving his Continental rivals. The army at Boulogne is never going to invade England because It would take 48 hours to embark all of the troops of his hundred thousand man expeditionary force with their horses and equipment at Boulogne. And the Royal Navy would have seen this from the moment it started and would have intervened and destroyed it. So he's assembling a big army at Boulogne, and that army marches off in 1805, not to England, but to Austria, where they win the Battles of Ulm and Austerlitz and shatter the Central European coalition against France. So Napoleon is bluffing, and he's very effective at bluffing. He will assemble another army in Boulogne later to invade Prussia and again when he invades Russia. So this is where he assembles his big armies because it's easy for logistical reasons, and he's trying to get the British pinned down on the defensive. In 1809, the British take away that option by destroying the naval base at Vlissingen, and they're immediately able to send half of their field army into the Iberian Peninsula to pick up the war against France in Portugal and Spain. So what we're looking at with the invasion is bluff. He is bluffing, much as Hitler was in 1940. And when the British expose that bluff by blowing up his resources, he doesn't have another game. He has to drop back on raw power. And he can't cross the English Channel because the Royal Navy is infinitely superior to the French navy in terms of professional quality, experience, hardware. And the French are never able to challenge British sea control.
- [08:10]
B
Why does the Battle of Trafalgar receive so little attention in your book?
- [08:16]
C
There's a very good reason for that. I've written quite a lot about the Battle of Trafalgar, particularly in a biography of Nelson I published some years ago. Trafalgar is not important in this story because it's already happened. So I'm really picking up around 1812, when Napoleon is defeated in Russia, and the moment when the British government sees that they can shape a future Europe by using their money, their diplomacy and their relatively small army to try and influence affairs on the continent. The Battle of Trafalgar, which is a work of the highest genius in naval art, is the reason why Britain is not going to lose the Napoleonic Wars. The Napoleonic naval threat reaches its maximum point in 1805, and it is utterly annihilated by Nelson as soon as it puts to sea. And after that, no French admiral wants to fight the British under any circumstances. So Nelson is in many way the prologue to this book. He makes Britain safe. Wellington's generation, Lord Liverpool, Lord Castlereagh, soldiers, statesmen, these are the men who then translate that advantage into a balancing role in the European continent. So for them, Trafalgar, by the time they're working on this is six or seven years in the past. Nelson, of course, is dead. There is no naval threat anymore, so all the emphasis is now on balancing Europe. So Trafalgar is the prequel to what happens here, but it's not important in that sense. Trafalgar is the end of a struggle for command of the sea, which doesn't resume after 1805.
- [10:01]
B
What exactly do you mean by the expression offshore balancing? Was this an expression employed by contemporaries at the time?
- [10:08]
C
No, it's an expression I borrowed from American political scientists. The great advantage of working in a war studies department rather than a history department is that I work with colleagues who work with political science agendas as well as academic research. The offshore balancing argument potentially put forward by a group of American thinkers who are looking for a way in which America can remain a hegemonic power without having to deploy large amounts of ground and air forces in places like Central Europe, curiously enough. And they propose that America uses its maritime and aerial power to balance from offshore and not to to put its foot soldiers and hardware in harm's way. The original target, obviously, would be the large amount of military power that was in West Germany during the Cold War, Air Force, Europe, things like that. But it also applies to post Cold War deployments, very large numbers of troops who were deployed into Asian campaigns, Iraq, Afghanistan, and to try and find a more economic method. It doesn't really work for the United States because it is a continental power and it does think with the army first. But it does work much better for Britain because Britain doesn't have the option of balancing from on the continent. It's never had that military power. The British army has always been relatively small, certainly among the great powers. So offshore balancing emphasizes the maritime naval dimension. It emphasizes what makes Britain strong and why it's a very difficult country to defeat. And it gets away from the very expensive commitment to put troops into the European theater. The cost of that deployment in the Cold War era, the NATO years, was that the British army was disproportionately large vis a vis the Royal Navy, given Britain's global interests. So offshore balancing is being able to exert influence from across the sea because you are powerful at sea and had the ability to impact strategy with a maritime approach.
- [12:24]
B
What exactly were the British aims at the Congress of Vienna? 1814, 1815. And how successful was Castlere Wellington in obtaining them?
- [12:33]
C
What the British want at Vienna is to create a stable, balanced European system in which there will be no individual hegemonic power. So they're dealing with the consequences of the collapse of Napoleonic power. And the first thing they want to do is to rebuild France not as a Napoleonic empire, but as a nation state under a conservative monarchy, which they hope will not start a major war in Europe. Monarchies tend to be slightly less aggressive. They're also very anxious to keep the Russians out of Central Europe. Remember the high water mark of 1814, shortly after Napoleon abdicated, was a review of the Russian army on the Champ de Mars in Paris. That's the green space which is now under The Eiffel Tower. 120,000 first class Russian troops went through exercises on this ground in the presence of the leading statesmen of the rest of Europe. The Russians are making a position here. They're saying, we are now the new dominant power. The British immediately stage a naval review at Portsmouth to say, well, actually, you're not the absolute power, because we control the sea and there's nothing you can do about that. So the British are using different forms of power, maritime, offshore, to stop Russia becoming the hegemonic power. That was their agenda. So Vienna is about balancing the Russians out. It's about keeping the French under control. It's very much like the British mantra for NATO just after the Second World War. The whole object of NATO was to keep the Germans down, the Russians out and the Americans in. And that's essentially what the British are doing. They're allied with France and Austria against Russia, they're allied with Austria, Prussia and Russia against France. So depending on who breaks the peace, the British stand ready to intervene. And what they will do if they intervene is exactly what happens in 1815. 1815 is the proof of the offshore balancing concept. It's designed into the system. The strategy of the 1815 campaign, right down to the battle tactics are all predetermined by the British agenda. It's not accidental that the Duke of Wellington is the signatory of the Vienna Congress for the British, because at that time he isn't commanding the army, he's the ambassador in Paris and he's also reviving the fortresses that defend the Franco Belgian border.
- [15:06]
B
Would it be true to say that you do not adhere to the American historian, or I should say the late American historian Paul Schroeder's concept in his book the Transformation of European Politics over the period from 1815 to the Crimean War, roughly speaking, was a period, in terms of European politics, of a condominium between Czarist Russia and the uk.
- [15:30]
C
Well, I don't see it as an effective partnership because these two powers have massive crisis points. Paul Schroder's work is exceptionally good and as his foundation, which I've worked on both of my earlier work on the Crimean War and in this case. But what he's looking at is powers which he thinks are essentially operating by the same rules. Now, Britain and Russia are not operating by the same rules. Russia is a continental, autocratic empire and it thinks in terms of control of land, of people and control of markets. Russia is a closed market, expansionist country. If Russia takes over your territory even today, they will force you to buy their substandard products at inflated prices. The British are offering a free trade alternative, which is better goods at lower cost without military occupation. So these are two systems that are clashing. The British are looking to increase the democracy that they already have, to widen it. The Russians are looking to maintain autocracy. Russia is a land power that judges success by extending its territorial boundaries and securing control of critical choke points. There's a Cold War between Britain and Russia throughout the 19th century, and the flashpoints are the Turkish Straits, Dardanelles, Bosphorus and the Danish narrows leading into the Baltic. And it's not accidental that when they go to war in 1854, the British send an amphibious strike force to destroy the naval base at Sevastopol, because that is the key to seizing Istanbul and breaking out into the Mediterranean. The British aren't interested in the Crimea, they're interested in the Russian navy. And their object is to sink, burn, destroy and utterly annihilate it and to prevent it posing that threat to Istanbul. Because the British control the economic activity of the Ottoman Empire and they're making a lot of money out of that trade and they do not wish to see it fall under the hands of the Russians, who will Block market access to advantage their own products. So I don't see this in that positive way that Paul Schroder does. His perspective is more Central European. Mine is more global maritime. I don't see that either of us is right or wrong. I think there are aspects of both of these things in play. But for me, the things that matter for the British perspective are maritime, economic, and in terms of strategic advantage, it's worth noting that the Russians who are building the big defenses on their coast to protect them from being attacked, not the British. The British don't build any forts to protect themselves against the Russians.
- [18:33]
B
Why were the barrier forts, which were located in what is today Belgium, such a. Such a highly prized military asset? In view of the fact that Marshal Sack in the war, the Austrian secession, managed to easily overrun them.
- [18:48]
C
Yeah. The barrier forts are. Were created at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. They were a guarantee that France would not secure the territory we now call Belgium. Used to be called the Austrian Netherlands. Before that, Spanish Netherlands. That is the Catholic section of the Netherlands, which remained under Spanish rule when the Dutch Republic was created. These have been fought over extensively in the war on the Spanish Succession, with the Duke of Marlborough capturing many of those fortresses in great sieges and also through major battles. So preventing France from having Belgium is existentially important to Britain because the only place the French can assemble a large invasion fleet to invade England is on the upper reaches of the Scheldt estuary around the Dutch port of Blissingam. And once the French have conquered this territory, 1793, 1794, they are at war with the British of an existential character until the abdication of Napoleon in 1814. Because if France has Belgium, Britain has to spend enough money on defense to actually be at war. It makes no difference the British whether they're in a declared war or not. The bills will be enormous. So neutralizing Belgium is critical. Wellington's fortress system is designed to channel a French attack in such a way that the British and their Prussian allies will be able to intercept and block it. And he had picked out the battlefield at Waterloo in September 1814. He was well aware of this location because the Duke of Marlborough had recceed it back in 1705.
- [20:38]
B
What exactly was the Wellington system?
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C
The Wellington system is my shorthand for how the British evolved strategically. Wellington is absolutely existentially involved in all of this. When the war ends in 1814, he remains in Paris after Waterloo. He comes back to Britain in 1817, and the first thing he does is to start to Run down the army, basically demobilize the army, reduce army estimates, introduce decent bookkeeping into army estimates, because he understands that the sinews of war are money, not manpower. The British can find manpower if they have money, but if they have no money, they can't find anything. So the British state is retrenching, it's reforming to make itself more economically efficient. And it is not deploying garrisons overseas because they are expensive, certainly not in Europe. So Wellington's system is to make sure that the British army, which is going to be small, is of high quality and it's mobile. It can be lifted by ships and deposited where necessary, Belgium or further afield. But more importantly, that that army can be moved because there is behind it a reserve cadre of troops who can take over the defensive roles on the coast of England. Those reserves will be a militia. And in 1852, Wellington, in his last public act, takes a bill through the House of Lords which creates a new, highly effective militia system. The proof of the pudding is that the following year, the British regular army in Britain conducts its first camp of exercise since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. And the year after that, essentially the same troops arrive in the Crimea to capture Sevastopol. So it's an expeditionary maritime power projection strategy, backed up by a secure second line strategic defense system to make sure that even if some ships get past the Royal Navy, they will not achieve anything on the British coast. He's also heavily involved in creating major new harbors for the steam era to ensure that Britain does command the seas around the British Isles and can conduct blockade operations on the coasts of France, Belgium, Holland and right across to Scandinavia. So Wellington has a strategic concept which is governed by political expediency, economic crisis, and it's governed by the need to respond to what is quite radical technological change. Wellington himself was never happy on a steamboat, but he recognized they were critically important to the way Britain would have to be defended, that the enemy would use them and they would have to be neutralized. So Wellington is the architect of a new strategy which turns offshore balancing into a serious strategic option.
- [23:38]
B
Why was the establishment of Belgium a British diplomatic victory?
- [23:44]
C
Belgium is a very interesting concept. In 1830, the question is asked again. In 1813, the British developed a very clever argument that they would combine the Dutch Republic and the former Austrian Netherlands in a single united Netherlands. That's what it was technically called from 1815 to 1830, under the stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, who would be elevated to the rank of King. So we get A Dutch king ruling over Dutch and Belgian low, Low country people. This never works. The Dutch and the Belgians don't get on very well. We know this because the really nasty jokes in both Dutch and Belgian are aimed at the other low countries countries. So they're the. The neighbors that make fun of each other. The Belgians decide they want to have their own country, and the British agree with them that this is the best option. And they create Belgium not just as a state, but as a state whose neutrality and independence is guaranteed by all five of the great powers. So Russia, Prussia, Austria, France and Britain sign up to a treaty which is negotiated in London, which means it is a British treaty. If you know where the treaty is signed and you name the country, those are the people who have the biggest interest in conduct of that treaty. So a treaty of London is always a sign that the British are at the center of this process. It takes nine years to get this treaty signed off. So it's a big project. And I think in the 21st century, if you told somebody diplomacy would take nine years, they would probably think you were being ridiculous. But it took nine years. Wellington starts this process. He's the Prime Minister when the Belgian revolt breaks out and he comes back as Foreign Secretary during this process. It's ultimately signed in 1839, and the British helped to find a king for the Belgians. Belgian royal family survives and the king is the cousin of Queen Victoria. They managed to keep that relationship going very well. So Belgium is created to serve Britain's strategic interests. It also serves the economic and political interests of the Belgians. But from the British perspective, it's that strategic question. It neutralizes the great naval base at Antwerp and the use of the Scheldt as an invasion base. So keeping the French out of Belgium is rule number one in British strategy in the Wellington system, right down to the end of the 19th century.
- [26:22]
B
How were the British able to, by mostly diplomatic means, to defeat the French and their Egyptian allies in the near eastern crisis of 1840?
- [26:32]
C
In 1840, we're looking at the end of a period of strained relations between the Ottoman Sultan and his vassal, the Pasha of Egypt, Muhammad Ali. And albeit an Albanian adventurer who'd been ruling Egypt and trying to modernize it. Muhammad Ali thinks that he'd make a better job of running the Ottoman Empire. But the British don't want that to happen. It would delegitimize the whole process. And they could see that the Russians would exploit this to seize Istanbul and gain access to the Mediterranean, which is the last thing that they wanted then or we would want now. So the British need to put Muhammad Ali back in his proper position as a subordinate of the Ottoman Sultan. They're able to win this campaign because they have deployed a seriously good peacetime fleet. They have all the latest new gunnery technology and they have some steam warships. And the fleet has within it a number of offices of absolutely outstanding quality, including Commodore Sir Charles Napier. And they're able to use their superior resources, skills and weapons to completely outperform the Egyptians and drive them out of a series of strong fortresses on the coast of what we now call Israel, the Lebanon and Syria. These operations are a very high tempo. The enemy collapses under pressure, the Ottoman Empire is saved, the Russian threat to Istanbul goes away, and the British secure what they want, which is the status quo. So they put the Sultan back in control of his empire, they put the Pasha of Egypt back under the Sultan, and the Russians are not involved, which prevents them from gaining any advantage from this scenario. The biggest problem is that the French are backing the Egyptians and they're very sore losers when the Egyptians fail. The French king, king of the French, Louis Philippe, says that he's prepared to cross the Rhine and start a war with, with the Central Europeans. This doesn't happen because the King of Prussia gives Wellington command of the Prussian army and everybody in France realizes they're looking at Waterloo mark too, so they back away. The Wellington system works because when the bell is rung for a major war in Europe, the Germans look to the British for leadership. They fall in behind the British, they hand Wellington the baton of command, and the French go back home and decide not to make a fight of it. So what we've got here is a really interesting demonstration that offshore balancing in Europe works even when the fighting is in the, in the near east and on the coasts of Palestine, and the main target is the Ottoman Empire.
- [29:19]
B
How did the coming of steam power affect the Royal Navy?
- [29:23]
C
Steam technology is critical to Britain's position during the Napoleonic Wars. It massively increases production of goods, but also of the movement of heavy goods like coal and iron application to ships very quickly. You've got steamships running across the Channel connecting England and France and then Belgium and England as well. This raises the question, if you've got steam power, you're not dependent on wind and tide, so naval operations are now not naturally predetermined. This means that all of your old sailing ship experience, which tells you that the French will not be coming because of the direction the wind is blowing in, has just disappeared you need to know an awful lot more about the maritime environment to operate. This is the beginning of marine oceanic science, and it's almost entirely strategic in intention. Steamships allow you to cross the channel in any state of wind or tide relatively quickly. But until the 1850s, with very few people on board them, they are not suitable for invasions. You can't invade England with small steamboats. You're going to need much bigger ships. Paddlewheel steamers become very important in speeding up communications. And that enables the British to run campaigns like the campaign in 1840 in the Eastern Mediterranean, relying on relatively rapid communications to outperform the communication links of their rivals. And by the 1850s, we see other technologies like underwater telegraph cables coming in as well. So the British Empire is an empire of knowledge. It's an empire of information, and it's an empire of transmission. And the steamship gives you all of those things. It also gives you the ability to take large warships close inshore to attack forts. In the age of Nelson, big ships never went anywhere near the coast in case the wind dropped and they drifted on shore and were wrecked. Once you've got a steam engine and you're master of your own direction, that is a whole different question. So by the 1840s, the British are using battleships to bombard forts at very close range because they have steamboats. In the Crimean War, many of the battleships have steam engines. And after that, all of the ships in the navy have steam engines. And you can be much more aggressive on the coast of hostile powers. The analog for American audiences would be the Civil War. What the Union was able to do with steam powered shipping is vastly greater than it would have been able to do in the age of sailing ships. And that certainly is a critical factor in the winning of the Civil War. And it's a critical factor in the winning of the Crimean War, which slightly precedes it. So steam shipping changes technology, changes communication, speed and reliability. It changes the tactical setup between land and sea as well.
- [32:24]
B
What explains the bankruptcy of French foreign policy in the post Napoleonic period?
- [32:31]
C
For me, the problem in the first half of the 19th century, really down to the 1870s, is that France has come out of the Napoleonic wars with an awful lot of glory, with a lot of military victory. But it's lost the war. And the French haven't adjusted to the reality that they are now not the biggest country in Europe, that their army has been badly defeated. Even their hero now Napoleon, failed miserably at Waterloo. And French rulers constantly get it into their heads that what France wants is glory, that it wants to be successful militarily, to expand, to be dynamic, to be doing something, to be busy. And in fact, most French people a didn't have the vote, so it didn't. Their opinions weren't expressed politically, but they didn't want to send their sons to be killed in another war. Napoleon killed an awful lot of French young men in the course of his campaigns. They didn't want to pay taxes to pay for those wars. And they disliked most of the regimes that persisted after 1815 because they were undemocratic and they were posturing as being belligerent. So France gets its king back in 1814, he's thrown out in 1815, he's then brought back in 1815, that dynasty is then thrown out in 1830. They then have Louis Philippe's king of the French regime for 18 years, then they have another republic, then they have another empire, and then in 1871, they have another republic. France is politically unstable. They're changing the franchise constantly, but they don't reach an equilibrium. It's a country that is not comfortable in its own skin. They're looking for something which they can't find. They invade Algeria to try and make themselves feel better, but even that doesn't work. So France is unstable and it's destabilizing the European and extra European world in its conscious and constant effort to secure something that will satisfy the people. And ultimately that's going to be adult male suffrage and democratic government. But it takes the French about 60 years to work that out. In the meantime, they spend an awful lot of time painting enormous pictures of French battle victories which they install in the palace at Versailles, to the consternation of most European countries who have to to face off with pictures of their country being humiliated on the battlefield by Napoleon. It doesn't trouble the British very much, I have to say. And then you get an arms race in war art between the French and the Russians, and the Russians are trying to poach the best French war artist. So there are different ways of waging war and exerting influence. But French instability is about that sense of loss, that loss of prestige, that loss of grandeur, of glory. And the nostalgia for Napoleon persists to this very day.
- [35:39]
B
Why was British naval supremacy not a factor in the Danish War of 1864?
- [35:45]
C
This is a classic example of where diplomatic historians misread the evidence in this crisis. The German powers, Prussia and Austria, are stripping away a province from the Danish kingdom on the grounds that the dynasty has changed and that the existing rules mean that the Germans have a right of interference, that the provinces in question are part of the German League and they are German speaking. What the dramatic historians will tell you is that the British protested about this and made some threats and then did nothing. What they miss is that Britain is guaranteeing Denmark. It is not guaranteeing those provinces which are taken away. Schleswig and Holstein, those are mainland provinces. Britain's security interest in Denmark is access to the Baltic. If you're going to discipline the Russians, you have to go into the Baltic, which the British do in a big way in the Crimean War. Access to the Baltic is critical to the British. The future of Schleswig and Holstein is of no significant interest the British whatsoever. Had the German powers invaded the Danish islands of Zeeland and Funen, where Copenhagen is and the controlling access to the Baltic, the British would almost certainly have gone to war. That they were not going to fight about a province where the question at issue was the legitimate descent of some extremely unusual bloodline ruling different parts of Denmark. So the British were ready for war and almost certainly would have gone to war had the Danish kingdom been threatened and particularly if access to the Baltic had been denied. They had fought a very long war against the Danes in the Napoleonic era to keep access to the Baltic open. So Britain would fight for the Baltic but they would not fight for Schleswig and Holstein, which were German provinces and ended up under German control. It's worth noting in 1919 there was a plebiscite in Schleswig and Holstein and only a small part of that territory voted to rejoin Denmark. That the majority of people who were taken into German control in the 1860s were German and saw themselves as German. They were German language and they lived very German lives and in and were different to the Danes living on the islands.
- [38:15]
B
Why do you state that? Quote, political weakness allowed Britain to drift into War in 1914. Unquote.
- [38:24]
C
Yeah. This is something that I've been examining in my last two books. The previous book, the British Way of War, looked at this as well. In 1914, the British have a liberal government of very eminent cultured statesmen, none of whom have given much attention to strategic risk or indeed possibility they might have to go to war. In 1870, Prime Minister Gladstone, a very famous liberal prime minister, had made sure that neither France nor Prussia invaded Belgium by mobilizing the army and the fleet and sending a very stiff diplomatic letter to Paris and Berlin. Cross the border and we are at war with you in 1914. The British don't do anything, they just wait. And by the time the waiting is over The Germans have crossed the Belgian frontier, which is causes belli. The British are obliged to go to the defense of Belgium, but because the government has not thought about strategy or how it will actually secure its objectives, they have no idea how they're going to win the war. The army persuades the politicians that they should just join the French and deal with the Germans. The proper strategy, which had been developed in 1907 under the advice of said Julian Corbett, great strategic analyst, was that the British Expeditionary Force, and its name is a giveaway. It's not meant to be stuck in the Continent, it's meant to be mobile, would go and secure the great fortress at Antwerp, which would prevent the Germans accessing the Belgian coast, which would become a major submarine base during the First World War and very nearly won the war for Germany. So these people have no strategic understanding. They're not consulting the people who do know what to do. This. Most members of the Cabinet know Julian Corbett, he's actually fellow liberal. Several of them have actually read his book, but they haven't paid any attention. So they stumble into a continental war, which the whole purpose of the Wellington system and offshore balancing was to avoid. They needed to get into the diplomacy earlier, they needed to mobilize their forces and to make very clear to Germany that violating Belgian neutrality would bring about hostile consequences. They did none of these things. They allowed the war to happen without attempting to prevent it, and for that they are liable. They didn't start the war, but they did nothing to prevent it breaking out at a time when Britain is the most powerful player in the system. Britain is richer, more globally engaged and has much greater resources at its disposal than any of the other European powers. The only thing the British are short of is manpower. But with the Empire and the Dominions, they even have that under control. They absolutely threw away a very strong diplomatic position and allowed the Germans to get stuck into the war before they told them that they would go to war with them. It's a very poor performance.
- [41:37]
B
So in that case, would it be true to say that you do not agree with what Sir Michael Howard once referred to as the Continental Commitment?
- [41:46]
C
Indeed, I don't know. So, Michael, very great man, he founded our department and is one of the great pioneers of military history. But when Michael thought about military history, it was the army. He paid no attention to the navy whatsoever, which for an Englishman is odd. The right arm, and indeed the senior military service in Britain is the navy, not the army. Britain is an insular maritime power. Focusing on the army from Britain is it's odd it. It doesn't chime in with reality. It's as if the army has actually been the significant strategic instrument of British power, and it hasn't. The First World War is the only time in history where the British tried to defeat the largest and most powerful enemy on the battlefield by mobilizing a continentally sized army. And all it left them with was a million fatal casualties, more than a million wounded and disabled, and they'd burned through a lot of skilled manpower. They took men out of the shipyards who were building vital shipping and warships to fight his infantry in the firing line. This is absurd. Many countries in the alliance had manpower to spare. The British did not. And it was a very poor allocation of resources, which they didn't repeat in the Second World War. So now Britain is a maritime power and it has to think from the sea and focus on the sea. Britain was nearly defeated by submarine attacks on merchant shipping, not by German armies in France.
- [43:25]
B
So, in essence, you would not agree with the argument that if the UK attempted to replicate its policies of vis a vis the Continent as per the Napoleonic wars, that the French, being under great pressure from the Germans after. After the war began in 1914, would have. How should I put it? They're not exactly entirely happy and conversely, actually might have decided to quit the war if they saw that the UK was not actually in the battlefield shedding their blood like the French were, or for that matter, the Russians.
- [44:03]
C
That's a very attractive argument if you want to make an army of 120,000 men sound like it's important. The French and the Germans have nearly 4 million men in the field. 100,000 is nothing. It's irrelevant. One French general said if the British send them one soldier, they would just make sure he got killed to encourage the others to come. What the French need, and what the Russians need even more is access to British money, industry and global communications, and that is the British contribution to winning the First World War. The British army in France is not able to do that, and attempts to suggest that it did are misleading. Germany is destroyed economically, its resources are chewed up and it can't access anymore, much as Russia had been in the Crimean War. So the answer to British strategic problems is not to mobilize mass Army. And remember, 1916 is the first time the British have ever conscripted men into the army, ever. Every other country in Europe has been conscripting for centuries. The British don't do that. They don't need that many soldiers. And their strategy before 1914 didn't involve mobilizing a mass army. The only people who thought that was a good idea were soldiers of high rank who wanted to command large armies. Wellington got away at Waterloo with less than 20,000 British troops. Wasn't necessary to send a large British army, and it was a waste of resources. The war would have been won more quickly if the British had held Antwerp and blocked the Germans from advancing. The British and Belgian army is in northern Belgium. The German army is not going to advance on Paris because their logistics would be wide open to being cut. So strategically, it makes no sense.
- [45:54]
B
So in essence, from your perspective, to paraphrase Churchill, the British army during the Great War, insofar as the fighting of France, was a luxury army.
- [46:05]
C
I didn't quite catch that. What kind of army?
- [46:08]
B
Luxury army.
- [46:09]
C
Yes. Remarkable.
- [46:11]
B
The German fleet.
- [46:12]
C
Yes. It was a luxury army for salt, for relatively old soldiers to play with, and it did not serve Britain's interests at all. What Britain really cared about is very easily understood. If you look at the Versailles Conference, the British are fighting to preserve the right to use economic warfare. That's their frontline strategy. It's not great armies, it's international trade being cut and blockades imposed. That's the big battle. And it's a big battle with the Americans who are arguing for free trade. The British block that and put a huge effort into it. So what we've got with Sir Michael's version of the First World War is an explanation of what happened, but it's not an analysis of what happened which explains why it should never have happened in the first place. So I think what I'm trying to do with this book is to make it clear that just because something happened doesn't mean it was important. And just because something happened doesn't mean that we need to take that as the only option. The British had options. Living on an island, you get choice, particularly when you have the world's biggest navy. You do not have to get involved in things that you don't like. And Britain was perfectly capable of waging very effective war against Germany. The Germans before the First World War were petrified of a long war because they knew the British would blockade them and break their economy. And that's exactly what happened.
- [47:45]
B
It caught my eye that your bibliography does not have Professor Rogers in it. Any particular reason for that.
- [47:56]
C
Nicholas Rogers book? At the time that I wrote this book, we had only reached volume two, which ends in 1815, so I did not have access to volume three, which is. Which came out later last year, and I didn't see any point referencing the two previous volumes because they were not relevant to the book that I was writing. So had I finished the book now, I would indeed have read the book. I have read and reviewed it. But no, it was not available for me to read in the relevant period, so I didn't see any reason to refer to the earlier volumes which were not relevant.
- [48:37]
B
Point well taken.
- [48:38]
C
Yep.
- [48:39]
B
Professor, if you wanted people take one thing away from your book, what would it be?
- [48:44]
C
British strategy is different. It's necessarily different because Britain is a small offshore island that depends on imported food and it has to prioritize the sea because otherwise it will be invaded and destroyed by larger and more powerful military forces. So Britain has choice, but that choice is within fairly narrow restrictions. And today most people in Britain don't think much about defense. And if they do, they just assume defense is a universal product. It isn't. You have to configure your forces to suit your strategic, political and economic agendas. And in the west, we haven't really recovered from the NATO years where everybody did something of everything. Before the First World War, the British dominated the sea, and they had no intention of dominating the continent with military force. After the end of the Second World War, the British end up with an army and an air force based in western Germany, which is very good for stopping World War 3 starting, but it's not a natural use of British strength. Wellington and Castlereagh and Lord Liverpool would have thought that ridiculous. The continental powers had more than enough military manpower to do this. We're facing the same debate at the moment. There are elements in the British army that seem to think that if there's any escalation in the Russia Ukraine conflict, the British should send troops. Britain's contribution should be maritime and economic because those are the great strengths of the British warfare state. The British army is relatively small, and NATO members in Eastern Europe have well over a million and a half ground troops. So sending a few British troops is not going to make any difference. Concentrating on what's important. And don't allow narrative histories of what happened to shape your understanding of what really mattered.
- [50:44]
B
On that observation, I would like to thank you very much, Professor Lambert, for being so kind as to speak with us today. This is Charles Cotillo. You'll be listening to New Books in History, a podcast channel, and New Books Network. Thank you, Professor Lambert, very much.
- [50:57]
C
Thank you, Charles. It was a delight.