This book provides a comprehensive survey of the development and operations of the navies of South-East Asia since the end of World War II. The navies of South-East Asia have rarely been the subject of systematic attention but, as the maritime strategic balance within Asia becomes more complex and open to challenge through the rise of China, they will play increasingly significant roles. While most have had only limited strength in the past, the majority are acquiring new capabilities, notably submarines, which will profoundly alter their ability to influence events. This volume outlines the difficulties that each navy has faced in developing capability in competition, not only with local armies and air forces, but with other national requirements. The authors analyse the way in which each has been shaped by history and by changing maritime strategic concepts, particularly through developments such as the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention. Drawing upon this contextual information, the book goes on to examine how the navies are likely to develop in the future, what new challenges they will face and the nature of the roles they will play within a region of increasing global strategic significance. This book will be of much interest to students of naval policy, SE Asian politics, regional security, strategic studies and IR in general.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of the development and operations of the navies of South-East Asia since the end of World War II.

The navies of South-East Asia have rarely been the subject of systematic attention but, as the maritime strategic balance within Asia becomes more complex and open to challenge through the rise of China, they will play increasingly significant roles. While most have had only limited strength in the past, the majority are acquiring new capabilities, notably submarines, which will profoundly alter their ability to influence events.

This volume outlines the difficulties that each navy has faced in developing capability in competition, not only with local armies and air forces, but with other national requirements. The authors analyse the way in which each has been shaped by history and by changing maritime strategic concepts, particularly through developments such as the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention. Drawing upon this contextual information, the book goes on to examine how the navies are likely to develop in the future, what new challenges they will face and the nature of the roles they will play within a region of increasing global strategic significance.

This book will be of much interest to students of naval policy, SE Asian politics, regional security, strategic studies and IR in general.

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Before Jutland is an effort to understand what happened at sea in northern European waters in 1914-15 when the German High Sea Fleet faced the Grand Fleet in the North Sea and the Russian Fleet in the Baltic. The book is an extensively revised and extended version of the author's 1984 work The King's Ships Were at Sea. It covers the first six months of the First World War because very important things occurred in that time and, despite the loose ends that inevitably remain with four more years of conflict to follow, important things can be said. The focus is primarily on the British, but both the Germans and the Russians are integral to the study because neither the British nor the Germans' North Sea activities can be fairly assessed without giving due weight to the Baltic theatre of operations. This is an operational history, which balances coverage of the major incidents with treatment of the continuum of activity. The intent within the scene setting chapters is not to attempt a complete survey of the events of the previous decade, but to situate each navy within the environment of 1914. Before Jutland includes the battles of Heligoland Bight and the Dogger Bank, as well as the shock of the submarine and its effect on the operations of all the protagonists. In analysing these events, it seeks to provide the context within which the protagonists were actually working, without the application of excessive hindsight, because in 1914 so much was new and experimental. Observers are inclined to consider what is known as the 'Fisher Era' as a continuum from Admiral Fisher's accession as First Sea Lord in the British Admiralty in 1904; in reality the pace of operational development not only accelerated but became truly multi-lane only after about 1909, just before the great reformer went into his first retirement. The pressures at all levels within navies were therefore intensifying in the years immediately before the outbreak of the war in ways that were not fully understood, nor necessarily recognized. In short, those involved were struggling to learn a new language of naval operations and warfare with an incomplete dictionary and very little grammar. In all, Before Jutland tries to show not only what happened, but how the services evolved to meet the challenges that they faced at the opening of the Great War and whether or not that evolution was successful.

After Jutland analyzes the naval war in Northern European waters following the Battle of Jutland. A popular misconception is that Jutland marked the end of the operational career of the German High Sea Fleet and the beginning of a period of stagnation for both it and its opponents, Great Britain's Grand Fleet and Russia's Baltic Fleet. The reality is much more complex. The German battle fleet was quiescent for much of the time in the North Sea, but it supported an ambitious amphibious campaign in the Baltic, while a bitter war was waged by submarines and light craft in the waters of the Heligoland Bight, the English Channel and off the Belgian Coast. After Jutland focuses primarily on the Royal Navy as the dominant maritime force, but it also analyzes the struggles of the beleaguered German and Russian navies as each descended into revolution, as well as the challenges faced by the United States Navy after America entered the war.