8

Intensified Military-Industrial Interaction,

1884–1914

Just as the industrialization of war

can be dated to the 1840s, when railroads and semiautomated mass
production together with Prussian breech-loaders and French efforts
to exploit steam to the detriment of British naval supremacy began to
transform preexisting military establishments, so, too, one can date
the intensification of interaction between the industrial and military
sectors of European society to a naval scare promulgated in Great
Britain in 1884. A clever journalist, W. T. Stead, and an ambitious
naval officer, Captain John Arbuthnot Fisher, were the protagonists of
this affair, though other men also played a part in manipulating British
public opinion from behind the scenes.

Decay of Britain’s Strategic Position

Their success depended on the fundamental fact that British strategic
security underwent systematic erosion from the 1870s onward. At
bottom lay the diffusion of industrial techniques from the British Isles
to other lands. This process went into high gear from about 1850, as
Germany and the United States began to compete with, and in some
lines of production to excel, British capacities and skill. In the nar­
rower field of naval armament, too, Britain’s superiority was en­
dangered by the export of high technology to other navies. Private
shipyards and armament manufacturers based in Britain played an ac­
tive role in this process. It was, indeed, only on the strength of foreign
sales that Armstrong and other British firms were able to stay in
business after the decision of 1864 had entrusted the production of
artillery for the British services to the Woolwich arsenal. But when, in
1882, Armstrong’s built a cruiser for Chile, fast enough to outrun all
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