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At the beginning of the 18th century, Britain was a rising power. It is impossible to try and understand British ascendancy without looking at the contribution of the British navy to it. This essay will try to analyze the objectives for which the British had chosen to rely on the navy as a basis for their power, and whether those objectives were fulfilled; or to put it in other words, were the British correct in preferring a navy over a land army?
When thinking of the reasons that lead to the favoring of a navy in the case of Britain, some of them are pretty obvious, like the fact that Britain is a group of islands detached from the rest of Europe. ...
The structure and location of the British Isles allowed Britain to be as involved and uninvolved in European wars as it wanted to, but in order to do that it had to have a strong navy that would prevent any European power from getting the British involved in the fighting (Ireland 8).
In addition, the fact that Britain was comprised out of a few islands required the navy as a defending force between those islands. In the event of an attacking navy coming between the islands, it would implement the strategy of divide and conquer and separate the British forces from the mainland. The significance accorded to the navy by the British parliament can be shown in many cases throughout the first half of the 18th century. ...
Another reason that prompted the reliance on a navy as the basis for the British Empires power was the fear of parliament that the king would use the land army in order to impose his interests on the kingdom. Such an event took place when the British Island of Ireland supported James in his struggle to regain his throne, a problem that William could only attend to in one way, by launching operations against the Island which had supported Jamess invasion (McKay and Scott 48).
William the 3rd started a chain of kings who were not English in origin and the British parliament feared the kings use of the countrys power in his own interests. To prevent such use, the British made sure that the power for making main decisions was to remain with parliament and the kings that came into power had a little difficulty dealing with that established fact. This created conflicts between parliament and monarchy and therefore parliament concentrated the British power where it was most effective and as a side effect limited the power of the land army so that the king could not use it to impose his opinions and interests on the country. ...
As noted before, Williams succession to the English throne required the use of naval power as far as the British were concerned, because when William the 3rd came into power it was after the British had got rid of the Stuart king James, forcing him to go into exile in France, there he got the support of Louis. ... For Louis, Jamess request for assistance in the name of his cause supplied a great excuse to take on the British and Dutch he so hated without being considered an aggressor. A threat of invasion such as this was always a reason for British justification for a navy. It was also the case where William was to fight invasion in Ireland and its Anglo-Irish supporters, using British military power against British subjects, the very same thing parliament feared.
Approximate Word count = 2789
Approximate Pages = 11.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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