William S. Dudley, Ph.D. Ten years ago, the Naval War College Press published a series of essays, edited by John Hattendorf, under the title Ubi Sumus: The State of Naval and Maritime History. This was an attempt by a group of historians to assess the state of naval history in a comprehensive and nearly global way. With regard to American naval history, their quaint way of expressing it was that U.S. Navy history was but a "toddler" as compared with other fields of history. Their approach included virtually every way one could view the field, from the state of teaching maritime and naval history, the popularity of sea fiction, the publication of scholarly works, and the availability of scholarly resources. Ken Hagan and Mark Shulman, in their Ubi Sumus essay "Mahan Plus One Hundred," threw down the gauntlet to other U.S. naval historians, challenging them to write history other than policy and strategy, to embrace new methodologies, such as social history, commercial-cultural history of Navy yards, civil-military relations, and the technical bureaucratic history of weapons systems. David Rosenberg's short epilogue to Ubi Sumus was entitled, "Beyond Toddlerhood: Thoughts on the Future of U.S. Naval History." He reiterated the Hagan and Shulman's concerns in his own inimitable way. By way of suggesting new approaches, he raised three questions: What was the U.S. Navy and who belonged to it? He suggested that more research should be done on the social, political and logistical aspects of the Navy. Secondly, what did the Navy do? By this he meant, beyond writing about campaigns and battles, naval historians should be concerned about the history of infrastructure of the Navy, its connections to the shore establishment, its social, financial, and administrative history, and its political connections. More topics come to mind - the development of the Navy's technology, its weapons, propulsion, and communications systems, and the impact of all this technology on sailors (officers and enlisted), their education and training, their lives and families. Finally, he posed the third question: Why should other historians care? He urged that future historians concern themselves with the Navy's connection to the larger society from which it springs and with the other military services with which it must operate, increasingly, in a joint, interwoven fashion. My intent is to survey the naval history publication record since 1994 and bring up-to-date the earlier study with respect to selected scholarly works. Most of the books I refer to are not publications of the Naval Historical Center, but they are about the U.S. Navy, published by academic and commercial presses. In the following discussion of recent publications in the field of U.S. naval history, I will focus on a selected few published in the last ten years that I consider the most significant and will leave others for a fuller discussion in a more lengthy treatment. George Baer, One Hundred Years of Seapower : The United States Navy, 1890-1990. 1994. A history of how a war-fighting organization responded in doctrine, strategy, and operations to radical changes in politics, innovation, and national needs. Harold D. Langley: A History of Medicine in the Early United States Navy. 1995. A path-breaking study of the evolution of medical practice in the U. S. Navy from 1794 to 1842. Demonstrates the improvement in fleet readiness, morale, promotions and retention that resulted from medical officers efforts to improve their profession. Raimundo Luraghi: A History of the Confederate Navy. 1996. Translated by Professor Paolo Coletta. This is the first general history of the Confederate naval program since 1887. It represents a major step forward in the naval historiography of the Civil War. Malcolm Muir: Black Shoes and Blue Water: Surface Navy, 1945-1975 (1996). This is a study of a thirty-year period vital to the creation of today's surface navy. The author pays particular attention to the development of new weapons, the evolution of sensors, command and control systems, and institutional steps to professionalize the surface warfare community. William N. Still, ed. The Confederate Navy: Ships, Men and Organization, 1861-1865. 1997. Comprised of a series of individually authored chapters summarizing the latest research on the Confederate Navy, this work corrects the imbalance created by works overemphasizing the deeds of the Confederate armies. Edward J. Marolda and Robert Schneller: Sword and Shield: The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf War (1998). This is the definitive work for our time that deals with the U.S. Navy's performance in Desert Storm. It is objective and comprehensive in its coverage and for that reason is essential reading for those interested in naval lessons learned in Gulf War I. Clark G. Reynolds: Navies in History (1998) A concise primer on general naval history by one of the masters of the discipline. It is designed for the generally well educated reader as well as classroom use in military history and naval science courses. Al Christman: Target Hiroshima: Deak Parsons and the Creation of the Atomic Bomb (1998). In this study of an important though nearly forgotten naval officer, Christman Sensitively described the life and work of one of the Navy's foremost mathematician-engineers who had a hand in developing many important weapons used during World War II. William. M. McBride: Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865-1945. (1999) This is a study of "transformation" in the U.S. Navy before it became a 21st century catch phrase. Dealing with the growth of the "gun club" and the battleship in the early 20th century, McBride explores the efforts to bring change and the resistance to change that has often permeated the Navy's highly technological culture. Andrew Gibson and Arthur Donovan. The Abandoned Ocean: A History of United States Maritime Policy. 2000. The authors trace the development of America's maritime policies from the early federal period to the present. They demonstrate that outdated and obsolete laws that once protected American commercial shipping now restrict its development at a time when the U.S. shipping industry has lost its competitive edge. Mindell, David A. War, Technology and Experience aboard USS Monitor (2000). This is an unusual study that analyzes the famous Civil War ironclad Monitor as both weapon and metaphor in the emergence of a new form of warfare, where machines dominate and dwarf the men who work them. The Monitor became such a public symbol of the Union Navy that it had to be protected rather than used in combat. Ronald Spector: At War At Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the 20th Century (2001) This former director of naval history analyzes the use of naval construction and technology in the hands of sailors representing markedly different cultures. He finds that similarly equipped navies fought differently owing to their political, social, and cultural environments. Susan Godson: Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the United States Navy. 2002. From the War of 1812 to the present, there have been women in the U.S. Navy. This study puts them in critical context and shows the difficult course women in the Navy steered as they shaped their service careers, as yeomen (F) in World War I, WAVES in World War II to line officers serving in ships and aircraft during the Cold War. This a basic work and is required reading for those who wish to understand today's Navy. James P. Stevenson: $5 Billion Misunderstanding: The Collapse of the Navy's A-12 Stealth Bomber Program. 2002. This is history of a top-secret weapons procurement program that went wrong. It provides a good example of collusion and malfeasance within the "Navy-Industrial Complex." Gary Weir: An Ocean in Common: American Naval Officers, Scientists, and the Ocean Environment. (2001) This is a fascinating account of the merging of two cultures, oceanographic science and the naval profession. It stemmed from the need to develop an undersea weapons system to combat submarine warfare that developed rapidly during and after World War I. Naval officers and civilian scientists came together in a common cause as undersea weapons gained in sophistication during World War II and the Cold War. Robert Browning: Success is All that Was Expected: The South Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War. 2002. While it was a slow process, the Union Navy "Anaconda" gradually strangled Confederate shipping along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts during the Civil War. Browning describes the successes and failures of this effort on the southeastern Atlantic coast from Charleston to Florida in a compelling and detailed study. William H. Roberts: Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization. 2002. Robert's history takes an overall look at Union navy ironclad construction on the coasts and rivers during the Civil War. He looks closely at the military industrial relations of that period as part of the military acquisition process. It is a study of design brilliance and failure, of long delays because of politics and puffed-up personalities, and of American business history during the industrial revolution. Jean Ebbert and Mary Beth Hall. The First, The Few, the Forgotten: Navy and Marine Corps Women in World War I. 2002. Some 12,000 women served in the Navy and Marine Corps during the First World War. Few people realize the contribution these women made and how the work affected their attitudes toward a national cause. As veterans they joined patriotic organizations, had clear memories of their service and were proud of their war effort. Ebbert and Hall have duly chronicled this remarkable group and in so doing have made us more aware of the social history of the military. Francis Duncan: Rickover: The Struggle for Excellence. 2001. Duncan, a close associate of Admiral Rickover, knew him well. He has drawn a skillful portrait of this tenacious, prickly, and dedicated officer who brought about nuclear propulsion in submarines and surface ships. John Sherwood. Afterburner: Naval Aviators in the Vietnam War. 2003. The author of this fine operational history writes with great skill and involvement. He has specialized in learning about the lives and actions of naval aviators through oral history interviews. He puts you in the cockpit and you get a pilots' perspective of dogfights and ground attacks. Once you read this you will have a wholly new conception of what was like to be a Navy pilot over Vietnam. Richard E. Miller: The Messman Chronicles: African Americans in the U.S. Navy, 1932-1943. 2004. This is a leading example of the new trends in the social history of the U.S. Navy. Miller has written a well-documented account of African-American sailors who served faithfully despite unfair and unequal treatment during peace and war. He also treats race relations between Filipino and Black sailors as they were often thrown into competition with one another. John Hattendorf : The Evolution of the Navy's Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986. 2004 This is a fascinating account of the development of naval strategy during the Carter and Reagan presidencies. Hattendorf demonstrates that we need to understand how and why policy makers shape and modify naval strategies in each era. Many people neither know the history of the strategies that have gone before nor why they succeeded or failed. This study provides a fine example what can be gained. Geoffrey Till: Seapower: A Guide for the 21st Century. 2004. While not limited to U.S. naval history, Till's study includes many references to it, as he discusses the comparative uses of seapower over time. Till's view is that the importance of the sea will grow over time rather than decline. The value of oceanic resources will grow as the world's population increases. There will be more competition for these scarce commodities and navies will become more active, not less. The high seas have shrunk with modern technology and satellite surveillance. With terrorism and piracy spreading, the concept of "freedom of the seas" may disappear in the era of the pre-emptive strike. This is a provocative book and deserves to be widely read. Conclusions In my opinion, our Ubi Sumus colleagues' calls to action are being met. The published naval historical works of the past decade have pushed the envelope on some of the as yet rarely probed topics. Social, administrative and technological history topics are now developing as acceptable fields for study and publication. The study of strategic and operational history will continue, of course, but younger historians are opening of new windows Navy's past and the topics are exciting. But my deep and overarching concern is that the U.S. Navy itself is too busy to notice and support these trends. For the future, I raise the question as to when the Navy's leadership will show its full support by endorsing the historical activity that is now occurring on its behalf. I will also issue a warning that the Navy's tactical history may be in dire straits. The leadership's failure to anticipate the need for long term electronic archiving of operational communications has resulted in the loss of a large body of documents needed for historical analysis. It is not impossible to fix this problem for the future, but there will undoubtedly be huge gaps in the historical record covering the present era. While we are redressing the balance in terms of non-operational history, the documentary bedrock of naval history is in danger of disappearing.
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