[Uwhistory] UWISC Presentation - "Mahan, Dreadnought, and National Identity" (fwd)

[Lori Anthony]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 15:53:02 -0800
From: Jeffrey Wolf <jeffwolf at u.washington.edu>
To: Jeffrey Wolf <jeffwolf at u.washington.edu>
Subject: UWISC Presentation - "Mahan, Dreadnought, and National Identity"

The University of Washington International Security Colloquium (UWISC) 
presents:

Rob Farley, "Mahan, Dreadnought, and National Identity."
Time and place: Thursday November 9 in Smith 40A at 12:30-1:50.
Discussant:  Jeff Wolf, PhD student, UW

Rob Farley is a recent UW PhD who is now an Assistant Professor at the 
Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, University of 
Kentucky. Below is an abstract of Rob's talk. Please contact me 
(jeffwolf at u.washington.edu) with any questions.


Mahan, Dreadnought, and National Identity

Robert M. Farley



Scholars have established that sociological considerations drive defense 
procurement as much as hard security concerns.  Decision-makers worry about 
prestige, national identity, and appropriateness when determining how to spend 
scarce defense dollars.  In the early part of the twentieth century, national 
prestige in both great and minor powers depended on the acquisition of 
dreadnought battleships.  In the wake of Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of 
Sea Power Upon History, national power, modernity, and independence were 
understood to be factors of naval power, and dreadnoughts became the most 
visible indicators of such power. Virtually abandoning considerations of 
military necessity and operational sustainability, small states contracted for 
the construction of dreadnoughts that they were unlikely to use and unable to 
maintain. This paper argues that sociological concerns dominated naval 
procurement in the early twentieth century, but that the steady rationalization 
of defense procurement procedures throughout the twentieth century has made a 
widespread recurrence of this phenomenon unlikely.



UWISC is sponsored by the Center for International Studies at the Jackson 
School of International Studies, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, and the 
Departments of Political Science and Scandinavian Studies.