The Foundations of British Maritime Ascendancy

Explores the fundamental role of the British state in facilitating the nation's global expansion and ascendancy in the eighteenth century.

Before 1815 Britain established a global empire, achieved naval domination, and laid the foundations of the first industrial revolution. This book explains the central and often underestimated role of the British state in providing the money and infrastructure to support its maritime ascendancy and develop expertise in overseas expansion.British power and global expansion between 1755 and 1815 have mainly been attributed to the fiscal-military state and the achievements of the Royal navy at sea. Roger Morriss here sheds new light on the broader range of developments in the infrastructure of the state needed to extend British power at sea and overseas. He demonstrates how developments in culture, experience and control in central government affected the supply of ships, manpower, food, transport and ordnance as well as the support of the army, permitting the maintenance of armed forces of unprecedented size and their projection to distant stations. He reveals how the British state, although dependent on the private sector, built a partnership with it based on trust, ethics and the law. This book argues that Britain's military bureaucracy, traditionally regarded as inferior to the fighting services, was in fact the keystone of the nation's maritime ascendancy.