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Title: Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865-1945 by William M. McBride ISBN: 0-8018-6486-0 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: December, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $51.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: A valuable addition
Comment: William McBride's book is accurately titled, although it needs to be understood that this is a social history of naval technological change, not technological history (nor economic history) per se. However, the little he does say about technology is mostly well informed, at least up to 1945 -- he has avoided the technological know-nothingism of many of the others who write on such subjects. He served as a junior naval officer and this background seems to stand him in good stead in forming his judgements about people and events.

The principal theme is the rise and evolution of ideas about battleships and their rivals for naval dominance. There are no profound new insights here, but on the whole McBride does a good job with his subject. He elaborates the picture in important respects and has many thoughtful observations to offer.

McBride sometimes is rather quick to impute motives to individuals and groups without much substantiation or consideration of alternative hypotheses. No doubt he is correct in most of these judgements, and he is less summary than many authors on these subjects have been, but I personally would have preferred a somewhat more measured approach.

Unfortunately, his prose can be off-putting at some times, due to his fondness for clothing fundamentally common-sensical concepts in obscurantist academic jargon. Fortunately, there is not too much of this and most of the book is reasonably readable.

One regrettable distortion comes in his somewhat tortured discussion of the naval arms limitations treaties (the Five Power Treaty of 1921 and its 1930 and 1936 London Treaty sequels). Although it has little to do with his ostensible subject, McBride ventures into judgments regarding the effects of various U.S. actions on opinion in Japan and the Imperial Japanese Navy, apparently without having consulted some of the most important scholarship on the subject. For instance, I can find no citation of his to James Crowley's book, Japan's Quest for Autonomy, with its extended and authoritative treatment of the U.S. as well as Japanese side of the London Treaties. Nor does he cite David Evans' and Mark Peattie's essential study of the Japanese Navy, Kaigun. These sources, based in extensive Japanese-language primary research, paint quite a different picture than McBride favors regarding the impact of the U.S. naval expansion of the 1930s on Japanese Navy views, relative to other influences. This is a self-inflicted wound: if he was unable to conduct more thorough research in the issue, peripheral as it is to his main point, McBride could perfectly well have avoided forming judgements regarding it without loss to his main arguments.

I puzzled over McBride's bald assertion that "the [rigid] airship could have succeeded," citing its supposed high search rate. He does make one citation to a book that examines this question in some detail and comes to quite different conclusions (Richard Smith's The Airships Akron & Macon), but seems to have relied principally on other sources. Few who have studied the issue carefully would agree with him -- some years ago, two of the last of Goodyear's rigid airship engineers disagreed flatly with him in the course of an extended discussion I had with them regarding proposals for reviving the technology.

It is understandable that there is no reference to the recent study by Thomas Hone, Norman Friedman, and Mark Mandeles, American & British Aircraft Carrier Development, 1919-1941 -- no doubt McBride's book was already in press by the time it appeared. Nevertheless, this is unfortunate, as their insights and evidence would have enriched McBride's work significantly in some areas.

In his final chapter, McBride ranges far beyond the period he set for himself, attempting not only to draw sweeping conclusions but to provide policy recommendations. Regrettably, this is the weakest part of the book. He is too ready to pronounce conclusions without careful analysis and without having developed strong evidence or given adequate consideration to alternative hypotheses. His treatment of recent developments often seems quite ill-informed and many of his confidently-asserted predictions seem dubious or even silly in light of what has transpired since the book was written. And he indulges especially in dense academic jargon in this section. Most readers will want to skip this chapter, and will retain a better opinion of the book for having done so.

Notwithstanding some lacunae, however, on the whole this is a valuable study of the process by which the U.S. Navy adapted itself to changing technology and needs in the period between the Civil War and World War II.

Will O'Neil