ENGLISH

Arms, Economics and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs

By G. C. Peden

Book information

Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Year
2007
ISBN
0521867487, 9780521867481
LCC
UA647 .P33 2007
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
3 MB (2854110 bytes)
Series
Cambridge Military Histories
Pages
400\400
Topic
History
Scanned
yes
Time added
2010-02-18 13:16:04
Исторические дисциплины;История стран Европы и Аме

Description

This book integrates strategy, technology and economics and presents a new way of looking at twentieth-century military history and Britain's decline as a great power. G. C. Peden explores how from the Edwardian era to the 1960s warfare was transformed by a series of innovations, including dreadnoughts, submarines, aircraft, tanks, radar, nuclear weapons and guided missiles. He shows that the cost of these new weapons tended to rise more quickly than national income and argues that strategy had to be adapted to take account of both the increased potency of new weapons and the economy's diminishing ability to sustain armed forces of a given size. Prior to the development of nuclear weapons, British strategy was based on an ability to wear down an enemy through blockade, attrition (in the First World War) and strategic bombing (in the Second), and therefore power rested as much on economic strength as on armaments.

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