David Morgan-Owen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1131813 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Morgan-Owen |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Morgan-Owen |
| SIGNATURE | MORGAN-OWEN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0551-2836 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Sources of military change
Judging by its doctrinal publications, the UK Defence establishment stands poised to begin a process of unprecedented change. The language of ‘multi-domain’ thinking is prominent within this discourse and is identified as being a key vehicle via which UK Defence will deliver upon its programme of reform. This article seeks to offer an initial evaluation of these claims and to assess them in light of the burgeoning literatures on Western defence ‘…
A haunting past
This article examines historical fictions as social processes by which ideas about conflict and warfare are constructed and narrated within society. Focusing on Britain, it explores ‘truth telling’ about the past in an applied context, examining efforts to construct and sustain narratives about Britain’s military past and their role in upholding forms of political and societal consensus that underpin the development and use of military power. We …
The politics of future war
Tensions between civil and military authorities over issues such as budgets and strategic posture are unavoidable in pluralistic societies. Scholars of Civil-Military Relations (CMR) have identified a range of practices through which civil-military contestation occurs, and examined their implications for issues such as military effectiveness. This literature, however, has yet to incorporate critical approaches to knowledge into its analysis. Seek…
Scares, Panics, and Strategy
This study examines whether “invasion scares” before 1914 period had an impact on the course of British strategy. It shows that contemporary observers perceived a clear link between the ways in which British society depicted and understood issues of strategy and the ways in which the state could prepare for and conduct a future war. This was particularly so when it came to the language used to describe issues of security in Britain and the ideolo…
Strategy, rationality, and the idea of public opinion in Britain, 1870-1914
This article examines how shifts in political culture affect the formation of strategy. It does so by focusing upon the role that 'public opinion' played in debates over strategy in Britain from 1870 to 1914. The article makes three contributions. First, it challenges the notion that linkages between democracy and strategy were creations of the twentieth century or the result of developments in air power. Second, it deepens our understanding of c…
Continuity and Change
This article presents a new interpretation of the relationship between technology and warfare at sea before and during the First World War. It challenges existing accounts which view technological innovations as the primary driver of naval strategy during this period, and argues for a more contingent, incremental and contextualised approach to the relationship between technology and strategy. It illustrates these points with a specific example: t…
History and the Perils of Grand Strategy
Grand strategy is of increasing interest to policy makers and scholars today. Considerable attention has been devoted to attempting to define what grand strategy is, and what it ought to entail. This article argues that these attempts risk imposing a modern Anglophone conception of ‘grand’ strategy upon cultures and periods which conceptualised strategy in alternative ways. Illustrating these points through a study of Great Britain between c. 187…
Re-fighting the First World War
Is there anything left to say about the First World War? As we come to the end of four years of centenary commemorations, it appears to be a question worth asking. Renewed public interest in the co
Studying Mars and Clio
In ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’ (History Workshop Journal 85, 2018), Kim Wagner rightly argues that violence was a ubiquitous feature of colonial rule and that this fact must be acknowledged if we are to fully confront the legacies of empire, and their implications for conflict today.1 In presenting his case, however, Wagner makes serious historical errors as well as the sweepin…
Churchill and the Dardanelles, by Christopher M. Bell
As the centenary commemorations of the First World War roll on, the dispassionate reader might be excused for looking askance at yet another new volume on the conflict—let alone one focused upon the personage of that most studied individual, Winston Spencer Churchill. What, they might ask, is the need for a new study of a military operation which, as Bell ably illustrates, cannot be judged to be anything other than a failure, or of a politician w…
Heligoland
The relationship between Britain and Germany, which played such an important role in shaping the fate of Europe in the twentieth century, has been a fertile field of study in recent years. Scholars have now moved beyond simplistic notions of a ‘rivalry’ which prefigured seemingly inevitable conflicts in 1914 and 1939 to present a more nuanced picture which includes the countervailing currents of co-operation, competition, shared interests and bel…
Commemorating the centenary of the First World War
This special issue examines the ways in which contemporary political, diplomatic, social and cultural trends have influenced centennial commemoration of the First World War in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. The four articles identify and examine a diversity of narratives that have emerged over the centenary period, charting similarities and differences between states, organisations and individuals. While divergent narratives certainly exist …
Britain, Europe, and the War at Sea, 1900–1918
An ‘Intermediate Blockade’? British North Sea Strategy, 1912–1914
Historians have argued that, between 1912 and 1914, Britain’s naval leadership projected a so-called ‘intermediate blockade’, a line of vessels strung across the mid-North Sea. This strategy has been widely criticized as impractical and unrealistic. However, this article demonstrates that the Admiralty never projected such an approach. Rather, the naval leadership intended to adopt a system of mid-North Sea patrols during this period. By misunder…
America's Black Sea Fleet
The story of the US naval forces stationed in the Near East in the aftermath of the First World War is unfamiliar to the majority of historians. However, as this book attempts to demonstrate, it is
Evolution or Revolution? British Naval Policy in the Fisher Era
This article outlines recent trends in the scholarship on the Royal Navy in the years preceding the outbreak of the First World War. It explains the evolution of the historiography on the topic and outlines how and why new approaches are required to progress our understanding of the topic henceforth
A Revolution in Naval Affairs? Technology, Strategy and British Naval Policy in the ‘Fisher Era’
This article examines the applicability of the concept of ‘revolutions’ in warfare to the study of pre-First World War British naval history. It argues that by attaching an overt degree of importance to the role of technological change in affecting transformations in contemporary views of war-fighting, historians have overlooked many aspects of Admiralty policy that can be better understood in terms of continuity, rather than ‘revolution’
Cooked up in the Dinner Hour? Sir Arthur Wilson’s War Plan, Reconsidered
Torpedo
"Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain by Katherine C. Epstein." Canadian Journal of History, 49(2), pp. 352–353
History is a Record of Exploded Ideas’
This article addresses how the Royal Navy intended to defend the British Isles from invasion before the First World War. Revisionist historians have recently suggested that during his first tenure as First Sea Lord, 1904–10, Sir John Fisher conceived and implemented a radical new home-defence strategy. Fisher's ‘flotilla defence’ system assigned a hitherto unprecedented importance to flotilla craft. This was apparently a marked departure from pre…
The Royal Navy and the German Threat 1901-1914
The Royal Navy and the German Threat 1901-1914: Admiralty Plans to Protect British Trade in a War against Germany, by Matthew S. Seligmann. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012. x, 186 pp. $110.00 US (cloth). Historians of the Royal Navy in the pre-First World War period have long accepted that the two principal challenges facing naval planners at the turn of the twentieth century were those of safeguarding British seaborne trade and securing th…
History is a Record of Exploded Ideas’
This article addresses how the Royal Navy intended to defend the British Isles from invasion before the First World War. Revisionist historians have recently suggested that during his first tenure as First Sea Lord, 1904–10, Sir John Fisher conceived and implemented a radical new home-defence strategy. Fisher's ‘flotilla defence’ system assigned a hitherto unprecedented importance to flotilla craft. This was apparently a marked departure from pre…
Commemorating the centenary of the First World War
This special issue examines the ways in which contemporary political, diplomatic, social and cultural trends have influenced centennial commemoration of the First World War in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. The four articles identify and examine a diversity of narratives that have emerged over the centenary period, charting similarities and differences between states, organisations and individuals. While divergent narratives certainly exist …
Sources of military change
Judging by its doctrinal publications, the UK Defence establishment stands poised to begin a process of unprecedented change. The language of ‘multi-domain’ thinking is prominent within this discourse and is identified as being a key vehicle via which UK Defence will deliver upon its programme of reform. This article seeks to offer an initial evaluation of these claims and to assess them in light of the burgeoning literatures on Western defence ‘…
History and the Perils of Grand Strategy
Grand strategy is of increasing interest to policy makers and scholars today. Considerable attention has been devoted to attempting to define what grand strategy is, and what it ought to entail. This article argues that these attempts risk imposing a modern Anglophone conception of ‘grand’ strategy upon cultures and periods which conceptualised strategy in alternative ways. Illustrating these points through a study of Great Britain between c. 187…
Studying Mars and Clio
In ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’ (History Workshop Journal 85, 2018), Kim Wagner rightly argues that violence was a ubiquitous feature of colonial rule and that this fact must be acknowledged if we are to fully confront the legacies of empire, and their implications for conflict today.1 In presenting his case, however, Wagner makes serious historical errors as well as the sweepin…
An ‘Intermediate Blockade’? British North Sea Strategy, 1912–1914
Historians have argued that, between 1912 and 1914, Britain’s naval leadership projected a so-called ‘intermediate blockade’, a line of vessels strung across the mid-North Sea. This strategy has been widely criticized as impractical and unrealistic. However, this article demonstrates that the Admiralty never projected such an approach. Rather, the naval leadership intended to adopt a system of mid-North Sea patrols during this period. By misunder…
Evolution or Revolution? British Naval Policy in the Fisher Era
This article outlines recent trends in the scholarship on the Royal Navy in the years preceding the outbreak of the First World War. It explains the evolution of the historiography on the topic and outlines how and why new approaches are required to progress our understanding of the topic henceforth
History is a Record of Exploded Ideas’
This article addresses how the Royal Navy intended to defend the British Isles from invasion before the First World War. Revisionist historians have recently suggested that during his first tenure as First Sea Lord, 1904–10, Sir John Fisher conceived and implemented a radical new home-defence strategy. Fisher's ‘flotilla defence’ system assigned a hitherto unprecedented importance to flotilla craft. This was apparently a marked departure from pre…
The Royal Navy and the German Threat 1901-1914
The Royal Navy and the German Threat 1901-1914: Admiralty Plans to Protect British Trade in a War against Germany, by Matthew S. Seligmann. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012. x, 186 pp. $110.00 US (cloth). Historians of the Royal Navy in the pre-First World War period have long accepted that the two principal challenges facing naval planners at the turn of the twentieth century were those of safeguarding British seaborne trade and securing th…
Torpedo
"Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain by Katherine C. Epstein." Canadian Journal of History, 49(2), pp. 352–353
An ‘Intermediate Blockade’? British North Sea Strategy, 1912–1914
Historians have argued that, between 1912 and 1914, Britain’s naval leadership projected a so-called ‘intermediate blockade’, a line of vessels strung across the mid-North Sea. This strategy has been widely criticized as impractical and unrealistic. However, this article demonstrates that the Admiralty never projected such an approach. Rather, the naval leadership intended to adopt a system of mid-North Sea patrols during this period. By misunder…
America's Black Sea Fleet
The story of the US naval forces stationed in the Near East in the aftermath of the First World War is unfamiliar to the majority of historians. However, as this book attempts to demonstrate, it is
Evolution or Revolution? British Naval Policy in the Fisher Era
This article outlines recent trends in the scholarship on the Royal Navy in the years preceding the outbreak of the First World War. It explains the evolution of the historiography on the topic and outlines how and why new approaches are required to progress our understanding of the topic henceforth
A Revolution in Naval Affairs? Technology, Strategy and British Naval Policy in the ‘Fisher Era’
This article examines the applicability of the concept of ‘revolutions’ in warfare to the study of pre-First World War British naval history. It argues that by attaching an overt degree of importance to the role of technological change in affecting transformations in contemporary views of war-fighting, historians have overlooked many aspects of Admiralty policy that can be better understood in terms of continuity, rather than ‘revolution’
Cooked up in the Dinner Hour? Sir Arthur Wilson’s War Plan, Reconsidered
Heligoland
The relationship between Britain and Germany, which played such an important role in shaping the fate of Europe in the twentieth century, has been a fertile field of study in recent years. Scholars have now moved beyond simplistic notions of a ‘rivalry’ which prefigured seemingly inevitable conflicts in 1914 and 1939 to present a more nuanced picture which includes the countervailing currents of co-operation, competition, shared interests and bel…
Commemorating the centenary of the First World War
This special issue examines the ways in which contemporary political, diplomatic, social and cultural trends have influenced centennial commemoration of the First World War in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. The four articles identify and examine a diversity of narratives that have emerged over the centenary period, charting similarities and differences between states, organisations and individuals. While divergent narratives certainly exist …
Britain, Europe, and the War at Sea, 1900–1918
Churchill and the Dardanelles, by Christopher M. Bell
As the centenary commemorations of the First World War roll on, the dispassionate reader might be excused for looking askance at yet another new volume on the conflict—let alone one focused upon the personage of that most studied individual, Winston Spencer Churchill. What, they might ask, is the need for a new study of a military operation which, as Bell ably illustrates, cannot be judged to be anything other than a failure, or of a politician w…
Re-fighting the First World War
Is there anything left to say about the First World War? As we come to the end of four years of centenary commemorations, it appears to be a question worth asking. Renewed public interest in the co
Studying Mars and Clio
In ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’ (History Workshop Journal 85, 2018), Kim Wagner rightly argues that violence was a ubiquitous feature of colonial rule and that this fact must be acknowledged if we are to fully confront the legacies of empire, and their implications for conflict today.1 In presenting his case, however, Wagner makes serious historical errors as well as the sweepin…
Continuity and Change
This article presents a new interpretation of the relationship between technology and warfare at sea before and during the First World War. It challenges existing accounts which view technological innovations as the primary driver of naval strategy during this period, and argues for a more contingent, incremental and contextualised approach to the relationship between technology and strategy. It illustrates these points with a specific example: t…
History and the Perils of Grand Strategy
Grand strategy is of increasing interest to policy makers and scholars today. Considerable attention has been devoted to attempting to define what grand strategy is, and what it ought to entail. This article argues that these attempts risk imposing a modern Anglophone conception of ‘grand’ strategy upon cultures and periods which conceptualised strategy in alternative ways. Illustrating these points through a study of Great Britain between c. 187…
Strategy, rationality, and the idea of public opinion in Britain, 1870-1914
This article examines how shifts in political culture affect the formation of strategy. It does so by focusing upon the role that 'public opinion' played in debates over strategy in Britain from 1870 to 1914. The article makes three contributions. First, it challenges the notion that linkages between democracy and strategy were creations of the twentieth century or the result of developments in air power. Second, it deepens our understanding of c…
The politics of future war
Tensions between civil and military authorities over issues such as budgets and strategic posture are unavoidable in pluralistic societies. Scholars of Civil-Military Relations (CMR) have identified a range of practices through which civil-military contestation occurs, and examined their implications for issues such as military effectiveness. This literature, however, has yet to incorporate critical approaches to knowledge into its analysis. Seek…
Scares, Panics, and Strategy
This study examines whether “invasion scares” before 1914 period had an impact on the course of British strategy. It shows that contemporary observers perceived a clear link between the ways in which British society depicted and understood issues of strategy and the ways in which the state could prepare for and conduct a future war. This was particularly so when it came to the language used to describe issues of security in Britain and the ideolo…
Sources of military change
Judging by its doctrinal publications, the UK Defence establishment stands poised to begin a process of unprecedented change. The language of ‘multi-domain’ thinking is prominent within this discourse and is identified as being a key vehicle via which UK Defence will deliver upon its programme of reform. This article seeks to offer an initial evaluation of these claims and to assess them in light of the burgeoning literatures on Western defence ‘…
A haunting past
This article examines historical fictions as social processes by which ideas about conflict and warfare are constructed and narrated within society. Focusing on Britain, it explores ‘truth telling’ about the past in an applied context, examining efforts to construct and sustain narratives about Britain’s military past and their role in upholding forms of political and societal consensus that underpin the development and use of military power. We …
Political science (20 works) · History (17 works) · Law (17 works) · History (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Sociology (10 works) · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact (10 works) · Military History and Strategy (9 works) · Ancient history (8 works) · Economic history (8 works)