Richard Dunley
Biographic Data
| ID | 2218539 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard Dunley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard |
| FAMILY NAME | Dunley |
| SIGNATURE | DUNLEY R |
| AFFILIATIONS | UNSW Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7932-7035 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
A global commons no longer
In recent years the way in which states perceive the value of the seas has changed. The processes of legal and extra-legal territorialization have meant that the seas are now viewed as having value in terms of resources, security and sovereignty. The build up of critical maritime infrastructure has bestowed additional value on large areas of the seas. This shift in the perception of value is having a profound impact on the missions navies are exp…
Inhumane, treacherous or uselessly cruel? Debating underwater weapons, 1880-1939
In the first half of the twentieth century, there were concerted efforts to restrict or proscribe the use of underwater weapons, including submarines, mines and torpedoes. These efforts largely failed, but exploring them sheds new light on why certain weapons are considered ‘legitimate’, while others are not. Unlike other transgressive weapons, these new technologies did not necessarily cause greater harm to the individual than existing weapons. …
Australianised military off-the-shelf
Australia adopts an Australianised Military Off-the-Shelf approach to naval ship design. It does so in order to reduce risk and cost whilst also delivering appropriate vessels for the Royal Australian Navy and maintaining sovereign capability. This article examines Australia’s approach to naval ship design, outlining its strengths and weaknesses before using the case study of the Anzac Class frigates to consider the criteria for the successful ap…
Plan B
The rise of China combined with a growing “America First” approach to US foreign policy has generated a debate in Australia about the status of the alliance with the United States. This article contributes to this debate by exploring what a Plan B, for Australian security outside the alliance, might look like. It assesses existing scholarship on the subject, highlighting how recent arguments that Australia can “go it alone” are fundamentally flaw…
Uncrewed naval vessels and the span of maritime tasks
Uncrewed vessels are increasingly being presented as the future of naval capability. Across the globe navies are turning to autonomous systems, and increasingly large uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) as potential solutions to their budgetary and personnel problems. There has been detailed academic discussion of the technical and legal challenges presented by uncrewed vessels, whilst policymakers, particularly in the United States have debated how …
The end of the ‘lucky country’? Understanding the failure of the Aukus policy debate
The Australian debate over AUKUS, and its strategic policy more generally, has been notable for its disjointed and incoherent nature. This article seeks to explain why, arguing that Australia has been the beneficiary of a remarkably benign strategic situation for nearly 80 years, something that has distorted our understanding of the underlying landscape
Do Archive Catalogues Make History
Archival research is foundational to the writing of most works of academic history and is a central part of the professional identity of historians. Despite this, we know very little about what historians do in archives, and how it shapes the process of writing history. This article uses quantitative data from The National Archives of the UK to analyse one part of this puzzle, namely how historians choose what to look at in an archive. It explore…
Rebuilding the Mills of Sea Power
Throughout the interwar period the British government viewed economic warfare as one of its most important strategic weapons, particularly in the event of war with Japan. This article explores the detailed steps taken to ensure that Britain would be able to deploy economic warfare tools in any future conflict. In doing so it reveals how a defence organisation with detailed practical knowledge of economic warfare planned to convert global naval po…
The Archive of the Edwardian Foreign Office
This analysis explores the history and structure of the archive of the Edwardian Foreign Office. It uses data and quantitative research methodology to address two crucial questions. What survives within the collection? And what can historians and others find using the regular discovery tools such as indexes and catalogues? It concludes by looking at how these processes shape the ways historians are using this collection; and in doing so, it provi…
Anti-Submarine Warfare in the Pre-First World War Royal Navy
In August 1914 the Royal Navy entered the First World War without a clear sense of how it was going to undertake anti-submarine warfare (ASW). In part this was a technical issue; fundamentally the requirements of ASW were at the very edge of what was then possible. This article will, however, argue that the problem ran deeper, and stemmed from cultural assumptions about what the role of the Royal Navy was, and how it should seek to address the ch…
Britain and the Mine, 1900–1915
Invasion, raids and army reform
In response to the pressure of the invasion debates of 1903–5 the Admiralty developed a new strategy, ‘flotilla defence’, to counter arguments brought forward by the War Office. This concept was a purely political one; it was a cynical bid to mislead the Committee of Imperial Defence in order to secure naval funding. By placing ‘flotilla defence’ in this context this article will demonstrate that it was not, as has been claimed, a revolutionary n…
The First World War at sea
Traditional Anglophone interpretations of the First World War have tended to be dominated by accounts of events on the Western Front with brief asides looking at the war in the East and in other th
Sir John Fisher and the Policy of Strategic Deterrence, 1904–1908
This article shows how Sir John Fisher, together with Edward VII, sought to use Britain’s naval strength as a tool of deterrence against Germany. By highlighting the Royal Navy’s strength and German vulnerability, they tried to convince policymakers in Berlin that war was not in German interests. This attitude underpinned much of Fisher’s naval policy and helps to explain some of his more extreme statements and actions, which have been the source…
The warrior has always shewed himself greater than his weapons’
During the Russo-Japanese War, British naval attachés serving with the Japanese produced a series of reports on both technical and cultural aspects of the conflict. In seeking to explain the Japanese successes, the attachés compared and contrasted their hosts with themselves, Royal Navy and Britain more generally. These reports offer a rare insight of the cultural preconceptions of Royal Navy officers prior to the First World War, presenting expl…
Not Intended to Act as Spies’
This article shows how the Royal Navy under the leadership of John Fisher exploited the British Consular system in Germany and Denmark to obtain both open-source and covert intelligence between 1906 and 1914. This structure was initially constructed with the tacit support of the Foreign Office, replacing an earlier intelligence network in France and Russia. The intelligence collected by the consuls reflected the Royal Navy's strategic priorities …
Plan B
The rise of China combined with a growing “America First” approach to US foreign policy has generated a debate in Australia about the status of the alliance with the United States. This article contributes to this debate by exploring what a Plan B, for Australian security outside the alliance, might look like. It assesses existing scholarship on the subject, highlighting how recent arguments that Australia can “go it alone” are fundamentally flaw…
Do Archive Catalogues Make History
Archival research is foundational to the writing of most works of academic history and is a central part of the professional identity of historians. Despite this, we know very little about what historians do in archives, and how it shapes the process of writing history. This article uses quantitative data from The National Archives of the UK to analyse one part of this puzzle, namely how historians choose what to look at in an archive. It explore…
Britain and the Mine, 1900–1915
Sir John Fisher and the Policy of Strategic Deterrence, 1904–1908
This article shows how Sir John Fisher, together with Edward VII, sought to use Britain’s naval strength as a tool of deterrence against Germany. By highlighting the Royal Navy’s strength and German vulnerability, they tried to convince policymakers in Berlin that war was not in German interests. This attitude underpinned much of Fisher’s naval policy and helps to explain some of his more extreme statements and actions, which have been the source…
Not Intended to Act as Spies’
This article shows how the Royal Navy under the leadership of John Fisher exploited the British Consular system in Germany and Denmark to obtain both open-source and covert intelligence between 1906 and 1914. This structure was initially constructed with the tacit support of the Foreign Office, replacing an earlier intelligence network in France and Russia. The intelligence collected by the consuls reflected the Royal Navy's strategic priorities …
The First World War at sea
Traditional Anglophone interpretations of the First World War have tended to be dominated by accounts of events on the Western Front with brief asides looking at the war in the East and in other th
Sir John Fisher and the Policy of Strategic Deterrence, 1904–1908
This article shows how Sir John Fisher, together with Edward VII, sought to use Britain’s naval strength as a tool of deterrence against Germany. By highlighting the Royal Navy’s strength and German vulnerability, they tried to convince policymakers in Berlin that war was not in German interests. This attitude underpinned much of Fisher’s naval policy and helps to explain some of his more extreme statements and actions, which have been the source…
The warrior has always shewed himself greater than his weapons’
During the Russo-Japanese War, British naval attachés serving with the Japanese produced a series of reports on both technical and cultural aspects of the conflict. In seeking to explain the Japanese successes, the attachés compared and contrasted their hosts with themselves, Royal Navy and Britain more generally. These reports offer a rare insight of the cultural preconceptions of Royal Navy officers prior to the First World War, presenting expl…
Invasion, raids and army reform
In response to the pressure of the invasion debates of 1903–5 the Admiralty developed a new strategy, ‘flotilla defence’, to counter arguments brought forward by the War Office. This concept was a purely political one; it was a cynical bid to mislead the Committee of Imperial Defence in order to secure naval funding. By placing ‘flotilla defence’ in this context this article will demonstrate that it was not, as has been claimed, a revolutionary n…
Britain and the Mine, 1900–1915
Anti-Submarine Warfare in the Pre-First World War Royal Navy
In August 1914 the Royal Navy entered the First World War without a clear sense of how it was going to undertake anti-submarine warfare (ASW). In part this was a technical issue; fundamentally the requirements of ASW were at the very edge of what was then possible. This article will, however, argue that the problem ran deeper, and stemmed from cultural assumptions about what the role of the Royal Navy was, and how it should seek to address the ch…
The Archive of the Edwardian Foreign Office
This analysis explores the history and structure of the archive of the Edwardian Foreign Office. It uses data and quantitative research methodology to address two crucial questions. What survives within the collection? And what can historians and others find using the regular discovery tools such as indexes and catalogues? It concludes by looking at how these processes shape the ways historians are using this collection; and in doing so, it provi…
Do Archive Catalogues Make History
Archival research is foundational to the writing of most works of academic history and is a central part of the professional identity of historians. Despite this, we know very little about what historians do in archives, and how it shapes the process of writing history. This article uses quantitative data from The National Archives of the UK to analyse one part of this puzzle, namely how historians choose what to look at in an archive. It explore…
Rebuilding the Mills of Sea Power
Throughout the interwar period the British government viewed economic warfare as one of its most important strategic weapons, particularly in the event of war with Japan. This article explores the detailed steps taken to ensure that Britain would be able to deploy economic warfare tools in any future conflict. In doing so it reveals how a defence organisation with detailed practical knowledge of economic warfare planned to convert global naval po…
Uncrewed naval vessels and the span of maritime tasks
Uncrewed vessels are increasingly being presented as the future of naval capability. Across the globe navies are turning to autonomous systems, and increasingly large uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) as potential solutions to their budgetary and personnel problems. There has been detailed academic discussion of the technical and legal challenges presented by uncrewed vessels, whilst policymakers, particularly in the United States have debated how …
The end of the ‘lucky country’? Understanding the failure of the Aukus policy debate
The Australian debate over AUKUS, and its strategic policy more generally, has been notable for its disjointed and incoherent nature. This article seeks to explain why, arguing that Australia has been the beneficiary of a remarkably benign strategic situation for nearly 80 years, something that has distorted our understanding of the underlying landscape
Australianised military off-the-shelf
Australia adopts an Australianised Military Off-the-Shelf approach to naval ship design. It does so in order to reduce risk and cost whilst also delivering appropriate vessels for the Royal Australian Navy and maintaining sovereign capability. This article examines Australia’s approach to naval ship design, outlining its strengths and weaknesses before using the case study of the Anzac Class frigates to consider the criteria for the successful ap…
Plan B
The rise of China combined with a growing “America First” approach to US foreign policy has generated a debate in Australia about the status of the alliance with the United States. This article contributes to this debate by exploring what a Plan B, for Australian security outside the alliance, might look like. It assesses existing scholarship on the subject, highlighting how recent arguments that Australia can “go it alone” are fundamentally flaw…
Inhumane, treacherous or uselessly cruel? Debating underwater weapons, 1880-1939
In the first half of the twentieth century, there were concerted efforts to restrict or proscribe the use of underwater weapons, including submarines, mines and torpedoes. These efforts largely failed, but exploring them sheds new light on why certain weapons are considered ‘legitimate’, while others are not. Unlike other transgressive weapons, these new technologies did not necessarily cause greater harm to the individual than existing weapons. …
A global commons no longer
In recent years the way in which states perceive the value of the seas has changed. The processes of legal and extra-legal territorialization have meant that the seas are now viewed as having value in terms of resources, security and sovereignty. The build up of critical maritime infrastructure has bestowed additional value on large areas of the seas. This shift in the perception of value is having a profound impact on the missions navies are exp…
Political science (13 works) · Law (10 works) · History (9 works) · History (9 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Navy (7 works) · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works) · Military History and Strategy (6 works)