In a book honouring a great naval educator it is only fitting that we reflect on the career of another. In the last decades of the nineteenth century navies grappled with the problem of preparing their officer corps for future wars, while the pace of technological change was accelerating, and there were few conflicts to inform the development of tactical and strategic doctrine. The United States Naval War College, established in 1884, addressed this issue as a vital preparatory stage for the creation of a new navy. In Great Britain the problem was compounded by the unique nature of the Imperial state, a global collection of colonies, dominions, informal economic zones and markets, linked by seaborne and submarine telegraph communications, and wholly dependent on sea control. Sir Julian Corbett developed classical strategic theory, hitherto dominated by continental military concerns to explain the strategic logic of British power. This chapter considers the origins and purpose of Corbett's Some Principles of Maritime Strategyof 1911. While Corbett's work has long been recognised as an outstanding intellectual contribution to strategic thought and defence education, it seems the case needs restatement.

A public intellectual, intimately engaged with naval and political circles at the highest levels, most of Corbett's contacts were on the Fisherite and Liberal Imperialist sides of the debate. They were the men in power. He worked for the Royal Navy because he loved the Service, found the work congenial, and retained the intellectual independence secured by private wealth, a global investment portfolio and London property.

Between 1902 and 1914 Corbett systematically analysed English/British strategy from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, suitably updated by examining the Spanish–American and Russo-Japanese Wars of 1898 and 1904–5, in a sophisticated attempt to establish a ‘British’ strategic model that was consistent with the classic texts of Clausewitz and Jomini, rather than naval thinkers like Mahan and Philip Colomb. He sought to explain the primacy of maritime over continental power to contemporary British statesmen and senior officers. He was not a ‘navalist’: he stressed army–navy cooperation, and dismissed naval strategy as a ‘minor’ or operational issue.