Scholarship and the ship of state: Rethinking the Anglo-American strategic decline analogy

This article uses the centenary of the First World War as an opportunity to re-examine a major element of the existing literature on the war-the strategic implications of supposed British decline-as well as analogies to the contemporary United States based upon that interpretation of history. It argues that the standard declinist interpretation of British strategy rests to a surprising degree upon the work of the naval historian Arthur Marder, and that Marder's archival research and conceptual framework were weaker than is generally realized. It suggests that more recent work appearing since Marder is stronger and renders the declinist strategic interpretation difficult to maintain. It concludes by considering the implications of this new work for analogies between the United States today and First World War-era Britain, and for the use of history in contemporary policy debates.