The war business: British shipping and the First World War

Ships and the shipping industry occupy a liminal place in most understandings of Britain at war. When shipping does appear it emerges as a source of vulnerability, or of peril upon the high seas. Shipowners are rendered as archetypal profiteers, wedded to outdated notions of free trade that were unsuitable for an age of mass mobilization and state power. In the First World War, it was only action by the state that seemed to overcome these inherent faults as the Ministry of Shipping finally imposed order upon an otherwise chaotic and antiquated industry. The nationalization of shipping occurred just in time, and too late.

This paper develops an alternative account of the wartime relationship between ships, shipowners, and the state – and thus of Britain at war. Building on Peter Davies’ insistence that shipping be understood in international context, it argues that seeing shipping through a prism of national organization fundamentally distorts how Britain made war between 1914-18. British strategy was predicated upon its capacity to exploit, adjust, and re-make the forms of global connectivity that had underpinned its financial and geopolitical power. This could not be achieved through any measure of state control possible at this time. The state lacked the economic understanding, administrative capacity, or political appetite to dictate world trade. Rather, the state evolved a purposeful policy of partnership and co-operation with maritime business that saw the logic of shipping become central to British strategic decision-making. The dictates of maritime transport ‘controlled’ how the war was fought, and ensured that it was far more than a ‘national’ endeavor.

Dr David Morgan-Owen teaches International Relations at the University of St Andrews. He is author of The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 (Oxford Uni Press, 2017), and is currently finishing work on a book about seapower and the First World War.

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