The Altered Environment

Abstract

IT would be surprising if the historical record of any activity so essentially irregular and ad hoc as gunboat diplomacy were to assume any clearly defined pattern. The conclusions to be drawn from the analysis of the preceding chapter, or from the more extensive summary of the Appendix, must accordingly be confined to a few cautious generalities. First of all, throughout the last fifty years, albeit with the fluctuations that inevitably result from changes in the international balance of power, a number of different governments continued to find various political applications for limited naval force. Secondly, although the collapse of the Russian and Turkish Empires, the chaos of China and American policy in the Caribbean combined to raise gunboat diplomacy during the twenties to sustained heights of activity not since achieved, the fluctuations of subsequent decades have not been uniformly downward. The lull of the thirties prefaced a new peak in the last years of peace; the nadir of 1944 (the only year without an example) was followed by a fresh outburst as soon as peace returned and, if the exceptional circumstances of the Spanish Civil War are excluded, the sixties have seen more use of limited naval force than the thirties. Thirdly, the varieties of gunboat diplomacy practised at the beginning of our period may also be distinguished during its later years.

Historical facts and events are studied not for imitation and not in a quest for ‘prescriptions’, but to trace regularities and to use them as a basis for formulating the principles of armed struggle best suited to contemporary conditions.

Penzin¹