Winner of the 2024 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval LiteratureThe Neptune Factor is the biography of an idea—the concept of “Sea Power,” a term first coined by Capt. A.T. Mahan and the core thread of his life’s work.  His central argument was that the outcome of rivalries on the seas have decisively shaped the course of modern history. Although Mahan’s scholarship has long been seen as foundational to all systematic study of naval power, Neptune Factor...

An eye-opening interpretation of the infamous Gallipoli campaign that sets it in the context of global trade. In early 1915, the British government ordered the Royal Navy to force a passage of the Dardanelles Straits-the most heavily defended waterway in the world. After the Navy failed to breach Turkish defenses, British and allied ground forces stormed the Gallipoli peninsula but were unable to move off the beaches. Over the course of the year, the Allied landed hundreds...

Before the First World War, the British Admiralty conceived a plan to win rapid victory in the event of war with Germany-economic warfare on an unprecedented scale.This secret strategy called for the state to exploit Britain's effective monopolies in banking, communications, and shipping-the essential infrastructure underpinning global trade-to create a controlled implosion of the world economic system.In this revisionist account, Nicholas Lambert shows in lively detail how naval p...