Rise And Fall of British Naval Mastery, The Book

With a New Introduction by the Author

First published in 1976, this book is the first detailed examination of the history of British sea power since A.T. Mahan's classic The Influence of Sea Power on History, published in 1890. In analyzing the reasons for the rise and fall of Great Britain as a predominant maritime nation in the period from the Tudors to the present day, Professor Kennedy sets the Royal Navy within a framework of national, international, economic, political and strategical considerations.

To this new paperback edition the author has added a new introduction that brings the discussion of naval power up to date, with special emphasis on today's enormous U.S. Navy as the prime contemporary example of the use of naval forces to wield global influence.

"As soon as it appeared in 1976, Paul M. Kennedy's magisterial survey of the historical role and significance of British seapower was recognized by serious naval historians as a work of the first importance. The book's publication in paperback provides an opportunity to recommend it to students of international relations, for its main objective is to place British naval power in broad geopolitical context. This is by far the most important survey of British naval history since Sir Herbert Richmond's Statesmen and Sea Power (1946) and in some ways it is more important."
-International Historical Review

Paul M. Kennedy is J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History at Yale University. He regularly publishes in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, and many other periodicals and scholarly journals. The author of thirteen books, he is perhaps best known for The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. His most recent publication (2006) is The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Future of the United Nations.