Naval Policy Between the Wars; [Volume] I: The Period of Anglo-American Antagonism 1919-1929

New York: Walker and Company, 1976. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good. 638, [2] pages. Glossary of Abbreviations. Illustrations. Maps. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. Front board weak and restrengthened with glue. Captain Stephen Wentworth Roskill, CBE, DSC, FBA, DLitt (1 August 1903 - 4 November 1982) was a senior career officer of the Royal Navy, serving during the Second World War and served as the official historian of the Royal Navy from 1949 to 1960. He is now chiefly remembered as a prodigious author of books on British maritime history. He was the senior British observer at the Bikini Atomic tests in 1946, and served as Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, 1946-48 before retiring. On retiring from active service in 1948, Roskill was appointed by the Cabinet Office Historical Section to write the official naval history of the Second World War. His three volume work The War at Sea was published between 1954 and 1961. After retirement, he was a visiting lecturer at several universities, including being Lees Knowles Lecturer in 1961, the Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1965, and Richmond Lecturer at Cambridge University in 1967. Stephen Roskill conceived Naval Policy Between the Wars as a peacetime equivalent of the official naval histories, filling the gap between the First World War volumes and his own study of the Navy in the Second World War. It is marked by the extensive use of British and American sources, from which Roskill extracted shrewd and balanced conclusions that have stood the test of time. The main themes of this volume are: the after-effects of the Armistice; the struggle to prevent a renewed naval arms race which culminated in the Washington Naval Treaty; and the broader attempts at peacekeeping through diplomacy. The primacy of big-gun battleships was increasingly challenged by air power, and the Navy fought an internal battle with the Air Force to obtain sufficient aviation assets for the fleet. This volume demonstrates that the period is key to understanding the development of the Navy that fought the Second World War.