Overview

This study examines how intellectual and institutional developments transformed the U.S. Navy from 1873 to 1898. These dates bracket a dynamic quarter-century duringwhich Americans witnessed their navy transform from a modest imperial constabulary into a powerful mechanized force designed principally for national defense. Cultures ofprogress-clusters of ideas, beliefs, values, and practices pertaining to modern warfare and technology-guided the Navy's transformation. Working together, naval officers andcivilian policy-makers radically upgraded the Navy's technology, reconceived the nation's strategic foundations, and redefined the naval profession. For most of the nineteenth century, the United States maintained a """"peace"""" navy to support aspirations for an overseas maritime empire. The Navy during this time existed principally to police and promote U.S. commercial activities abroad. Meanwhile, civil leaders remained confident they could improvise a """"war"""" navy to meet any emergency the nation might encounter. Within the officer corps, the peace navy culture bolstered a professional identity that valued expertise in seamanship and gunnery, while attaching little importance to strategy, fleet operations, and other advanced warfare skills. The 1880s witnessed a fundamental shift in naval mission priorities that helped toreshape both the navy and the professional identity of its officers. Troubled by developments in military technology and international politics, U.S. policy-makerssupplanted the constabulary tradition with a new focus on national defense. Within this shifting context, the """"new navy"""" of the 1890s represented a reversal of customary mission sets: war and national security needs eclipsed peace and commercial empire-building as the service's organizing principles. In addition to spurring technological transformation within the fleet, these changes energized efforts to cultivate strategic thought and practice among naval officers, helping to engender anew professional identity-that of """"Strategist."""" The agents of naval transformation embraced a progressive ideology. They viewed science, technology, and expertise as the best means to effect change in a world contorted by modernizing and globalizing trends. Moreover, the methods and accomplishments of Gilded Age naval reformers anticipated the wider surge of U.S. progressive-era development by some ten or twenty years. Within the navy's progressive movement, two new cultures-Strategy and Mechanism-influenced the course of transformation. Although they shared progressive pedigrees, each culture embodied a distinctive vision for the Navy's future. The conflict resulted, and the tensions between strategists and mechanists ultimately forged the dichotomous """"Warrior-Engineer"""" identity of modern naval officers.

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9781682471937

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Reviews

Scott Mobley makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how and why the U.S. Navy underwent the most complete and thoroughgoing transformation of any of our military services in their histories. This is an important story persuasively told, as valuable for our current military leadership as for historians and public officials involved in military affairs. --Richard H. Kohn, Professor Emeritus of History and Peace, War, and Defense, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A fine study, offering sound new insights into the transformation of the U S Navy in the late 19th century, correcting what had been described as an Old Guard resistance to the New Navy advocates at the Naval War College and the ONI. Mobley establishes that the dispute was, instead, between technology-oriented leaders like Francis Ramsey and strategy-oriented ones like Luce and Mahan. And he correctly indicates that this tension echoes to the present day. --Peter Karsten, author of The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modern American Navalism Captain Scott Mobley's book comes at a fortuitous time. The Naval reform movement in the period written about here is of immense importance to understanding one of the factors that shaped American naval policy and grand strategy in the coming 20th century. This work provides essential context for that understanding. Naval officers would be well served to study the generation of officers examined here, a story little known or told, who helped literally to change the world. --John T. Kuehn, PhD, Commander USN (retired), author of America's First General Staff: A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the Navy, 1900-1950

Captain Scott Mobley's book comes at a fortuitous time. The Naval reform movement in the period written about here is of immense importance to understanding one of the factors that shaped American naval policy and grand strategy in the coming 20th century. This work provides essential context for that understanding. Naval officers would be well served to study the generation of officers examined here, a story little known or told, who helped literally to change the world. --John T. Kuehn, PhD, Commander USN (retired), author of America's First General Staff: A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the Navy, 1900-1950

Captain Mobley's Progressives in Navy Blue builds on welcome recent scholarship on what once been an overlooked era of naval history prior to the war with Spain. Mobley argues new institutions such as the Naval Institute, Office of Naval Intelligence, and Naval War College facilitated a strategic, anti-imperialistic worldview within the Navy's officer corps that proved to be in the forefront of the progressive movement of the early 20th century. Mobley's synthetic work, feeding off the scholarship of Robert Wiebe, Richard Hofstadter, John Hattendorf and others, should be added to the syllabi for courses on progressivism on college campuses throughout the land. --David F. Winkler, author of Incidents at Sea: American Confrontation and Cooperation with Russia and China, 1945-2016 Scott Mobley makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how and why the U.S. Navy underwent the most complete and thoroughgoing transformation of any of our military services in their histories. This is an important story persuasively told, as valuable for our current military leadership as for historians and public officials involved in military affairs. --Richard H. Kohn, Professor Emeritus of History and Peace, War, and Defense, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A fine study, offering sound new insights into the transformation of the U S Navy in the late 19th century, correcting what had been described as an Old Guard resistance to the New Navy advocates at the Naval War College and the ONI. Mobley establishes that the dispute was, instead, between technology-oriented leaders like Francis Ramsey and strategy-oriented ones like Luce and Mahan. And he correctly indicates that this tension echoes to the present day. --Peter Karsten, author of The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modern American Navalism Captain Scott Mobley's book comes at a fortuitous time. The Naval reform movement in the period written about here is of immense importance to understanding one of the factors that shaped American naval policy and grand strategy in the coming 20th century. This work provides essential context for that understanding. Naval officers would be well served to study the generation of officers examined here, a story little known or told, who helped literally to change the world. --John T. Kuehn, PhD, Commander USN (retired), author of America's First General Staff: A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the Navy, 1900-1950

This book is lovingly researched.... Students new to these debates over progressivism, professionalism, and reform will find much of value in the historiographical language attached to the citations. --Naval Historical Foundation The book is fluently and clearly written.... Its thesis is well and convincingly supported by copious endnotes. Progressives in Navy Blue is a landmark work that augers well for the Naval Institute Press' new series, 'Studies in Naval History and Sea Power.' It ... deserves the widest readership. --The Mariner's Mirror It is not often that a book like this comes out, one that helps fill in a missing picture. Most studies of the United States Navy look at a few eras: early America, the Civil War, and post-Spanish/American War. Rarely do we get a nice, and well written, book that covers the era after the Civil War but before the Spanish/American War in such detail.... Mr. Mobley does an excellent job crafting the story by harnessing an impressive catalog of research that be breaks down and interprets the information for us, the reader. People will walk away learning how much the Navy has changed, and how it almost did not change, with the times. Improving the Navy was not a forgone conclusion, but Mr. Mobley gives us the story of how it came about. --Manhattan Book Review Mobley`s book makes not only the transformation of the U.S.Navy to a world leading combat navy better understandable, but gives some detailed insight in the meaning of maritime strategic thinking for the coming generations of Naval Commanders. --MarineForum Many of the lessons Mobley identifies can inform today's warrior-engineer debate. As the information age matures and the robotics age emerges, America's navy faces new technological and strategic challenges. Those who trust technology to dominate future warfare and those who argue for the continued need to study the science of war continue to clash, just as they did over a century ago. Lieutenant William Bainbridge-Hoff 's observation rings as validly today as when he uttered it in 1886: '[W]ell-constructed strategy must consider technology, just as technology should be informed by strategy' (p. 207). For this reason, those desiring to advance the naval profession should read this book. --Naval War College Review There is much to learn from reading this book. For just as the end of the 19th century saw the United States moving from wooden, wind-powered ships to steel, coal-fired ships, the beginning of the 21st century sees the U.S. Navy moving from manned platforms to unmanned platforms that carry out both surveillance and attack missions. Thus, the same sort of technological, tactical, and strategic tensions that percolated through the Navy between 1872 and 1898 are again being experienced in today's service. --The Journal of America's Literary Past Captain Mobley's Progressives in Navy Blue builds on welcome recent scholarship on what once been an overlooked era of naval history prior to the war with Spain. Mobley argues new institutions such as the Naval Institute, Office of Naval Intelligence, and Naval War College facilitated a strategic, anti-imperialistic worldview within the Navy's officer corps that proved to be in the forefront of the progressive movement of the early 20th century. Mobley's synthetic work, feeding off the scholarship of Robert Wiebe, Richard Hofstadter, John Hattendorf and others, should be added to the syllabi for courses on progressivism on college campuses throughout the land. --David F. Winkler, author of Incidents at Sea: American Confrontation and Cooperation with Russia and China, 1945-2016 Scott Mobley makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how and why the U.S. Navy underwent the most complete and thoroughgoing transformation of any of our military services in their histories. This is an important story persuasively told, as valuable for our current military leadership as for historians and public officials involved in military affairs. --Richard H. Kohn, Professor Emeritus of History and Peace, War, and Defense, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A fine study, offering sound new insights into the transformation of the U S Navy in the late 19th century, correcting what had been described as an Old Guard resistance to the New Navy advocates at the Naval War College and the ONI. Mobley establishes that the dispute was, instead, between technology-oriented leaders like Francis Ramsey and strategy-oriented ones like Luce and Mahan. And he correctly indicates that this tension echoes to the present day. --Peter Karsten, author of The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modern American Navalism Captain Scott Mobley's book comes at a fortuitous time. The Naval reform movement in the period written about here is of immense importance to understanding one of the factors that shaped American naval policy and grand strategy in the coming 20th century. This work provides essential context for that understanding. Naval officers would be well served to study the generation of officers examined here, a story little known or told, who helped literally to change the world. --John T. Kuehn, PhD, Commander USN (retired), author of America's First General Staff: A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the Navy, 1900-1950

Author Information

Scott Mobley earned a Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2015. A former surface warfare officer, Mobley graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. He retired from the U.S. Navy as a captain, having commanded a frigate and a fast combat logistics ship. He also servedas reactor officer in a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Mobley was awarded the Rear Admiral John D. Hayes Pre-doctoral Fellowship in U.S. Naval History for 2014. In 2015, he was selected as the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1957 Fellow for researching and teaching naval history.

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