The naval pivot of Asia: an examination of the place of Hong Kong in British far Eastern strategy, 1900-1914

Abstract

At a time when Britain is reappraising her East of Suez role it may be of interest to re-examine another period when, in the face of overstretched resources and rising defences costs, Britain pruned her world-wide commitments to concentrate her forces to meet more fundamental threats to her security. In the period 1896-1914 British naval forces in the Far East declined from a position of unquestioned superiority to one of a token presence. Increasingly the navy was concentrated in the North Sea to meet the German naval challenge while the Pacific fell under the undisputed control of Japan, who in 1902 became Britain's ally. Britain regarded her naval inferiority in China Seas as a temporary phenomenon. Indeed in 1909 she even planned a new Eastern Fleet, but she was never again to be supreme there. fault, Nortcote Parkinson asserts, lay in the priority given by a democratic government to Social Welfare with a resultant inability to pay for a new Eastern Fleet. In consequence "the British Empire committed suicide in about 1908, throwing away its last change of recovery in 1921." Contemporaries also foresaw disaster and they forced a series of debates on Britain's defences in the Far East.