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Gunboats, Empire and the China Station provides the first detailed examination of the Royal Navy’s everyday work maintaining the British Empire in interwar East Asia, against the wider backdrop of transformative changes in global geopolitics.
As we look around at a world facing a tumultuous transition from American dominance to one where a more assertive China makes its weight known, the events of a century ago where British global dominance started to wane, are of even greater relevance. To understand the present, we must consider the context of the past.
Examining Britain’s imperial outposts in 1920s East Asia this book details the changes and challenges affecting the Royal Navy’s third largest fleet, the China Station, as its crews fought to hold back the changing tides of fortune.
Exploring the role of the China Station in the British imperial system, foreign policy and East Asian geopolitics, Heaslip guides the reader through the importance of this naval outpost for the world stage in the interwar period. As well as considering the global implications of the China Station, it details the lived experiences of young officers in the Royal Navy at this time, following their immersion into a new world and the stresses and challenges they encountered along the way. Importantly, it also discusses how these officers were perceived by the Chinese populations of the ports they visited, how the two communities interacted and what this meant in a period of ‘peace’.
Against the changing nature of Britain’s informal empire in the 1920s, Gunboats, Empire and the China Station examines the role of technological change and the influence it had on everyday interwar life at the maritime frontier of the British Empire. Revealing how allied powers flouted interwar disarmament treaties under the cover of imperial policy, this book highlights the complex nature of naval operations in-between major conflicts and calls into question how peaceful this peacetime truly was.
Bloomsbury Academic Publishing