Petroleum and power: Naval fuel technology and the Anglo-American struggle for core hegemony, 1889--1922

As the nineteenth century ended, the Great Power engaged in a naval arms race as part of an internecine struggle for supremacy. Previous studies of the naval policies of this era generally treat technological innovation simplistically and view technology as a deterministic factor with an inevitable trajectory and impact. Recent scholarship in the history of technology acknowledges that technological change is often influenced by social, political, and cultural factors instead of supposedly objective scientific and technical criteria. Focusing on the process of conversion from coal to petroleum within the context of world system theory from the perspective of an emergent technological system, this study argues that the British and American navies' decisions to adopt oil fuel and the subsequent impact of that decision on British hegemony was not the result of a deterministic technology but remained rooted in the respective nations' policies and the policymaking process itself. While the decision to convert eventually weakened British naval power to America's benefit, human actions rather than anything inherent to oil fuel technology governed the outcome. By adopting a new doctrine that emphasized vessel speed, British navalists turned to oil fuel, albeit reluctantly given the lack of any substantial British-controlled petroleum reserves. In America, policymakers embracing the massed fleet doctrines of Alfred Thayer Mahan envisioned oil fuel as a solution to the difficulties involved in projecting naval power across great distances but concerns regarding future availability of a non-renewable resource inhibited adoption. Conversion depended as much upon solutions to these logistical concerns as upon the development of the technology. Stresses on petroleum supplies during World War I proved Britain's logistical solution inadequate and reinforced American fears of scarcity. Accordingly, the issue of supply thus shaped both nations' post-war naval policies as the British abandoned their long-standing pursuit of naval supremacy and reluctantly accepted parity with America. While conversion did not in and of itself force Britain to concede hegemony, the issue of logistics did exert a significant influence.