The Singapore Maritime Trade Protection Strategy: 1921 and 2023
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/2561-5467.1238Keywords:
Singapore strategy, Singapore Naval Base, Royal Navy, Corbett, oil-fired fleetAbstract
Current historiography of the rebalancing of the British Empire’s global strategy in the 1920s is incomplete. Their strategy was built on protecting Imperial global maritime trade, itself based on returning global mobility to the fleet and building a fleet base at Singapore to block Japanese fleet entry into the Empire’s demographic heartland of the Indian Ocean. This was a Corbettian seapower strategy, now obscured by the events of 1941-42. This article examines the nature of the Singapore strategy as it was developed to allow a new oil-fired fleet to operate as globally as the pre-war coal-fired fleet.
L’historiographie actuelle du rééquilibrage de la stratégie mondiale de l’Empire britannique dans les années 1920 est incomplète. Cette stratégie reposait sur la protection du commerce maritime mondial impérial, lui-même fondé sur le rétablissement de la mobilité de l’escadre à l’échelle mondiale et la construction à Singapour d’une base pour l’escadre visant à bloquer l’entrée de l’escadre japonais au cœur démographique de l’Empire de l’océan Indien. Il s’agissait d’une stratégie corbettienne en matière de puissance maritime, ayant été depuis éclipsée par les événements de 1941-1942. Le présent article porte sur la nature de la stratégie de Singapour telle qu’elle a été élaborée pour permettre à un nouvel escadre alimenté au mazout d’exercer ses activités à l’échelle mondiale tout comme le faisait l’escadre alimenté au charbon d’avant la guerre.
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