An offshore balance of power

An offshore balance of power

Why did Britain face no existential crisis for almost an entire century between Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and the outbreak of the First World War? The lethality of arms increased exponentially during that period; steam power and the screw propeller altered naval strategy out of all recognition from the days of fighting sail; major European wars broke out in 1859, 1866 and 1870, yet throughout it all metropolitan Britain stayed inviolate, wit…