At War in Distant Waters: British Colonial Defense in the Great War

A Great And Urgent Imperial Service investigates the reasons behind combined military and naval offensive expeditions that Great Britain conducted outside of Europe during the Great War. These campaigns have been branded by various historians as unnecessary sideshows to the conflict raged on the European continent. Pattee argues that the various campaigns were not unnecessary adjuncts to the war in Europe but that they fulfilled an important strategic purpose by protecting British trade where it was most vulnerable. International trade was essential for maintaining the island nation's way of life; a vital interest and a matter of national survival. Great Britain required freedom of the seas in order to maintain its global trade. A general war in Europe threatened Great Britain's economic independence with the potential of losing its continental trading partners. The German High Seas Fleet constituted a serious threat that also placed the British coast at grave risk forcing the Royal Navy to concentrate in home waters. These concerns forced Great Britain into the Great War, but that also made the island empire's global trade a valuable and vulnerable target to Germany's various commerce raiders--as Admiral Tirpitz's risk theory had anticipated.

Pattee argues that the several combined military and naval operations against overseas territories constituted parts of an overarching strategy designed to facilitate the Royal Navy's gaining command of the seas. Using documents from the Cabinet, the Foreign and Colonial Offices, the War Office, and the Admiralty, plus personal correspondence and papers of high-ranking government officials, he demonstrates that the Offensive Sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defense drafted the campaign plan. Subsequently, the plan received Cabinet approval, and then the Foreign Office, the Admiralty, and the Colonial Office coordinated with Allies and colonies to execute the operations necessary to prosecute the campaign. In Mesopotamia, overseas expeditions directed against the Ottoman Empire protected communications with India and British oil concessions in Persia. The combined operations against German territories exterminated the logistics and intelligence hubs that supported Germany's commerce raiders thereby protecting Britain's world-wide trade and its overseas possessions.