Naval History as Intellectual History: The Case of the Jeune École

The Jeune École ('Young School') was a school of naval thought operating in France from the mid-1880s to the early years of the twentieth century. Renegades in their time, they argued against the primacy of the battleship in favour of small craft with 'automatic torpedoes' and other new technologies. Their impact was highly disruptive and led to heavily politicised debates in the French parliament and much wastage and confusion in procurement strategy. To this day, they remain a neuralgic point in French naval history.

Yet recent years have seen them getting another hearing, their example invoked to argue for the advantages afforded by notionally cost-effective technological solutions unimaginable in their day. The fact that actors ranging from the Houthis to the Ukrainian Navy to the PLA-N to the US Navy have all been described as following Jeune École strategies indicates that some confusion is at work. In this, the case of the Jeune École is not unlike other episodes familiar to intellectual history and the challenges involved in extrapolating ideas from highly localized contexts to serve new purposes.

Dr Knox Peden is an Academic Research Officer and Historian at the Sea Power Centre-Australia and Visiting Fellow in the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. He has taught history and philosophy at several Australian universities, including UQ, and has published widely on French intellectual history. His current research seeks to bring an intellectual-historical approach to debates within naval strategic thought about the uses of history.

Image: British engineer Robert Whitehead and test torpedo, Fiume (modern Croatia), 1875 (Public Domain).