ABSTRACT
Michael Howard recognised from his postmodern, Cold War perspective was not just the absence of real Pax Britannica, enforced by the unquestionable might and majesty of the Royal Navy drifting into the turbulent twentieth century, but the increasingly insular and defensive nationalism of such peoples ever more at odds with those around them. The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship which told a story from three points of view of British, French and American and which utilised ground-breaking research in each national archive. La Gloire was dismissed by Battleships in Transition, as it served only to stimulate the technically more advanced British to develop their own steam navy, and in regards to iron-clad evolution in particular, as befits a technologically backward nation, La Gloire was far less revolutionary than the British response. C. J. Bartletts own Great Britain and Sea Power was criticised for depicting these weapons platforms as over-armed dinosaurs perilously vulnerable to exploding shellfire, especially from one another.
