ABSTRACT
American shock and awe displays are much more alienating than Palmerston’s use of gunboat diplomacy to further expressly British national and imperial interests. Theories and strategy charted the denigration of naval history, as Donald Schurman noted, as almost exclusively focused on battle history and narrow nuts-and-bolts issues. A recent work by Kwasi Kwarteng notes: Britains Empire was not liberal in the sense of being a plural, democratic society. It openly repudiated ideas of human equality and put power and responsibility into the hands of a chosen elite, drawn from a tiny proportion of the population in Britain. All multidisciplinary niceties aside, it was therefore all about who had the bigger stick after all, or as the author expressed, the strategic logic remained irrefutable. Even for mid-Victorians during the height of the Pax at the zenith of their power, some naval historians have now claimed to consider something less than absolute supremacy in an uncertain world future.
