In this first detailed examination of the History of British sea power since Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power on History, Professor Kennedy argues that Britain's naval strength has always been bound up with her economic growth and decline. In placing emphasis upon the economic factor, in calling into question Britain's 'natural' bias towards the overseas and maritime world, and in analysing her fall as a naval, colonial and economic Great Power, Kennedy offers a fresh approach to the studyof British naval history and a challenge to traditional assumptions and historiography about the Royal Navy.