Awards

• Winner of Winner, John Lyman Book Award for World Naval and Maritime History, North American Society for Oceanic History Shortlisted, Gilder-Lehrman Prize for Military History.

Overview

An eye-opening interpretation of the infamous Gallipoli campaign that sets it in the context of global trade.In early 1915, the British government ordered the Royal Navy to force a passage of the Dardanelles Straits-the most heavily defended waterway in the world. After the Navy failed to breach Turkish defenses, British and allied ground forces stormed the Gallipoli peninsula but were unable to move off the beaches. Over the course of the year, the Allied landed hundreds of thousands of reinforcements but all to no avail. The Gallipoli campaign has gone down as one of the great disasters in the history of warfare.Previous works have focused on the battles and sought to explain the reasons for the British failure, typically focusing on First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. In this bold new account, Nicholas Lambert offers the first fully researched explanation of why Prime Minister Henry Asquith and all of his senior advisers--the War Lords--ordered the attacks in the first place, in defiance of most professional military opinion. Peeling back the manipulation of the historical record by those involved with the campaign's inception, Lambert shows that the original goals were political-economic rather than military: not to relieve pressure on the Western Front but to respond to the fall-out from the massive disruption of the international grain trade caused by the war. By the beginning of 1915, the price of wheat was rising so fast that Britain, the greatest importer of wheat in the world, feared bread riots. Meanwhile Russia, the greatest exporter of wheat in the world and Britain's ally in the east, faced financial collapse. Lambert demonstrates that the War Lords authorized the attacks at the Dardanelles to open the straits to the flow of Russian wheat, seeking to lower the price of grain on the global market and simultaneously to eliminate the need for huge British loans to support Russia's war effort. Carefully reconstructing the perspectives of the individual War Lords, this book offers an eye-opening case study of strategic policy making under pressure in a globalized world economy.

Full Product Details

9780197545201

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Reviews

Nick Lambert has long had a reputation among historians as being scholarly, controversial, and highly readable, but now he has surpassed himself. We have had expert studies of the First World War by economic and financial experts to supplement the usual political and military narratives, but Lambert displays a familiarity with all these fields as well as a mastery of sources and a vivacity of style that makes this book almost compulsively readable. He not only examines the Dardanelles controversy in considerable detail but also explains what the British government, and its various components, thought the war was all aboutDLor should be about. Anyone who thought that the Dardanelles question had been settled for good needs to think again. -- Sir Michael Howard Nicholas Lambert's exemplary scholarship and original thinking are displayed at their best in this formidable re-evaluation of the strategic determinants of the Gallipoli campaign. A meticulously documented, analytically provocative, and compelling narrative. -- Cameron Hazlehurst, Australian National University In The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster, Nick Lambert guides us through the labyrinths of economic globalization to unpack the making of one of history's most famous military debacles. This compelling book, ambitious, engagingly written, and methodologically innovative, shows how economic history can illuminate the history of war. -- Marc Flandreau, University of Pennsylvania The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster is a masterful work of uncanny contemporary relevanceDLone that resonates with the very human art of strategic decision making. Nick Lambert's innate understanding of national power, in all its dimensions, brilliantly illuminates the competing considerations and grave consequences in the creation of national-security and naval policy. Any current or aspiring practitioner of global security, civilian and uniformed alike, will be educated and enlightened by this fascinating case study. -- Adm. Bill Moran, USN (Ret.)

The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster is a masterful work of uncanny contemporary relevance-one that resonates with the very human art of strategic decision making. Nick Lambert's innate understanding of national power, in all its dimensions, brilliantly illuminates the competing considerations and grave consequences in the creation of national-security and naval policy. Any current or aspiring practitioner of global security, civilian and uniformed alike, will be educated and enlightened by this fascinating case study. * Adm. Bill Moran, USN (Ret.) * In The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster, Nick Lambert guides us through the labyrinths of economic globalization to unpack the making of one of history's most famous military debacles. This compelling book, ambitious, engagingly written, and methodologically innovative, shows how economic history can illuminate the history of war. * Marc Flandreau, University of Pennsylvania * Nicholas Lambert's exemplary scholarship and original thinking are displayed at their best in this formidable re-evaluation of the strategic determinants of the Gallipoli campaign. A meticulously documented, analytically provocative, and compelling narrative. * Cameron Hazlehurst, Australian National University * Nick Lambert has long had a reputation among historians as being scholarly, controversial, and highly readable, but now he has surpassed himself. We have had expert studies of the First World War by economic and financial experts to supplement the usual political and military narratives, but Lambert displays a familiarity with all these fields as well as a mastery of sources and a vivacity of style that makes this book almost compulsively readable. He not only examines the Dardanelles controversy in considerable detail but also explains what the British government, and its various components, thought what the war was all about-or should be about. Anyone who thought that the Dardanelles question had been settled for good needs to think again. * Sir Michael Howard *

The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster is a masterful work of uncanny contemporary relevance-one that resonates with the very human art of strategic decision making. Nick Lambert's innate understanding of national power, in all its dimensions, brilliantly illuminates the competing considerations and grave consequences in the creation of national-security and naval policy. Any current or aspiring practitioner of global security, civilian and uniformed alike, will be educated and enlightened by this fascinating case study. * The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster, USN (Ret.) * In The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster, Nick Lambert guides us through the labyrinths of economic globalization to unpack the making of one of history's most famous military debacles. This compelling book, ambitious, engagingly written, and methodologically innovative, shows how economic history can illuminate the history of war. * The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster, University of Pennsylvania * Nicholas Lambert's exemplary scholarship and original thinking are displayed at their best in this formidable re-evaluation of the strategic determinants of the Gallipoli campaign. A meticulously documented, analytically provocative, and compelling narrative. * The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster, Australian National University * Nick Lambert has long had a reputation among historians as being scholarly, controversial, and highly readable, but now he has surpassed himself. We have had expert studies of the First World War by economic and financial experts to supplement the usual political and military narratives, but Lambert displays a familiarity with all these fields as well as a mastery of sources and a vivacity of style that makes this book almost compulsively readable. He not only examines the Dardanelles controversy in considerable detail but also explains what the British government, and its various components, thought what the war was all about-or should be about. Anyone who thought that the Dardanelles question was had been settled for good needs to think again. * The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster *

Author Information

Nicholas A. Lambert is the prize-winning author of Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution and Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War. Between 2016 and 2018, he held the Class of 1957 Chair at the United States Naval Academy.

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