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- Title
Keeping the Germans Out of the Straits: The Five Ottoman Dreadnought Thesis Reconsidered.
- Authors
Seligmann, Matthew S.
- Abstract
This article contests Sean McMeekin’s claims concerning Russian culpability for the First World War. McMeekin maintains that Ottoman rearmament, particularly the purchase of several battleships released onto the global arms market by South American states, threatened to create a situation where the Russian Black Sea Fleet would be outclassed by its Ottoman opposite number. Rather than waiting for this to happen, the tsarist regime chose to go to war. Yet, contrary to McMeekin’s claims, the Ottoman naval expansion never assumed threatening dimensions because the Porte was unable to purchase battleships from Chile or Argentina. As a result, it provided no incentive for Russia to go to war in 1914.
- Subjects
REARMAMENT; BATTLESHIPS; WORLD War I; OTTOMAN Empire; RUSSIAN naval history; SEA power (Military science); HISTORY
- Publication
War in History, 2016, Vol 23, Issue 1, p20
- ISSN
0968-3445
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/0968344514550544