The opening chapter provides the necessary context for both the development of British prize law and how law has, or has not, been treated in maritime strategic thinking. It provides a conceptual analysis of how and why law should be incorporated into maritime strategic thought. The conceptual part of the chapter argues that law and sea power cannot be divorced for two principal reasons. First, sea power is the vehicle through which a state is able to transform domestic maritime law into international maritime law. Second, the maritime strategic considerations of a nation drive negotiations over international maritime law in an attempt to either constrain, or expand, the rights of a sea power. The extent to which maritime nations are able to influence those negotiations depends on the relative qualities of their sea power.

Expectations of Italy were high in London: Rome’s intervention was to be the turning point in the war. Something, however, soon went terribly wrong.

This chapter examines Callwell’s contribution to the ‘naval school’ that emerged as a result of increased interest in matters of imperial defence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that Callwell’s work was distinctive, based on his position as a ‘khaki-clad maritime theorist’, a soldier looking at amphibious warfare from the landsman’s perspective. It also explores Callwell’s time at the War Office, 1903-7, during which he was a practitioner as well as a theorist of strategy. Finally, it assesses Callwell’s literary output during his retirement, especially his writing on the Territorial Army.