The U.S. Navy and the Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex, 1847-1883

Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2001. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/No DJ present. x, [2], 181, [7] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. The first book to examine the developing relationship between American business and the U.S. Navy in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Kurt Hackemer is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at University of South Dakota. He teaches a wide range of American and non-American military history courses, but his research focuses on 19th century American naval and military history. He is currently working on a pair of complementary projects focused on Dakota Territory. The first project explores the territory's Civil War experience from a War and Society perspective, and the second examines the world of Civil War veterans who moved to the frontier. The expression military-industrial complex (MIC) describes the relationship between a country's military and the defense industry that supplies it, seen together as a vested interest which influences public policy. A driving factor behind the relationship between the military and the defense-minded corporations is that both sides benefit—one side from obtaining war weapons, and the other from being paid to supply them. The term is most often used in reference to the system behind the armed forces of the United States, where the relationship is most prevalent due to close links among defense contractors, the Pentagon, and politicians. The expression gained popularity after a warning of the relationship's detrimental effects, in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 17, 1961. Although the still-unfolding story of the new steel Navy represents an important milestone in the search for the origins of the military-industrial complex, it does not signal the end of the quest. Transferring ideas and methods from the civilian sector to the military sector brought two often disparate entities together. The military, with its passion for order and control often encountered more freewheeling institutions that placed a premium on experimentation. Resolving their differences in a constructive manner meant defining what the developing relationships would look like. Despite the inherent difficulties, the transition was made. This study argues that the search for the origins of the naval-industrial relationship in the Untied States should look beyond the technology of steel warship construction to the Navy's efforts to integrate other new technologies into the fleet several decades earlier. As the Navy struggled in turn with steam engines of the 1850s, ironclad vessels in the 1860s, and steel warships in the 1880s, it found that each technology exceeded the capabilities of its physical plant. In each case, therefore, it turned to private contractors out of necessity. What emerges in the end of this study is a more sophisticated understanding of the Navy's contract process. Viewed in proper context, the introduction of new technology into the fleet can be explained in a more more orderly and rational fashion.