Sir Julian Stafford Corbett (1854-1922) was a prominent British naval historian and geostrategist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose works helped shape the Royal Navy’s reforms of that era. He studied law at Cambridge, where he took a first class degree. Corbett came to naval history in mid-life and from a civilian background. One of his most famous works is Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (1911), which remains a classic among students of naval warfare. He was a good friend and ally of naval reformer Admiral John “Jackie” Fisher, the First Sea Lord. Corbett emerged as one of the first authors in the development of modern naval doctrine. He offered no general theory of warfare at sea. Instead, he focused his thoughts on the nature of maritime strategy and what the meaning of naval warfare meant to the power of a nation. Corbett was interested in the diplomatic alliance systems and coalitions formed before and during a war, and he was concerned with the economic and financial dimensions of waging war as well as with the technological and material aspects of war.
