Inventing the Logistics of Empire: Coal and American Naval Education, 1880–1920

This paper examines how energy—particularly in the form of coal—formed the material backbone of administering the United States' newly acquired island empire at the turn of the 20th century. In the years after 1898, the U.S. Navy began transforming its preparations for war and the administration of peace, developing new plans for naval strategy, the tactics of steam warfare, and particularly, logistics. New ideas about industrial warfare crystallized in the education of elite officers at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where practical experience at sea met systematic analysis. In the early 20th century, officers at the War College evaluated naval strategy and tactics, systematizing war preparation and execution. Coal formed a central element of this education. In this paper I argue that coal provided the model for war planning that the College later generalized as “logistics”—the provision of all resources for war and the strategy for ensuring their availability. Looking closely at lectures, exams, student essays, and instructor evaluations, this paper traces the emergence of a comprehensive idea of logistics among the elite officer class, the place of logistics in modernizing the U.S. Navy, and the ways this new practical science shaped, and was in turn shaped by, the emergence of the United States as a global power in the 20th century."