PROBABLY ONLY one person in the world knew both that my dissertation touched upon the career of Admiral Raoul Castex and that the Naval Institute Press was seeking an editor for Castex’s major work. Thus, my first debt is to my old teacher Steven T. Ross of the Naval War College, who often manages to put two facts together. Special thanks to series editor John Hattendorf for offering me the project and for valiant efforts to prevent me from botching it. Co-editor Wayne Hughes and Castex expert Hervé Coutau-Bégarie offered useful criticism of an early draft of the introduction. I am responsible for the errors that remain.
Castex’s broad erudition is a challenge to the editor, and I am grateful to at least a dozen friends and colleagues for explanations of points of history, philosophy, naval architecture, geography, and French translation. Special thanks go to Peter Law, who, though he finds living with the French army taxing enough, tolerated the intrusion of naval affairs into our marriage and provided professional interpretations of Castex’s beloved mathematical analogies.
I would like to thank the Service Historique de la Marine in Paris for access to Castex’s papers back in 1985, when I had no idea how profitable that diversion in my research would prove to be.
Though accomplished mostly during an academic year at the University of Alabama, the task was begun while I was a Ford Fellow in European Society and Western Security at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs and completed during a research year at Southampton University funded by a Leverhulme Commonwealth/U.S.A. Fellowship.
No editor deserves to be confronted simultaneously with Castex’s style and Kiesling’s spelling, but Carol Swartz’s sharp eye and tactful pen protected both the manuscript and the author’s pride. Equal thanks to Linda O’Doughda, who inherited the project from Carol and guided it in the anxious final weeks. Whatever errors escaped their vigilance are my responsibility alone.
If that very private man Raoul Castex had intended Théories stratégiques to have a dedication, he would have given it one. Whatever in this volume is not the admiral’s, however, but mine, I offer to George Forrest and Peter Derow, ancient historians of Wadham College, Oxford, in thanks for the priceless gift of confidence.