Rolf Hobson

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Rolf Hugh Hobson (born July 18, 1961 in Oslo ) is a Norwegian military and naval historian. He is at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies (IFS, Instituut for Forsvarsstudier) in Oslo.

Life

Hobson obtained his master's degree (cand. Mag.) In history from the University of Oslo in 1986 and studied at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf from 1988 to 1993 . From 1990 to 1993 he conducted research at the University of Applied Sciences (AVH) in Trondheim (now the University of Trondheim) and from 1994 he was at the IFS. In 2000 he did a research stay in Paris and from 2009 to 2010 at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich .

He is on the Council of the German-Norwegian Society .

plant

His areas of interest are Norwegian and European military history, World War I and II, and German history in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Hobson became known when he presented a new interpretation of the military naval arms race between Germany and England in the run-up to the First World War in his 1999 dissertation at the TNTU Trondheim (published in 2002) . He sees it in the global context of navalism , the ideology of which stems in particular from the then internationally received naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan ( The Influence of Sea Power upon History , 1890) and thus also moves away from the fundamental study by Volker Berghahn on the Tirpitz Plan (1971 ), who saw behind this a German special path and hidden domestic political motives of the Wilhelmine conservative elite, concerned to maintain power, at work. Under Mahan's influence, Tirpitz and, as a result of his propaganda, also the German public changed the naval policy in the 1890s, which at the time of the cabinet of Leo von Caprivi (until 1894) was based solely on support in an impending two-front war against France and Russia should serve. Hobson accordingly distinguished an old Prussian from a new all-German school of naval warfare strategy, which prevailed around 1897. The aim of the new strategy was to build a risk fleet that should deter British attacks and should serve as a background threat for the representation of global colonial interests. The program was promoted to the German public by Tirpitz, who lost sight of the foreign policy consequences of Britain's partisanship against Germany.

Hobson put German military thinking in international comparison, including the change due to advanced industrialization and the international development of the law of the sea. He also discussed similarities with the other two European land powers with no great colonial maritime tradition Austria-Hungary and Russia.

Fonts

  • Maritime imperialism. Sea power ideology, maritime strategic thinking and the Tirpitz Plan 1875 to 1914 . Oldenbourg Verlag , Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56671-7 (Contributions to military history 61, series of publications by the Military History Research Office , translator Eva Besteck), (also: Trondheim, Univ., Diss., 1999: Imperialism at sea.).
    • English original: Imperialism at sea: naval strategic thought, the ideology of sea power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914 , Boston: Brill Academic Press 2002
  • with Tom Kristiansen: Norsk forsvarshistorie , Volume 3: 1905–1940 - Total krig, nøytralitet og politisk splittelse , Bergen: Eide Forlag 2001
  • Editor with Tom Kristiansen: Navies in Northern Waters 1721–2000 , Frank Cass 2004
  • Fra kabinetkrigen til den totalen krigen, Clausewitz -tolkninger fra Moltke til Aron , Forsvarsstudier 6, Oslo, Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies 1994
  • Krig og strategisk tenkning i Europa 1500–1945: samfunnsendring, statssystem, militær teori , Oslo, Cappelen Akademisk 2005
  • Editor with Jarle Simensen, Ole Kristian Grimnes, Einhart Lorenz: Tyskland - Norge: den long historien , Oslo: Tane Aschehoug 1999
  • Editor with Sven G. Holtsmark, Tom Kristiansen: Stormaktene Sverige og Norge 1905–1907: fra konsulatsak til integritetstraktat , Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk 2006
  • On the ideology of sea power, in: Jürgen Elvert, Sigurd Hess, Heinrich Walle (editor) Maritime Economy in Germany: Shipping -Werften- Trade - Sea power in the 19th and 20th centuries , historical messages of the Ranke-Gesellschaft, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner 2012 , Pp. 170-175
  • RMA and transformation. En historisk-kritisk gjennomgang av to sentrale begreper i nyere vestlig forsvarsppolitikk , Oslo: Institutt for forsvarsstudier, 2008
  • Weser Exercise in German and Norwegian Historiography, in: Michael H. Clemmesen, Marcus Faulkner Northern European Overture to War, 1939–1941. From Memel to Barbarossa ", Brill Academic Publishers, 2013 pp. 449-459
  • Defense Intellectuals: On the career of desk strategists , in Bernd Greiner, Tim B. Müller, Klaas Voss : Erbe des Kalten Krieges, Verlag Hamburger Edition, 2013, pp. 148–158, ISBN 978-3-86854-258-5 .
  • Blitzkrieg, the RMA and Defense Intellectuals in Dima Adamsky, Kjell Inge Bjerga Contemporary Military Innovation. Between anticipation and adaptation , Routledge, 2012, pp. 175-187
  • The national security of secondary maritime powers within the classic European states system , in: Peter Dutton, Robert Ross, Øystein Tunsjø: Twenty-First Century Seapower: Cooperation and Conflict at Sea , Routledge, 2012, pp. 9-17
  • Scandinavia in the First World War: the Main Features , Revue d'histoire Nordique, Universite de Toulouse Le Mirail, 2012, pp. 19-58
  • Blitzkrieg, the Revolution in Military Affairs and Defense Intellectuals , Journal of Strategic Studies, Volume 33, Issue 4, 2010, pp. 625–643

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Official website of the society ( Memento of December 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Review by Dirk Bönker, H-Soz-Kult 2004
  3. ↑ Jost Dülfer, Adventure over water review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 26, 2005
personal data
SURNAME Hobson, Rolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hobson, Rolf Hugh
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Norwegian historian
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Oslo , Norway