Writing

Essays

Short-form writing on naval history, political science, military affairs, and the craft of writing. These are first drafts and not prepared for publication, but I offer them as my first thoughts on the subjects.

Naval History2026

Netherlands East Indies - 1914

The Netherlands Indies in 1914 was an enormous possession held by a very small country. Thirteen thousand islands, roughly forty million subjects, and some of the richest export agriculture in the world answered to a governor-general in Batavia, who in turn answered to a mother country of barely six million people on the far side of the earth. Dutch officials had known for three decades that this mismatch, a rich and thinly defended colony surrounded by empires that could swallow it without much trouble, was the central fact of their situation. When the war broke out in Europe that August, the Indies did not go to war. It went to work guarding its neutrality, and the anxieties that had been building since the 1880s, about Britain next door, Germany's colonial appetite, and above all Japan, suddenly had a war to attach themselves to.

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Naval History2026

The Asiatic Fleet (1914) (Revised August 2026)

When Europe went to war in August 1914, the officers of the United States Asiatic Fleet understood before Washington did that the balance of power in their ocean had changed. They were placed to know. The fleet answered directly to the Navy Department, operated thousands of miles from any other American command, and carried responsibility for Guam, the Philippines, and the Open Door in China with a force a European power would have rated a squadron. Most Americans at home could not have found it on a map. The fleet was small, its ships were old, and it never had enough coal.