The ''Jeune École'' ("Young School") was a
strategic naval concept developed during the 19th century. It advocated the use of small, heavily armed vessels to combat larger
battleship
A battleship is a large, heavily naval armour, armored warship with a main battery consisting of large naval gun, guns, designed to serve as a capital ship. From their advent in the late 1880s, battleships were among the largest and most form ...
s, and the use of
commerce raider
Commerce raiding is a form of naval warfare used to destroy or disrupt logistics of the enemy on the open sea by attacking its merchant shipping, rather than engaging its combatants or enforcing a blockade against them. Privateering is a fo ...
s to cripple the trade of the rival nation. The idea was developed among
French naval theorists: the
French government
The Government of France (, ), officially the Government of the French Republic (, ), exercises Executive (government), executive power in France. It is composed of the Prime Minister of France, prime minister, who is the head of government, ...
had the second largest navy of the time, and the theorists desired to counteract the strength of the larger British
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
.
Small units against battleships
One of the first proponents of the ''Jeune École'' was the artillery general
Henri-Joseph Paixhans, who invented explosive
shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...
guns for warships during the 1820s. He advocated the use of these powerful guns on numerous small steam
warship
A warship or combatant ship is a naval ship that is used for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the navy branch of the armed forces of a nation, though they have also been operated by individuals, cooperatives and corporations. As well as b ...
s that could destroy much larger battleships.
Later, the
French Navy
The French Navy (, , ), informally (, ), is the Navy, maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the four military service branches of History of France, France. It is among the largest and most powerful List of navies, naval forces i ...
developed the concept more elaborately as it experimented with
torpedo
A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, such ...
es and
torpedo boat
A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of ...
s. The French Navy became one of the strongest proponents of this combat system by the end of the 19th century, particularly during the ministry of Admiral
Théophile Aube. The naval successes of the French Navy against
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
during the
Sino-French War
The Sino-French or Franco-Chinese War, also known as the Tonkin War, was a limited conflict fought from August 1884 to April 1885 between the French Third Republic and Qing China for influence in Vietnam. There was no declaration of war.
The C ...
of 1883–85 also tended to validate the potential of torpedo boats against conventional navies.
France was also very active in the development of a
submarine
A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...
fleet, again trying to rely on technical development to compensate for British numerical superiority of battleships. By the beginning of the 20th century, France was "undoubtedly the first navy to have an effective submarine force".
Counter measures against the ''Jeune École'' system consisted largely of
destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort
larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were conceived i ...
s, designed to deter and destroy small torpedo units (in French, "destroyer" is ''contre-torpilleur'', and in English, "destroyer" is a contraction of "torpedo boat destroyer"), the first of which was the ''
Destructor''.
Commerce raiders
The other constitutive part of the ''Jeune École'' concept consisted of planning to raid the commercial ships of the enemy so as to curtail its trade and economy, again a tactic designed especially against Great Britain.
Raiding ships, such as the ''Dupuy de Lôme'', were designed for this role. ''
Dupuy de Lôme'', an
armored cruiser
The armored cruiser was a type of warship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was designed like other types of cruisers to operate as a long-range, independent warship, capable of defeating any ship apart from a pre-dreadnought battles ...
laid down in 1888, was capable of 23 knots and was designed to raid enemy commerce ships during extended forays.
Influences
The ''Jeune École'' system was particularly influential on the development of smaller navies, including the
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, Potsdam Declaration, when it was dissolved followin ...
during the 19th century, which tried to compensate for weaknesses in battleships.
British admiral
"Jackie" Fisher, who would later become the
First Sea Lord
First Sea Lord, officially known as First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff (1SL/CNS), is the title of a statutory position in the British Armed Forces, held by an Admiral (Royal Navy), admiral or a General (United Kingdom), general of the ...
in 1904, was especially impressed by the ideas of ''Jeune École'' and felt that the threats of fast raiders and swarms of torpedo boats made the traditional battleship too unwieldy. He argued that the future lay with fast ships with light armor and big guns, which would become known as the
battlecruiser
The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of att ...
.
See also
*
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Net-Centric before its time: The Jeune École and Its Lessons for Today Erik J. Dahl US Naval War College Review, Autumn 2005, Vol. 58, No. 4
* (fr
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jeune Ecole
History of the French Navy
Naval history of Japan
Naval warfare
Destroyers
Commerce raiders
Military doctrines