Speaker: Kunika Kakuta, King’s College London

Chair: Alan James, Senior Lecturer in War Studies

Part of the work for a PhD in progress, this paper focuses on the political developments of the Imperial Japanese navy and the Athenian Navy of the fifth century BC, particularly how elites understood the significance of public finance for navies, and the influence of the different political constitutions. Through a comparison with the Meiji Japan, which centralised previously existed clan-politics of the Tokugawa Shōgunate and the naval forces after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, it is argued that Themistocles did not revolutionise the Athenian financial system to become a seapower. Instead, he exploited and modified the political institution and the concepts of public finance that already existed to advance the sea power strategy in Athens in 483. Themistocles’ ‘revolution’ allowed the elite class of Cleisthenian reform to grip the control of politics, finance, and foreign policy of Athens further and thus, indirectly, of the lowest class thetes, those who crewed the triremes. In a similar manner, this paper also questions the overemphasised link between democracy and seapower, arguing that the Athenian navy was not a naval mob (nautikos ochlos), and it was not the navy that led to the downfall of the Athenian archē, but the elite politicians’ reckless personal greed, just like their Imperial Japanese counterparts.

Kunika Kakuta is a PhD student in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, supervised by Professor Andrew Lambert and Dr Alessio Patalano. Her thesis argues that the Imperial and Athenian navies were not purely strategic tools; they were battlefields for the elite politicians to promote their own political agendas. A ‘classic’ seapower state, Athens and Imperial Japan both followed a similar path of decline of their respective imperial power. Prior to joining the Department of War Studies in October 2016, Kunika completed a BA in Classics at Royal Holloway, University of London before completing her intercollegiate MA in Ancient History at Royal Holloway, King’s College, London, and University College London.

Hosted by the Laughton Naval History Unit of the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War on behalf of the British Commission for Maritime History and the Society for Nautical Research