The opened letter: networking in the early modern British world

often have different missions, levels of ambitions and skills. Some have ambitions to help larger navies maintaining wider maritime security, while others are content with merely protecting their own coasts and their Exclusive Economic Zones. Some attempt to keep a balanced fleet with different capabilities, while others aim to specialise in certain fields, for example, mine-clearing, hoping a larger ally will compensate in other areas. Both Till and the editors conclude that small navies are rarely (if ever) different in kind, but rather in degree. On the issue of types or classifications of navies, Basil Germond (chapter 3) provides a good overview of the literature in the field. Assessing the different attempts at categorisation, he concludes that navies are usually ranked according to two main criteria: reach and projection capabilities. Navies that do not have the latter characteristic tend to be represented and constructed as ‘small’, but frequently also as ‘inferior’. He also asserts that navies described as ‘small’ can escape their ‘inferiority’ label if they successfully join multilateral naval frameworks and coalitions, thus contributing to the general effort to protect and secure the liberal international order. As with most edited collections, this book includes texts that are often incisive and wellwritten as separate entities, but together they form a rather disparate whole. While ambitious in its aim, to penetrate and unpack the dilemmas facing small navies, it hardly solves the conceptual issue at hand, leaving the reader with more questions than answers. If anything, the book succeeds in showing the diversity of small navies and their many roads to success.