Chapter 1 explores vessel-naming practices in the Imperial Japanese Navy and their connections to classical Japanese poetry. This connection linked navy vessels with a past aesthetic rooted linked to the Emperor and rooted in notions of Japan as a divine land.

Chapter 7 explores the life on the water for Japanese sailors, and their tenuous connections to the Japanese home islands. Japanese society was mobilized for total warfare, which meant letter-writing campaigns for Japanese school children. Japanese society valorized the Imperial Japanese Navy, the pride of the nation, particularly after such Japanese victories at the Battle of Kolombangara.

Chapter 11 explores Operation Ten-Go, the battleship Yamato’s suicide mission to defend Okinawa from Allied invasion. Yukikaze escorted Yamato and witnessed her destruction. By this juncture, a kamikaze spirit permeated the Imperial Japanese Navy, which had become consumed by its legacies in the eyes of history, rather than strategic successes.

Chapter 5 explores the Battle of Midway from the perspective of Yukikaze and the Imperial Army landing forces that converged on the Midway Atoll from the south. The U.S. Navy sunk four carriers at Midway, which refocused Japanese efforts around Guadalcanal.

Chapter 9 investigates the Battle of Leyte Gulf and its aftermath by focusing on the Battle Off Samar, where Yukikaze saw action. A cultural turning point, the Imperial Japanese Navy demonstrated new suicidal tactics at Leyte, evidencing the emergence of a new culture of sacrifice in the navy. After Leyte Gulf, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s conduct became less about strategic success and more about honor in the eyes of Japan’s martial history.

Chapter 4 analyzes Imperial Japanese Navy submarine warfare in the Java Sea, particularly Yukikaze’s confrontation with U.S. Navy submarine S-37. Waging war in the South Seas required technological advancements in sonar, radar, charts and other navigational aids, all explored in this chapter.

Chapter 3 contextualized World War II in the Pacific as a resource war, where Japan fought in the South Pacific in order to achieve energy independence through the confiscation of oil fields in the Dutch East Indies. The Battle of the Java Sea was fought to secure oil fields.

The Introduction lays out the contextual background to the themes and elements that are brought together to shape the monograph’s arguments. It positions the monograph within the existing literature on the Seven Years’ War and the history of neutrality in order to establish how it builds upon these bodies of work to incorporate law as a necessary element of strategic analysis. The core hypotheses and arguments of the book are also established. First, that neutrality was a dynamic role for maritime nations such as Spain and the Dutch Republic which had as much of an influencing effect on British strategic thinking as did affairs with belligerent nations. Second, that the Court of Prize Appeal played a critical role within the three-pronged maritime strategy of maintaining foreign confidence in British maritime law and its court system; balancing the interests of British privateers and neutral carriers of commerce in the prize court system; and destroying French seaborne trade through commerce predation. Third, that British maritime strategic concerns shaped and created new legal rules, norms, and precedents within the prize court system that would then serve to clarify and cement British, Spanish, and Dutch understandings of neutral rights and international maritime law.

The first part of this chapter focuses on the shift in Anglo-Spanish relations brought on by the death of the British ambassador in Madrid. It delves into the critical role that individuals can play during diplomatic negotiations and the subsequent effects they can have on issues relating to neutrality and sea power. Keene’s relationship with William Pitt and with Ricardo Wall largely kept Anglo-Spanish relations afloat and working toward an eventuality where Spain would remain neutral and willing to compromise on neutral rights. Keene actively worked to persuade Wall to accept the Court of Prize Appeal as the best mechanism to safeguard Spanish neutrality but failed to achieve his goal before he died. Keene’s successor, Lord Bristol, proved much less effective and relations between the two governments deteriorated further. It was under these trying political circumstances that the San Juan Baptista came before the Court of Prize Appeal. Lord Hardwicke’s intent appeared to be to ensure that the first Spanish appellate case be decided in favour of the Spanish in order to win Spanish government support for the Court of Prize Appeal as a fair and viable mechanism to safeguard neutral rights.