This thesis will examine the growth of professionalism within the shore establishment of the Royal Navy from 1778 to 1811. The thesis will examine the career of one particular administrator whose career coincides with this period, that of Sir Charles Middleton, First Baron Barham, in order to demonstrate his contribution towards the process of professionalisation. The thesis will take into account the work that Barham did whilst in official government office, as a member of, or advisor to, various Parliamentary Select Committees and Commissions during his career, and how this work furthered the process of professionalisation of government offices in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-centuries. The general level of the professionalism of the naval shore establishment shall be investigated at the beginning and end of the period, with investigation into exactly how professionalism is measured in different occupations, particularly as it relates to government. Various aspects of how Barham attempted to introduce greater efficiency, ability, and professionalism into the departments he worked within shall be covered, culminating in the work he did as First Lord of the Admiralty and chairman of the Commission for Revising and Digesting the Civil Affairs of the Navy.
This work is deemed necessary due to the relative lack of attention given to the professionalism of the administration of the military services in Britain during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth-centuries, with the preference of study given to the active service officers in both the Army and Navy. The focus of study in government departments has also focussed predominantly on the Treasury, Exchequer, and Secretaries of State. The naval departments are worthy of study, however, due to their archaic nature, with several departments tracing their lineages to the Restoration, and, in the case of the Navy Board, to the Tudors. The ways in which these departments were modernised and prepared to adapt to the nineteenth-century ways of governance will reveal how they were thought of by the governments of the day, what measures were necessary in order for these institutions to break their seventeenth-century constitutions, and how critical it was that such departments operated to the greatest levels of efficiency and professionalism during three great wars during this period.
