the.com/gunboat
diplomacy for nations who skipped the talking and brought the artillery instead
means A relatively small armed naval vessel carrying one or more guns, used for patrolling coasts and rivers or projecting military force in shallow waters.
from A plain compound of 'gun' and 'boat' — English at its most literal. 'Gun' itself likely traces to a Scandinavian woman's name, Gunnhildr (both elements, 'gunnr' and 'hildr,' meaning 'war'), apparently a medieval nickname for a large siege engine before it ever meant a firearm. The term 'gunboat' rose to prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries with these small, heavily armed craft, and 'gunboat diplomacy' — coercing weaker states by parking warships off their coast — gave the phrase its lasting edge.
- gunboat diplomacy
- coercion by naval threat, named after these very ships
- river hunters
- shallow draft let them prowl rivers warships couldn't
- opium wars
- British gunboats forced China's ports open by force
- giant slayers
- small hulls carried disproportionately massive guns
- the diplomat
- a slang shoe and steak too, oddly
uss panay — american gunboat sunk by japanese aircraft in china's yangtze river, december 1937
hms cockchafer — british gunboat that served on the yangtze river during the boxer rebellion, 1900
vickers gunboats — british-built gunboats deployed on china's rivers and for imperial policing, 1920s-1930s