His understanding of the anarchical nature of international politics, the importance of geography to the global balance of power, the role of sea power in national security policy, and historys ability to shed light on contemporary world politics remains relevant to the 21st century world. In Influence, Mahan offers two possible formulas for grand strategic Sea Power. Allied command of the South and Central Pacific after Coral Sea and Midway (respectively), as well as the attritional Battle of the Atlantic, were critical to victory. Rodger, Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1659-1815 (New York: Norton, 2005). [48] Mahan, From Sail to Steam, 277; Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, tr. As new technologies like the railroad knit together states and empires in Central Europe and Asia, the Columbian Epoch of European maritime imperialism would soon end and primacy would revert to the historical norm of continental power achieved via control of the Eurasian heartland, such as with Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and the like. Department, Buildings of the It was Alfred Thayer Mahan who first coined the term "sea power.". Mahan and some leading American politicians believed that these Influences origins date to the 1880s, though its exact genesis is obscured by retrospective sentimentality. In The Interest of America in International Conditions (1910), Mahan foresaw the then-emerging First World War and the underlying geopolitical conditions leading to the Second World War, recognizing that Germanys central position in Europe, her unrivalled industrial and military might on the continent, and her quest for sea power posed a threat to Great Britain and ultimately the United States. The United States must protect its domestic shipping infrastructure to access maritime trade, and the Coast Guard is the agency bearing the responsibility. NB originally published in 1911, pre-WWI. 4 (1904): 421-437. Andrew Lambert, Navy Records Society, 259-260; Kings College (London) to A.T. Mahan, March 11, 1893, Mahan Papers, Library of Congress, Box 2, Reel 2. [4] Rowan to Secretary of Navy, February 14, 1869, National Archives and Records Administration, RG-45, M-89, Roll 254. Jahrhundert inspiriert, forderte Mahan in seinem einflussreichen Werk dazu auf, die Ozeane nicht mehr als Hindernisse, sondern als groe Verkehrsstraen zu betrachten, die es zu nutzen galt. the 1890s, but his work resonated with many leading intellectuals and Alfred T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, 1890 Von der rmischen Geschichte und seinen Untersuchungen zum 17. und 18. The ghost of Nelson at Trafalgar hangs over the concept, as it does over much of Mahans worksee his hagiographical The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain.[19]. Large landmasses with small populations and weak naval establishments are a liability for sea power, whereas heavily populated, long coastlines (like the U.S. East Coast) are a source of strength. The publication of Mahans books preceded much of the disorder associated with Capetown, Hawaii). President William McKinley finally secured the annexation of Hawaii by means of Patriotism is another Russian strongpoint. Commodore Robert W. Shufeldts Voyage to Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts, Mahans The Influence of Sea Power upon History: Securing International [49]In asking what lessons might flow from the influence of Roman sea power on the fall of the Carthaginian Empire, Mahan arrived at the germ of his project. In this sense, Corbett is less a repudiation of Mahan than a refinement of Mahanian logics. [62] As Mackinder conceived it, the Eurasian heartland is surrounded by an Inner Crescent of Western Europe, the Middle East, and South and North East Asia. Finally, he attempted to ratify a treaty with the Colombian Government that would allow the United States to build an isthmian canal through the province of Panama. It's free to sign up and bid on jobs. Continue with Recommended Cookies. The acquisition of Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam and Cienfuegos *n Cuba, for example, has greatly enhanced Soviet naval strategic positioning. From the time of their publication, the writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan have framed dialogues on U.S. sea power, sea control, and maritime strategy. While the country's parties are crafting new populist pitches to Thai voters, factional politics still reigns supreme. Mahan, however, as a historian and a grand-strategic proponent of geopolitics (to say nothing of his role as a polemicist for institutional prerogatives) remains both insightful and significant. Edward the first prize of the War of the French Revolution. Rodgers magisterial The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815. 16, No. The author, Alfred Thayer Mahan, was a United States Naval officer and the son of the esteemed West Point professor Dennis Hart Mahan. [39] N.A.M. Britain was successful in the War of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), chiefly as a result of its ability to maintain overseas trade and finance armed conflict on the Continent. Mahan, the son of the legendary West Point instructor Dennis Hart Mahan, was born in 1840, graduated from the U.S. decline in the naval strength of its major European rivals, paved the way for Halford J. Mackinder, Geographical Pivot of History, The Geographical Journal 23, No. Naval War College, in 1890 he selectively compiled lecture notes into the body-text of Influence. [48] Mahan was struck by the effects of (supposed) Roman naval superiority on the course of the Punic Wars. Nations in these outer rings were, by Mackinders definition, peripheral to the pivot of history in central Eurasia. Mahans evidentiary base consists of several case studies, beginning with the Anglo-Dutch Wars in the 17thcentury. Harrison Administration (1889-1893) Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Franklin Tracy read it approvingly, seeing the book as evidence in favor of naval investment. New Delhi has distanced itself from a controversial and unequal deal between Adani Power and the Bangladesh Power Development Board. Dutton & Co., 1968), 35. The Russian climate, however, is so frigid that more than 90% of this total is icebound the entire year, rendering it useless to naval operations. The best known competing geopolitical model to Mahans is Halford Mackinders 1904 Heartland or World Island theory: a theoretical and historical argument that control of the landmass of Eurasia underwrote a continental (or land power) that no maritime state could effectively challenge. Non-members can read five free Proceedings articles per month. Account & Lists Returns & Orders. Ensign Pandolfes home is Scituate, Massachusetts. with profound social and economic consequences. A.T. Mahan, Naval Strategy Compared and Contrasted with the Principles and Practice of Military Operations on Land, (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1911). Put briefly, Mahan as grand strategist argued that Britain's "sea power" underwrote its rise to strategic preponderance in the European system from 1650 to 1780. Great Britainan island nation with free access to the high seashad strong geographic incentives and advantages in the race for Sea Power vis--vis its continental rivals France and later Germany. Lambert resurrects the concept of seapower (one word), defining it as a form of cultural identity mixed with geopolitical ambitions that allows marginal sea states to leverage asymmetric-maritime advantages against great power hegemons. Mahan begins with a discussion of the elements he considers to be the key to a nation's . It relates in detail how the Navy formed and reformed its doctrine of naval force and operations around a concept articulated by Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan - a concept of offensive sea control. Francis P. Sempa is the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century (Transaction Books) and Americas Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics, and War (University Press of America). Defense, China for Us, Chinese Naval Strategy in the 21st Century: The Turn to Mahan, Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century, Americas Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics, and War. [20] Mahans only book dedicated to strategy and tactics as such was, by his own admission, the worst writing he ever produced. Journal Article OPEN ACCESS Naval War College Review, Vol. Influences effect on the U.S. Navy took longer to register, much to Mahans disappointment. Beyond this, an Outer Crescent and Outer Insular Crescent of the World Island includes the Western Hemisphere (including the United States), Britain, Australia, and Japannot coincidentally states that have historically invested a great deal in Sea Power. naval power lagged far behind that of its European peers, not to mention a handful of Latin America nations. Largely in response to these circumstances, Mahan took matters into his own hands, making a historical argument (or polemic) for naval expansion. Rather, it is designed point-by-point to illustrate didactically the importance of Sea Power to policymakers in the United States. First, Mahan looked for strategic points of convergence and concentration. Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). If so, does the Soviet Union have the necessary prerequisites to become a seapower? This is 'defined as the condition that exists when an adversary is denied the ability to use an area of sea for its own purposes The timing was serendipitous: his move came just as the first of the new steel navys appropriations came into effect. Question 2. [22] Mahan, Influence, 71. While Mahan could work under the assumption of robust U.S. commercial shipping, modern strategists do not have the same luxury. Extrapolating from the history of Northern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, Mahan concluded that sea powernaval superiority rooted in commercial vitality, shipping, and foreign territorial acquisitionswas the key to national power and influence. tern held the vast majority of the people tied to the soil. In 1890, United States Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan published a book titled "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History." The monumental text addressed the importance of both military and commercial fleets in the success of a nation in war and peacetime. [16] As what Margaret Sprout called an Evangelist of Sea Power, he was remarkably successful: The Mahanian phrase has been appropriated by all the other branches of the armed services with varying degrees of fidelity (land power, air power, and surely space power is not too far off in the future). The term itself entered the English language in the 1840s via the British classicist George Grotes History of Greece, which described the Minoans as a seapower or, alternately, thalassocracy.[15] Mahan split that word into its component parts for effect (maritime power was apparently too smooth for his liking) and then spread the concept with nearly religious zeal. The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 16601783, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and In 1890 Alfred Thayer Mahan published a book that transformed naval theoryand unleashed the world's great fleets. . Indeed, reading the text for insight into pure naval strategy misses Mahans larger point. Us, Write [36] On Preparedness, New York Times, March 18, 1897. It was his second book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783 (1890), however, that brought him national and international fame. from the meridian of western Asia Minor, until to the eastward it overpasses that of Japan. He envisioned an expansionist Russia needing to be contained by an alliance of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan, which is precisely what happened between 1945 and 1991. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. But theres just as much, if not more, tracking in the virtual world.". This is particularly true if the flee1 in question has sortied without high-performance air cover. Captain, later Rear-Admiral, Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) was an American naval officer and historian . Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power, 53. Mahan knew it well, having served on at least one rotting Civil War-era gunboat in Japan. Work on the long-planned Muse-Kyaukphyu line is once again inching forward, but construction is likely many years off. Securing such access would require three things: a merchant navy, which could carry American products to new markets across the great highway of the high seas; an American battleship navy to deter or destroy rival fleets; and a network of naval bases capable of providing fuel and supplies for the enlarged navy, and maintaining open lines of communications between the United States and its new markets. Conclusion: The Soviet Union has the potential to develop, or compensate for, nearly all of its natural disadvantages in relation to Mahans six principles of seapower. Great Britains emergence as the worlds dominant military, political, and This incident created a chain reaction of damage to commerce, delaying more than 400 vessel transits and suspending nearly $60 billion in trade, with countless downstream effects on the supply chain. Mahan's lecture notes become the basis for his book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, published in 1890.
Mahan conducted his basic research for Influence in the library of the English Club of Lima, Peru while he was stationed (sullenly) patrolling the Pacific coast of South America. Mahan intended for his writing to educate the American populace on the strategic value of sea power and to advocate for expansion of the U.S. Navy.1 Drawing on the examples of Britain, Holland, and France, he distills sea power into coexistent naval, commercial, and financial elements.2 As president of the Naval War College, he not unexpectedly examines the value of a states navy in exercising sea power. Mahan begins with a discussion of the Punic Wars War-era gunboat in Japan the Soviet have! Coined the term & quot ; Delhi has distanced itself from a controversial and unequal deal Adani... With Capetown, Hawaii ) Power Development Board College Review, Vol first coined the term & quot.. 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