Eight years before the Spanish-American War resulted in the United States becoming a world power with overseas possessions, Mahan wrote an article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled The United States Looking Outward, (1890) in which he urged U.S. leaders to recognize that our security and interests were affected by the balance of power in Europe and Asia. The decline of the U.S. Navy ended about 1880, and by 1890, a renaissance was in full swing. . Though Grote apparently applies it to Minoan civilization, see: Lambert, Seapower States, 334, n. 2. [71] Kennedy also noticedalong with Mackinderthat Mahans ideal of Sea Power held true only for a relatively short period (the Columbian Epoch) before the widespread adoption of railways and the consolidation of territorial nation-states. Most importantly, Anglo-U.S. Sea (cum financial) Power sustained the British war in Europe, convoying armies, supplies, and credit across the watera familiar theme in Mahans work. The danger inherent in shifting forces over a distance as great as that existing between the Black Sea and Far East fleets was amply proven by the Japanese victory at Tsushima Strait in 1905. However, both of . Enjoying this article? [40] Why did one succeed at sea and not the other? 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. Largely in response to these circumstances, Mahan took matters into his own hands, making a historical argument (or polemic) for naval expansion. sense, sea power and cyber power share a common objective. This causes Soviet ships to put in less sea-days (time under way) than their American counterparts. Mahans subsequent work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire (1892), carried this argument forward in an almost wholly derivative encore. Mahan argued that British control of the seas, combined with a corresponding This chapter also discusses how the core principles Mahan borrowed from the Swiss military theorist Jomini - concentration, offensive action, and decision by battle . Naval War College Digital Commons, 1964 In the decades following Mahans death, Coast Guard authority expanded to encompass all aspects of domestic sea power, with responsibility for the totality of the nations marine transportation system, including the free flow of commerce through the nations ports. [37] Therein lay the origins of British prosperity and influence, as Mahans historical research hoped to demonstrate. Search for jobs related to Mahan six principles of sea power or hire on the world's largest freelancing marketplace with 22m+ jobs. Tactics were conditioned by changing types of naval armaments. Peter Karsten, The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modem American Navalism(New York: Free Press, 1972). See also: Daniel Wayne Stewart, The Greatest Gift to Modern Civilization: Naval Power and Moral Order in the United States and Great Britain, 1880-1918, (Ph.D. For Mahan, ephemeral superiority in ship tonnage, technology, or proficiency is only a chimerical form of security. Patriotism is another Russian strongpoint. The stability of the Soviet Navy in the Russian political structure is another facet of seapower the government must consider. Anyone curious about the period in question should save time and energy by turning to N.A.M. The Inuence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, Vol II (of 2) - Alfred Thayer Mahan 2020-08-15 Influenced by Jomini 's principles of strategy, he argued that in the coming wars, control of the sea would grant the power to control the trade and resources needed to wage war. Influences origins date to the 1880s, though its exact genesis is obscured by retrospective sentimentality. They must allow the Russian sailors to go ashore in foreign ports and see things differently, and often better, than those existing at home. 3 When Mahan wrote, there was only a single, unrivalled power with global interests: the Royal Navy. Like all historical texts, Mahans work tells us as much about the moment in which it was created as it does the objective past. There was an emerging power with . While there, Mahan took to Theodor Mommsens account of the Hannibalic episode in The History of Rome. The upshot, he asserted, was that tactical principles like maneuver, firepower, the value of surprise and anti-scouting all translated across the centuries. Robert Seager II and Doris Maguire (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975), Vol II, 494. [61] Mackinder believed that the momentary dominance of European warships and seaborne commerce (from roughly 1500-1900) was largely an accident of technology and not an immutable fact. 1, Article 7; Arne Roksund, The Jeune Ecole: The Strategy of the Weak (Boston: Brill, 2007); Theodore Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy: French Naval Policy 1871-1904, ed. Nicholas Lambert, What Is a Navy For? U.S. that westward migration across the North American continent and the countrys Chapter 4 - Alfred Mahan "Sea Power" - Foundations of Geopolitics Foundations of Geopolitics PART 1 - Founding fathers of geopolitics Chapter 1 - Friedrich Ratzel. @media only screen and (min-device-width : 320px) and (max-device-width : 480px) { If the United States failed to act, Mahan warned, the vast mass of China . The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660 1783 eBook : Mahan , A. T.: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store. What are the 6 elements of Mahan? Two related, but discrete definitions come through in the textwhat might be called little and big s/Sea p/Powerthough to be clear Mahan uses only the former. This had understandable appeal to industrialists, merchants interested in overseas trade, investors, nationalists, and imperialists, and peacetime America. In a virtuous cycle, physical access to the sea, commercial trade, and colonial possessions created national wealth. lessons could be applied to U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the quest to When combined with the average Russians disdain for sustained effort, his love of wielding arbitrary power, and the continually smashed dreams of consumer satisfaction, the ambitious five-year plans of the government (which dictate economic quotas and growth) lead to corruption, shoddy production, and unavailability of parts and service. Written during a period of U.S. naval reform and expansion, Mahans research is at once a parochial argument about the need to revitalize U.S. sea power, and a broader account of the relationships between the ocean, trade, and national strength. Most critically, William (of Orange) and Marys ascent to the British throne in 1688 reconfigured Dutch strategic concerns toward France at the expense of the navy.[41]. Number of population and national character can also be made to work in Russias favor by developing the peoples strengths of patriotism and perseverance. [69] Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). But since 1790, the Revenue Cutter Service had been collecting tariffs, combating smuggling, and enforcing revenue and customs laws. Mahan argued for a universal principle of concentration of powerful ships in home waters and minimized strength in distant seas, while Fisher reversed Mahan by utilizing technological change to propose submarines for defense of home waters and mobile battle cruisers for protection of distant imperial interests. Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) was the first modern military theorist to attempt to explain the influence of sea power in a systematic way; arguably, he claimed to have coined the term itself.5 Mahan's seminal book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783, was published in 1890. affected sea power. Many critics have read Influence as transparent propaganda for a domestic audience or a set of dated prescriptions about naval strategy. What concerned Mahan most was ensuring that the U.S. Government could 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. Hello Select your address Kindle Store Hello, Sign in. The terms Maritime strategy and Naval strategy have been variably defined throughout modern history. . Mahan, armed with his faith in Sea Power as a determinative factor in history, was well prepared to catch the growing wave of navalist sentiment in the United States. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. A. Friedman, Command of the LittoralsInsights from Mahan, The Strategy Bridge, 10 October 2017; and David Ramassinii, Too Small to Answer the Call, U.S. 1898. Alabama; it can only be a secondary goal of naval action. [7] Mark R. Shulman, Navalism and the Emergence of American Sea Power (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995); Scott Mobley, Progressives in Navy Blue (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2018). 3 (1953): 491-512. Mahan is suspicious of democratic societies because they may struggle to maintain naval funding during peacetime (witness U.S. demobilization after the Civil War). Nonetheless, even without a climactic battle, it is clear that the Mahanian historical method could have accommodated WWI and its outcome. [31] (Semi-)Colonial peoples the world over could no doubt empathize. Mahana product of his timestakes for granted that nations have innate and often racialized characteristics. In todays highly technical navies, the quality and adaptability of personnel are matters of paramount importance once the government has decided to commit itself to a course of naval development. A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783 (Boston, Little Brown and Company, 1898). Element five, national character, is still more important, given that the basic precondition of Sea Power is commercial prosperity. Their ability to withstand long hours and hard work allowed them to adapt to the sailors life, yielding Sir. All the whileand strange as it sounds to twenty-first century readers long accustomed to post-1945 U.S. maritime preponderanceU.S. He also recognized the power potential of China and foresaw a time when the United States would need to be concerned with Chinas rise. You've read 1 out of 5 free articles of Proceedings this month. Robert Seager II and Doris Maguire (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975). Mahans books complemented the work of one of his contemporaries, Professor It was an anniversary, unfortunately, that went largely unnoticed. [63] Rather than controlling the sea or retreating behind it, Spykman argued for consistent engagement with the rimlands of Western Europe, the Middle East, and the Asian Monsoon lands as a means of balancing power and controlling potential hegemons. [10] Mahan disagreed with many of his compatriotsand a competing set of French thinkerswho argued for comparably cheaper investments in coastal defense technologies and commerce raiding ships. Securing such access would 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 links naval activities to wider national and international issues and proposed a series of principles for professional naval officer to use in the formulation of naval strategy. Halford J. Mackinder, Geographical Pivot of History, The Geographical Journal 23, No. Those writing on naval affairs will ever be indebted to Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian Corbett, if not the first to put pen to paper and write about navies, then they remain of the first rank of those still cited owing to . China is drawing lessons from Russias invasion of Ukraine. the 1890s, but his work resonated with many leading intellectuals and tern held the vast majority of the people tied to the soil. It was Alfred Thayer Mahan who first coined the term "sea power.". William P. Dickson (London: R. Bentley, 1862-1866). William Leeman and John B. Hattendorf, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2020). A great navy is one designed to fight an enemy in fleet engagements in order to win command of the sea, not one designed for commerce raiding or guerre de course. I owed it to no other man.[46] Mahan was deeply religious, and so perhaps it should come as no surprise that his conversion to Sea Power has a Road-to-Damascus feel to it. Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1918). Mahan understood that the United States, like Great Britain, was geopolitically an island lying offshore the Eurasian landmass whose security could be threatened by a hostile power or alliance of powers that gained effective political control of the key power centers of Eurasia. He further understood that predominant Anglo-American sea power in its broadest sense was the key to ensuring the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia. of the Department, Mahans The Influence of Sea Power upon History: Securing International [72] Factors like size and population might matter to sea power, but are far more relevant to calculations of raw geopolitical or landpower strengthas anyone contemporaneously counting Soviet infantry divisions in Eastern Europe could attest. Foreseeing a not-so-distant day when an Isthmian Canal would transform the Caribbean Basin (like the Mediterranean) into a hub of trade routes and a site of great power conflict, he advocated for the construction of a sea-going U.S. fleet of battleships designed to compete with the dominant powers in the North Atlantic (Britain above all). In this sense Kennedy largely reflected Mackinders argument: Railways and the consolidation of nation states like Germany, Russia, and the United States in the late-19th century once again made land-powers the dominant actors in the international system. Exacerbating matters, he originally wrote the text as a series of lectures at the War College. Skip to main content.ca. The true strength of Russia lies on the field of Borodino and in the rubble of Stalingrad, not in the rhetoric of the Communist Party Central Committee. N.A.M. Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). True, the book is both of those things, but Mahans account of Atlantic imperial rivalries is also more valuably an estimate of the effect of sea power upon the course of history and the prosperity of nations.[2] That form of comparative and nomological history makes Influence a strategic classic of enduring relevance. [23] In this context, a Trafalgar-like victoryone which destroys an adversary navy or reduces its capacity to harassing attacksis important only insomuch as it ensures the true objective of a navy: secure control of communications between points.[24]. [9] Wayne Hughes, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2000), 9. [35] Lastly comes national policy. 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. Mahan wrote Influence in response to the somewhat ironic position of the United States and its navy in the international system in the 1880s and 90s. Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1944). [21] Furthermore, most of the tactical and naval-strategic insights Mahan articulated in 1890 are derivative of works produced by theorists of land power, notably Antoine-Henri Jomini: an emphasis on decisive engagement; concentration on strategic points; and the imperative of protecting logistics (what Mahan would call communications). While Mahan could work under the assumption of robust U.S. commercial shipping, modern strategists do not have the same luxury. [14] German[ edit] Character of the Government: Mahan shows us time and again that the path a nation takes in its climb to or fall from greatness results from the character of the government. [3] Demobilization post-1865 had left the USN with a wooden-hulled Old Steam Navy that by the 1880s was literally rotting away. 2.6 The key elements of a maritime strategy include sea denial, sea control and power projection: Sea Denial has the 'aim of prevention of the use of the sea' by another force against us. 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