Alfred Thayer Mahan

Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote the book that persuaded half a dozen governments to build battle fleets. Born in 1840 at West Point, where his father taught engineering, he went to the Naval Academy against his father's advice, served in the blockade during the Civil War, and had an undistinguished sea career — he disliked ships, ran several aground, and was happiest ashore. He was rescued from obscurity by an invitation to lecture at the new Naval War College in 1885. The lectures became The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, published in 1890. Its argument was that the outcome of the great European wars had been determined not on land but by control of the sea, and that command of the sea was won by concentrated battle fleets seeking decisive engagement — not by commerce raiding or coastal defence. Sea power, he argued, rested on geography, population, government policy, a merchant marine, colonies and bases. The timing was perfect. Industrial states were deciding what navies to build, and Mahan told them to build capital ships. Kaiser Wilhelm II said he was trying to learn it by heart and had it placed aboard German warships; Tirpitz used it to justify the fleet that antagonised Britain; the Japanese translated it and taught it at their staff college; and Theodore Roosevelt, who reviewed it, used it to argue for the fleet, for Hawaii and for the Panama Canal. He is thus partly responsible for the naval arms race before 1914. He died in 1914. Submarines and aircraft undermined much of his doctrine within a generation of his death.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history