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Alfred Thayer Mahan is not a name that is widely recognised nowadays, but of all the writers featured in this column, he can most convincingly be said to have influenced the course of history. His late-19th-century works on naval history and strategy have had an incalculable influence on world leaders, from Kaiser Wilhelm to (arguably) Donald Trump.
Naval strategy in the First and Second World Wars followed Mahanian principles, as it did also during the Cold War. His theories have underpinned Chinese naval strategy for more than 20 years, and President Trump’s startling pronouncements on the future of Panama and Greenland align closely to Mahan’s views on control of sea lanes, international commerce, and blockades.
Born 1840, Mahan entered the US Naval Academy and had a generally uneventful career for a quarter of a century as a naval officer. Serving in ships that were transitioning from wood and sail to iron and steam, he might have remained in obscurity had he not been asked to lecture at the newly established Naval War College in 1885. His teachings there evolved into a series of famous published works, starting in 1890 with The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. This was followed by two further volumes on the French Revolutionary Wars and the War of 1812 respectively.
The histories were not groundbreaking as such, as Mahan largely used existing secondary sources as the basis for his research. But it is the coherent set of strategic principles that he derived from his studies that proved so influential.
Six conditions
This is particularly true of his study of the British navy. Mahan was fascinated by the part played by the Royal Navy in Britain’s then global superpower status. In his first work, Mahan set out six ‘Principal Conditions affecting the sea power of nations’. These were: geographical position; physical conformation; extent of territory; size of population; character of the people; and character of the government. He demonstrated how Britain’s island location gave her immunity from invasion, while usefully sitting astride the Atlantic trade routes. Her small size created an overflow of population which led to expansion outwards, and, with it, trade and colonisation.
Rather than plunging immediately into the the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 1650s to 1680s, the logical starting point of Mahan’s first book (which looks at the period from 1660 onwards), his opening sentence reflects on the principles that underpin naval conflict throughout time:
The first and most obvious light in which the sea presents itself from the political and social point of view is that of a great highway; or better, perhaps, of a wide common, over which men may pass in all directions, but on which some well-known paths show that controlling reasons have led them to choose certain lines of travel rather than others.
The key principles of Mahanian naval doctrine emerge as he describes the conflicts involving the first great naval powers: Britain, Holland, France, and Spain. Although they arise from a discussion of 17th- and 18th-century conflicts, his precepts have a timeless quality about them:
The necessity of a navy, in the restricted sense of the word, springs therefore, from the existence of a peaceful shipping, and disappears with it, except in the case of a nation which has aggressive tendencies, and keeps up a navy merely as a branch of the military establishment.
Mahan is required reading for officers in the modern Chinese PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) and he still underpins much of US naval strategy. Both of these nations have massive global trading interests, and massive navies to match.
Mahan’s works on naval strategy have had an incalculable influence.
Conversely, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz’s German navy of World War I neatly illustrates the second part of Mahan’s statement. The German High Command eagerly embraced Mahan – but failed to grasp the fact that a big battle fleet was only part of the equation. They ended up with a fleet that wasn’t quite big enough for the job, and Germany’s lack of an extensive coastline gave it little scope to break out. In both World Wars, Germany’s U-boat fleet gave them significant potential for economic blockade, but in both instances the focus on capital ships had hamstrung the massive expansion needed to have a decisive impact.
Powerful battle fleets were indeed part of Mahan’s formula for success, and his books did a lot to drive the surge in battleship construction from the late 19th century onwards. Fascinated by Nelson (he also wrote a very successful biography of Britain’s naval hero), Mahan espoused the decisive, crushing naval victory as part of his philosophy, but he was sensible enough to see it was part of a much wider picture.
Triumph at sea necessitated a healthy merchant fleet, convoy escorts and control of the sea lanes, secure overseas bases, and a strong industrial base. Significantly, he was an exponent, too, of international coalitions, which were after all necessary in order to defeat Napoleon.
Doomed enterprise
All of this was ignored by another power that was fascinated by Mahan: Japan. Having secured Russia’s defeat through a crushing naval victory at Tsushima in 1905, Japan fruitlessly pursued a similar triumph in its war with the allies following Pearl Harbor. Mahan was deeply embedded in the Imperial Japanese Navy’s doctrine and shipbuilding practice, particularly in the focus on capital ships.
Yet key elements of Mahan’s thinking were ignored by the Japanese, particularly the protection of the merchant fleet. By dividing the battle fleet, Japan ignored Mahan’s emphasis on concentration of force, and, above all, the enterprise was doomed because the economic and social aspects of fighting the world’s most powerful industrial nation were ignored.
All of this begs the question: is Mahan relevant in the era of the aircraft carrier and the guided missile? Well, he was writing at the close of the age of sail, and recording the history of the age of wooden-hulled ships of the line. But the principles can be easily transposed to modern warfare. For instance, a simple search on ‘Mahan and China’ will reveal a host of articles on how this rising maritime power has embraced the author.
America might be forgiven for thinking that, in giving his theories to the world, Mahan created a monster. A recent article in the Australian Journal of International Affairs asserts that ‘China is applying Mahan’s geopolitical theory to enhance its maritime dominance, particularly through strategic port developments and asserting control over critical maritime chokepoints’.
The phenomenal expansion of the Chinese navy, China’s growing commercial dominance, and the ‘Anti-Access and Denial of Area’ that we see in the South China Sea are key elements of Mahan’s theories. But so too is the notion of free international commerce and the formation of multinational coalitions. It remains to be seen which will prevail.
Alfred Thayer Mahan
Born: 27 September 1840
Died: 1 December 1914
Nationality: American
Alfred Thayer Mahan grew up in West Point, New York, the son of a distinguished professor at the US Military Academy. He served for nearly 40 years in the American navy, including as a lieutenant during the Civil War. Following his later career as a college lecturer, he returned to the navy, this time serving on the war board during the Spanish-American War of 1898. By 1906, he had been promoted to the rank of rear admiral. Shortly before his death in December 1914, Mahan predicted the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I. Historian John Keegan described him as ‘the most important American strategist of the 19th century’.
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