His reading of history also demonstrated, time and again, that attacks on adversary merchant vessels by raidersa guerre de coursewere never as effective as a decisive battle with the enemy that drove his force from the sea or at least allowed it to appear only as a fugitive.[12] Toward that end, the construction of a fleet of armored battleships was an essential condition of national power. Mahan was one of the foremost proponents of the vigorous foreign policy 54. . naval power lagged far behind that of its European peers, not to mention a handful of Latin America nations. Kevin D. McCranie,Mahan, Corbett, and the Foundations of Naval Strategic Thought(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2021). Amid great power competition, life in the China-Russia borderlands reveals the paradoxes underpinning the Beijing-Moscow friendship. It's free to sign up and bid on jobs. Mahan also grasped as early as 1901 the fundamental geopolitical realities of the Cold War that emerged from the ashes of the first two world wars. @media only screen and (min-device-width : 320px) and (max-device-width : 480px) { Writing during the interwar period and World War II, he argued that the real contest for power in the 20th century would take place in the rimland around Eurasia (what Mackinder called the Inner Crescent) where Sea Power and Land Power meet in a sort of geopolitical estuary. 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. With a broader understanding of Sea Power in mind, Influences aim is to identify the mutually reinforcing relationships between geography, commerce, and military or commercial shippingas well as to explain why individual states do or do not mobilize Sea Power to pursue national goals. [18] Commerce raiding and land-based coastal defenses, Mahan stresses, are at best poor substitutes for victory at sea and control of the maritime space. [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. For a modern sailor he is technically underdeveloped, crude, and haphazard in his work. [14] German[ edit] Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) was a US Navy officer and author of influential marine history and strategy books. lessons could be applied to U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the quest to Sea Power Theory - Development - I. As he noted in his 1902 Presidential Address to the AHA, the artistic unity of a historical project often necessitated the subordination of contradictory evidence around a central theme, lest a more subtle argument mislead lay readers. Summary of Theory Alfred Mahan, the originator of the North - Studocu Development theory summary of theory alfred mahan, the originator of the north american school of geopolitics and an american naval officer and historian, DismissTry Ask an Expert Ask an Expert Sign inRegister Sign inRegister Home In 1886, Mahan was recalled from his Pacific postinglikely the best case for all involvedto assume a position at the freshly christened Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island by his mentor and patron Stephen B. Luce. It was a basic thesis that Kennedy expanded in 1987 to the Rise and Fall of Great Powers, a landmark text in which he identified a similar pattern of economic prosperity, imperial overstretch, and decline. While Turner did not explicitly Some have argued that twentieth-century inventions like the submarine and the aircraft carrier make Mahan and his overwhelming emphasis on surface-capital ships irrelevant, but this is far too narrow a reading of the text. Democracies are good at war for many of the same reasons they are good at capitalism and at the enhancement of the human spirit. For all of its success, criticsand there have been manyhave found ample fault with Mahans method and conclusions. Before shifting the Coast Guards focus to the Indo-Pacific and beyond, the United States must ensure its own commercial maritime viability. With regard to Mahans elements of sea power, China is situated in the heart of east-central Asia and has a lengthy sea-coast, a huge population, a growing economy, growing military and naval power, and, at least for now, a stable government. [30] Drawing from his experience in the Civil War, Mahan noted that the sparsely populated inlets and harbors of the Confederacy were not a source of strength, but rather highways for riverine penetration by Union gunboats. A skim through John Hattenforf's bibliography of Mahan's work demonstrates the daunting nature of how voluminous his historical and international affairs writing was. [91] Immanuel C.Y. #ga-ad {display: none;} We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. However, both of . In 1893, Mahan wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times in which he recommended U.S. annexation of Hawaii as a necessary first step to exercise control of the North Pacific. In the 1890s, Mahans ideas resonated with leading politicians, including Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, and Secretary of the Navy Herbert Tracy. It could have both. As the United States refocuses on great power competition and reevaluates its maritime strategy, it must consider the critical duties of the U.S. Coast Guard, even if Mahan did not. Writing at the turn of the 20 th century, Mahan was explicitly thinking about the role of sea power for the United States as it emerged onto the world stage, and his ideas, though very influential at the time, have fallen somewhat out of favor in more recent thinking about sea power. 30 seconds. Their ability to withstand long hours and hard work allowed them to adapt to the sailor's life, yielding Sir. Mahan's six elements of sea power, economic strength of a country is central to his thinking. who believed in sea power endorsed Mahan's doctrine. Many critics have read Influence as transparent propaganda for a domestic audience or a set of dated prescriptions about naval strategy. Apart from temporary wartime diversions, it persisted largely in that capacity until the end of the 19th century.5 These duties fell squarely within Mahans principles of maintaining open ports, preventing blockade, and protecting commercial maritime interests. In 1885 (five years before Influence) the Chilean Revista de Marina caught the spirit, crowing: The trident of Neptune is the scepter of the world and the history in the support of this truth shows to us that the peoples who have taken hold of the empire of the sea surpass all the others in their riches, power and civilization.[52]Mahans failure to grapple seriously with this contemporaneous example of Sea Power in practice reflected either his racially motivated condescension toward Latin America or else his shocking lack of investigative talent. Mahans Theories of s/Sea p/Power as Naval Strategy and Grand Strategy, It reflects the appeal of Mahans argument that sea power as a slogan or bumper sticker has traveled so widely in the 130 years since Influences publication. Mahan and some leading American politicians believed that these lessons could be applied to U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the quest to expand U.S. markets overseas. 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. Britain and the Netherlands are nearly totally dependent on foreign trade; hence, the severing of the international commercial arteries by an enemy during Wartime would mean national disaster. Mahan focuses much of his effort towards the "blue-water" Navy, while Julian Corbett[6], in contrast, focuses more intently on the connection between sea and landpower, and the limitations therein. Markets in the 1890s, purchasing Alaska in a fascinating sequel to Mahan 's writings could be entitled the "influence of Mahan upon sea power." At this point we should briefly ex amine the high points in Mahan's life and career. [91] Control of points, too, remains a vital consideration, justifying Freedom of Navigation Operations from the South China Sea to the Persian Gulf. Mahans books complemented the work of one of his contemporaries, Professor Frederick Jackson Turner, who is best known for his seminal essay of 1893, The Significance of the Frontier in American History. An American history professor at the University of Wisconsin, Turner postulated that westward migration across the North American continent and the countrys population growth had finally led to the closing of the American frontier, with profound social and economic consequences. Sea power describesanation's ability to cOMPRAR. expand U.S. markets overseas. [35] Lastly comes national policy. Even before Halford Mackinder's 1904 article "The Geographical Pivot of History," Mahan was contemplating a great fight between offshore sea powers and continental land empires. [63] Nicholas Spykman, The Geography of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1944), 40-41. [1] Indeed, it is likely true that no other piece of applied history has been as successful (for better or for worse) in the making and shaping of U.S. national security policy; George F. Kennans 1947 X Article comes to mind as a comparable example. Less intuitively, poor soil and climate often encourage Sea Power because domestic inadequacies force commercial interests abroad in search of resources and profits. Philip Crowl, Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian, in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. He identified several narrow passages or strategic chokepoints, the control of which contributed to Great Britains command of the seas. [22] Mahan, Influence, 71. Istilah Sea Power pertama kali muncul di akhir abad 19 oleh Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan dalam bukunya The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, hal.1660-1783. Russia has over, 28.0 miles of coastline, plenty for any aspiring sea' power. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. require three things: a merchant navy, which could carry American products to SEA BATTLES: BYNG OFF MINORCA; HAWKE AND CONFLANS; POCOCK AND D'ACH IN EAST INDIES pp 281-329 Get access Export citation CHAPTER IX - COURSE OF EVENTS FROM THE PEACE OF PARIS TO 1778. 8.650.0 square miles containing a population of, 241.700.0 (as of 1970). 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 . [71] Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987). As he stressed, the safety and independence of [the United States] can be preserved only by a foreign policy that will make it impossible for the Eurasian landmass to harbor an overwhelmingly dominant power in Europe and the Far East.[64] Though critical of what he called the extraordinary Anglo-Saxon predilection for thinking that only naval warfare is important, Spykman agreed that a pillar of this balancing act was sufficient maritime power to sustain relations on either end of Eurasia. He was brought up in a scholarly as well as military background . The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. Like Germany before the First World War, China in the 21st century has embraced Mahan. 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. In Influence, Mahan offers two possible formulas for grand strategic Sea Power. 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 That stress is the reason Influence is so often paired with later work by geopolitical thinkers such as Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman. [40] Why did one succeed at sea and not the other? [45] A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1892). Consider the strategic indecisiveness of Confederate cruiser warfare during the U.S. Civil War. In The Problem of Asia, Mahan urged statesmen to glance at the map of Asia and note the vast, uninterrupted mass of the Russian Empire, stretching without a break . Alfred Thayer's Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power Upon History was a two-volume work that argued that sea power was the key to military and economic expansion. [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. decline in the naval strength of its major European rivals, paved the way for Following the successful conclusion of the Spanish-American War in Deployment of ships at sea means the Soviet government must relinquish some of its cherished authority into the hands of naval officers, even though these officers are considered thoroughly dependable. Diplomatic Couriers, Guide to Country Recognition and Diss., Temple University, 1999). Influence then shifts focus to a century-long Anglo-French competition, punctuated by war. Work on the long-planned Muse-Kyaukphyu line is once again inching forward, but construction is likely many years off. Either is possible. Alfred Mahan Author of the influential book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History" and the father of American Imperialism Yellow Journalism Exaggerated and sensationalized reporting for the purpose of boosting sales and circulation Spanish-American War The elements in question are: 1) geographical position; 2) physical conformation; 3) extent of territory; 4) population; 5) national character; and finally, 6) the character and policy of governments. Consider the March 2021 grounding of the M/V Ever Given in the Suez Canal. The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660-1783 is a history of naval warfare published in 1890 by Alfred Thayer Mahan. Understanding them is important if conflict is to be avoided. Chinese military sources can tell us exactly what the PLA is learning. Mahan, however, wrote or contributed to twenty books. 15-30 (16 pages) https://www.jstor.org/stable/45236517 About this issue 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. Patriotism is another Russian strongpoint. As a matter of naval strategy, Mahans argument is relatively straightforward. Beijing doesnt have to choose between land and sea predominance. Its just about what you need currently. Mahan on Naval Warfare: Selections from the Writings of Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, ed. Corbett, by contrast, played chess: Though using the same board, he was quick to recognize the importance of specialized assets, maneuvering in concert, often toward limited ends. Naturally, states with numerous and deep harbors enjoy advantages over those without them. As Mahan concludes: The overwhelming sea power of England was the determining factor in European history during the period mentioned.[14] When reading Influence today it is useful, even imperative, to differentiate sea power as a narrow military strategy from this latter, more capacious, and (I argue) Mahanianunderstanding of the term as a form of grand strategy for the organization of national resources and objectives. [70] Mahan mentions production, Kennedy acknowledges, but he is more interested in seaborne commerce as the driving source of wealth; a significant distinction even if the concepts of trade and production routinely overlap in practice. [50] Robert Seager, Ten Years Before Mahan: The Unofficial Case for the New Navy, 1880-1890, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review40, No. In his 1980 book "Influence," Mahan outlined six "principal conditions affecting the sea power of nations": geographical position, physical . may yield to one of those impulses which have in past ages buried civilization under a wave of barbaric invasion. Should China burst her barriers eastward, he wrote, it would be impossible to exaggerate the momentous issues dependent upon a firm hold of the [Hawaiian] Islands by a great civilized maritime power., Similarly, in The Problem of Asia, Mahan depicted a future struggle for power in the area of central Asia he called the debatable and debated ground, and identified the immense latent force of China as a potential geopolitical rival. guaranteed the independence of Mexico from Spanish control. In doing so it encourages readers to consider the text through three lenses: polemic, naval strategy, and grand strategy. Sea powera slippery term from its inceptionhas diverse meanings with different applications. . The Inuence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783 - A. T. Mahan 2010 Mahan presents an examination of the general history of Europe and America with special reference to the eect of sea power on the course of history. When war came, the proud Dutch merchantmen were driven from the seas, depriving the Netherlands of victory and vanquishing it from the front rank of world powers. [53] A.T. Mahan, LPATM, Vol I, 563-564. 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. John Hattendorf (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1991). As the custodian of U.S. ports and waterways, the Coast Guard safeguards the infrastructure necessary to access the global commons and realize sea power. Consider the context: By the 1880s, railway lines knit together the United States continental empire from the Atlantic to the Pacific. ENGLAND'S OVERWHELMING POWER AND CONQUESTS ON THE SEAS, IN NORTH AMERICA, EUROPE, AND EAST AND WEST INDIES. Alfred T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, 1890 Von der rmischen Geschichte und seinen Untersuchungen zum 17. und 18. Continental Army and Militia forces under the command of Major General John Sullivan had been besieging the British forces in Newport, Rhode Island, which is situated on Aquidneck Island, but they had finally abandoned their siege and were withdrawing to the northern part of the island. 5 (May 2017): 28. Following the Civil War, Secretary of State William Seward had attempted to Nonetheless, even without a climactic battle, it is clear that the Mahanian historical method could have accommodated WWI and its outcome. In The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, Mahan reviewed the role of sea power in the emergence and growth of the British Empire. (CGN-36). 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]. Compared to Mahan, Kennedy placed a great deal more emphasis on the central economic factor of industrial productivity in the making of naval power. 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