- Author
- Waring, P.S., Midshipman, RAN
- Subjects
- Biographies and personal histories
- Tags
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- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- September 2008 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
Another significant aspect of Mahan’s work was his analysis of the shifting sea lines of communication due to the proposed canal through the Central American Isthmus. He accurately predicted that any such canal would greatly increase the sea traffic upon, and thus the strategic importance of, the Caribbean. Moreover, Mahan effectively highlighted the interdependency between naval power and economics. In particular the cyclical link between a strong navy capable of keeping open the lines of communications and an economy based on the acquisition of colonies for trading with, which in turn would create the prosperity needed to support a large navy. In effect Mahan was arguing for a broader conception of maritime power, a more encompassing paradigm which better tied naval power to domestic prosperity.
Mahan was arguing for the existence of immutable historical constants; principles upon which the success of the great powers had been determined throughout history.
‘Conditions and weapons change; but to cope with the one or successfully wield the others, respect must be had to the constant teachings of history in the tactics of the battlefield, or in those operations of war which are comprised under the name of strategy.’
Sail may have given way to steam but the lessons of history were, for Mahan, no less instructive. Principles such as the need to maintain an undivided force, the importance of decisively engaging the enemy’s fleet and the relative futility of commerce destroying were all proven through history and, as such, immutable.
Mahan’s work was at once both a rejection of the claim that as technology improved history became irrelevant and an effective intellectual justification for the transformation of American maritime policy. Although connecting international politics with naval supremacy in the broadest sense, Mahan’s work was not without a purpose and not without an intended audience. Like a detective, a good historian will always search out the motive of any source he examines.
Mahan and the End of American Isolationism
The late nineteenth century was a period of dramatic economic expansion for the United States and there were many who believed that she should attain a position more consummate with this growing wealth. Fresh markets were needed for the growth of American trade and influential figures such as the future president Theodore Roosevelt argued for a greater global role for America, bordering even on the acquisition of an empire. Washington’s famous warning against becoming embroiled in European affairs had, for the most part, held fast throughout the nineteenth century. But as the economy boomed and the continental borders attained a degree of permanence the stage was set for the end of isolationism and the beginning of the global expansion of American power. It was into this atmosphere that Mahan’s work gained an enthusiastic audience; he was well known to Roosevelt and in effect began to provide the intellectual underpinnings for his grand plans for American expansion.
Mahan was not on the front lines in Cuba with Roosevelt when war broke out against Spain in 1898, nor was he with his famed contemporary Dewey when he scored his famous victory over the Spanish fleet in Manilla Bay, rather he was serving a different, yet not necessarily less important, role back in America. Mahan was exhibiting leadership of a different type to those men of action; his was of the intellectual kind, providing the rationale and the justification for the dramatic shift in American policy. As Warren Zimmerman states in the introduction to his book on the expansion of American influence, ‘Mahan was the “man of thought,” as he called himself, working out a rationale for expansion that made him the pre-eminent military strategist in all American history.’It was the convincing manner in which he linked sea-power with domestic economic imperatives that gave his arguments such credence.
From a more quantitative perspective Mahan’s influence is equally apparent. The period between 1880 and 1907 saw an American ship building program that surpassed even the great naval build up of the Kaiser’s Germany. Mahan had shouted loudly for a strong navy, writing numerous books and well over a hundred articles and essays, and it seems as though members of government were listening. By the time the Great White Fleet returned to Chesapeake Bay in late 1907 America’s navy was second only in size and capability to that of the Royal Navy.Mahan’s leadership was once again of the intellectual kind, he tied the growth of American global influence to rational, realistic national imperatives thus providing an effective reasoning beyond the somewhat hollow rhetoric of American Exceptionalism. His leadership can perhaps be best illustrated by its impact on not only the policies of his own state but on the European world as well.
Mahan and the Great Anglo-German Naval Race
The Germany of the late nineteenth century had much in common with the United States of the same era, both relatively recent entities and both in search of a greater global position. As the sun begun to set on the era of Pax-Britannica these new industrial powers were in search of markets, colonies and even the prestige of empire. The Americans desired an ‘Open Door’ into Asia and the fulfilment of their ‘Manifest Destiny’ whilst the Germans hoped for a ‘Place in the Sun.’ These rhetorical parallels were matched by the similar impact of Mahan’s work.