Mahan, Alfred Thayer (1840–1914)

Author and Naval Strategist

Alfred Thayer Mahan was a 19th-century naval officer who greatly influenced the modern U.S. Navy. Unlike most offi-cers whose reputations were built at sea, Mahan's legacy was as an author and naval strategist.

Mahan was the son of Dennis Hart Mahan, the notable reformer of the United States Military Academy at West Point. The younger Mahan chose Annapolis instead and graduated second in the class of 1859. Like most officers who sided with the Union, he served in its naval blockade of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Although his service was undistinguished, Mahan's wartime experiences influ-enced his later writings on the importance of naval strength to national power.

Mahan served in a variety of ship billets after the war, but he never acquired a taste for sea duty. Recognizing that this limited his opportunities, he jumped at an invitation from Adm. Stephen Luce to join the faculty of the newly founded Naval War College in 1884. After Luce was recalled to an operational assignment in 1885, Mahan succeeded him as president of the college and helped keep the fledgling school operational. His faculty lectures on naval history were published in 1890 in a landmark book, The Influence of Seapower Upon History.

Mahan's reputation among modern historians is mixed. Many scholars have debunked his historical skills, arguing that his evidence does not sustain the sweep of his theories. However, recent work also casts Mahan in a more positive light by focusing on the legacy of his innovative, if somewhat flawed, ideas. Mahan was most interested in addressing far-reaching questions relating to national power and develop-ment, such as why some countries achieved prominence and what sustained their political and economic power.

Mahan insisted that the common thread was a strong navy. Throughout history, nations have looked to the oceans to build their economies and secure alliances. With rare exceptions, nations that lacked a strong navy had not withstood the test of time. Strong navies, on the other hand, protected nations from attack. The preeminent example Mahan used to support his theories was Great Britain. England built its empire's foundations on the strength of the Royal Navy. Its foremost rival, France, was a tremendous land power, but its navy was never strong enough to challenge England seriously beyond the European continent.

Mahan asserted that the United States could also become a world power, but only if the military embarked on [Page 439]making critical changes. In his opinion, the country's naval strategy was woefully deficient. The Navy had directed most of its attention to coastal defense—it was a “brown-water” Navy. It did not have enough ships to maintain much “blue-water” presence (projecting the nation's diplomatic and economic interests overseas), so during wartime it focused on commerce raiding or single ship engagements. Mahan believed that such tactics violated the cardinal rules of warfare. He borrowed from Napoleon's ideas on land warfare—especially on the concentration of force and the design of decisive battles—in making his recommendations. England's mastery of the seas came from a concentrated battle fleet, which projected power over a wide radius. In wartime, Mahan argued, a navy's primary purpose was the destruction of the enemy's main battle fleet, after which it could blockade the enemy's coast or destroy its commerce to complete the victory.

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