Alfred Thayer Mahan is one of the most influential strategists of the 19th and 20th centuries. He explains how England won its wars against France from the 17th to the 19th century thanks to its naval superiority and secured through maritime trade the rank of first economic power in the world.
The Character and His Motivations
The U.S. Navy was created in 1800 for defensive reasons: coastal defense and to stop Barbary raids in the Mediterranean on the American merchant navy. The Dey of Algiers took American citizen sailors as slaves.
After the capture of Spain by Napoleon and the Bolivarian revolutions of 1813 to 1830 in Latin America, President Monroe in 1820 asserted the diplomatic and military supremacy of the United States throughout the American continent.
Alfred is the son of a professor of Westpoint Military School. Born in 1840, he was 21 at the start of the American Civil War and served as a lieutenant during the war until he was 26. Alfred does not like to go to sea: steamships are too noisy for his taste, ships under his command are involved in collisions with other ships and stationary objects.
After the Civil War, he developed a passion for naval history and strategy. The U.S. Navy, which had modernized in 1865, faced budget cuts after the Civil War. This work of history and strategist allows him to give meaning to his profession and to justify that a budget and a consequent status are attributed to the navy.
If he reaches the rank of captain at the height of his fame at 50. The issue of the political status of the navy was controversial in Congress. As an American politician of the time said: appoint an admiral, and he will want to become a duke. Five star admiral Dewey will try to become president.
Mahanian theory
Mahan's intuition is that the navy is the key to victory. He realizes that Hannibal probably lost the war against Rome because he was unable to communicate or get supplies from Carthage in Italy. He published several works on strategy:
in 1890, "The influence of maritime power on history: 1660-1783",
in 1892, "The influence of maritime power on the French Revolution and the empire: 1793-1812",
in 1897, "The interest of America in maritime power: present and future"
He describes in his books the naval history of Europe:
While agriculture or natural resources allow income in kind, trade makes it possible to monetize the production of a country.
It is the currency that finances the war. France is a much larger and more populous country than England, and yet England had better credit and can obtain the funds to finance his army.
In naval inferiority, France used privateers to harass the English merchant navy. The latter could not attack systematically because of British naval superiority and trade was reduced by only 10% to 20%. The blockade is ineffective.
According to him, ships of the line made it possible to establish naval superiority in the event of a decisive naval battle. Having superior ships of the line and competent sailors allows for an effective blockade that suffocates the enemy's financing of the war.
American Political Context
In the United States, territorial expansion westward ended in California in 1848 and 1853, the last episode of the Indian Wars took place at Wounded Knee in 1890. New questions then arise:
The Panama Canal is a great French project of 1880, does the Monroe Doctrine still make sense if the European navies dominate the United States Navy?
The status of Cuba as a Spanish colony seems fragile while Spain is destabilized by anarchists, is there not here an easy conquest of a large fertile territory?
Should we depose the Queen of Hawaii, and install a government there to guarantee a naval base in the Pacific, and limit Japanese immigration?
Should we take control of the Philippines to open a trade door to China?
For some in Washington, it was the manifest destiny of the man "of English speaking and Germanic race" to conquer and take control of the resources and to administer the natives. It would be a question of continuing the expansion beyond the natural borders of the country.
American opinion was then divided on this subject:
On the one hand, in a world where empires are expanding and small states no longer seem viable, the American population had increased from 4 million to 65 million between 1800 and 1890, the country was big enough to cope with any empire, and expansion appeared in the economic interest of the Americans.
On the other hand, many American elites believed that the role of the United States is to liberate other nations from the colonial yoke. An imperialist policy was contrary to the founding principles of the United States.
Finally, the expansion of international "big fruit" trade and the pressure of the "big steel" steel trust necessary for the construction of a modern fleet will favor imperialism. America will take the Philippines, but will want to liberate Cuba that has helped for too long for its independence, settling for Puerto Rico.
These imperialist pushes and experiences will be limited by the country's founding anti-colonial ideology, and the insurgency in the Philippines. American foreign policy from 1890 to 1930 was complicated by this contradiction between strategic interests and principles.
International influence
In the 1890s, Mahan became an international celebrity:
During his visit to England, Queen Victoria gave him a state reception in Buckingham, and the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge awarded him a doctorate in the same week.
In Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II is particularly enthusiastic and creates a modern navy
In France, the Mahanian doctrine and dominates until 1914 and replaces the Young School which prescribed many small torpedo boats and avoided the arms race, following technological evolution, Admiral Castex writes his Strategic Theories in 1935, better informed but less influential.
In Japan, the Imperial Japanese Navy already had a separate budget and ministry of equal status with the Imperial Japanese Army since 1872, before their conquest of Taiwan, they also followed the strategy of the Young School before adopting Mahanism.
Consequences: Imperialism, arms race
The English frigates of 1870 only respond to the innovations of 1865 (propeller propulsion, metal hull) introduced by the Americans during the American Civil War.
In 1890, Mahan's works revived the arms race, and by 1893, the battleships Indiana, Massachusetts, and Oregon were ordered and used in the war against Spain and China.
The one-upmanship of 1890 led to the creation of the Dreadnought class in 1906 by the British, propulsion by steam turbines, intercontinental autonomy, improved armor, torpedo tubes, 300mm guns:
The boats built since 1906 make all warships built since 1890 obsolete. The consequence of the success of the Mahanian theory is an arms race. HMS Dreadnought of 1906 lasted little longer and was scrapped in 1923 while the nuclear aircraft carriers of the Nimitz class in service since 1972 are still in service.
Mahan contributes to the development of the military-industrial complex, which is carried by the industrial interest of the country: steel trust, commercial interests: United Fruit Company
It causes the American presence in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Philippines, Panama
It launches the French, German, Japanese, and English in the 20th century in an arms race.
While the previous theory was for the harassment of ships of the line by lighter ships.
The state saw itself as a strategist from the end of the feudal era, but the necessary investments from 1890 to 1910 increased its planning needs.
From an environmental point of view, there is a big difference between Mahan and William Playfair. While the latter recognized the strategic importance of maritime trade, he only recommended encouraging the population to a more vegetarian menu to limit the country's food dependence.