Alfred Thayer Mahan Alfred Thayer Mahan ( September 27 , 1840 – December 1 , 1914 ) was a United States Navy flag officer , geostrategist , and historian , who has been called " the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century . " His concept of " sea power " was based on the idea that countries with greater naval power will have greater worldwide impact ; it was most famously presented in " The Influence of Sea Power Upon History , 1660 – 1783 " ( 1890 ) . The concept had an enormous influence in shaping the strategic thought of navies across the world , especially in the United States , Germany , Japan and Britain , ultimately causing a European naval arms race in the 1890s , which included the United States . His ideas still permeate the U . S . Navy Doctrine . Several ships have been named as the , including the lead vessel of a class of destroyers . Early life and education . Mahan was born on September 27 , 1840 in West Point , New York to Dennis Hart Mahan ( a professor at the United States Military Academy ) and Mary Helena Mahan . His middle name , Thayer , honors " the father of West Point " , Sylvanus Thayer . He attended Saint James School , an Episcopal college preparatory academy in western Maryland . He then studied at Columbia for two years where he was a member of the Philolexian Society debating club and then , against his parents ' wishes , transferred to the Naval Academy , where he graduated second in his class in 1859 . Commissioned as a lieutenant in 1861 , Mahan served the Union in the American Civil War as an officer on USS " Worcester " , " Congress " , " Pocahontas " , and " James Adger " and as an instructor at the Naval Academy . In 1865 , he was promoted to lieutenant commander , and then to commander ( 1872 ) , and captain ( 1885 ) . As commander of the he was stationed at Callao , Peru , protecting American interests during the final stages of the War of the Pacific . Despite his success in the Navy , his skills in actual command of a ship were not exemplary , and a number of vessels under his command were involved in collisions , with both moving and stationary objects . He had an affection for old square - rigged vessels and did not like the smoky , noisy steamships of his time ; he tried to avoid active sea duty . On the other hand , the books he wrote ashore made him arguably the most influential naval historian of the period . Career . Naval War College and writings . In 1885 , he was appointed as a lecturer in naval history and tactics at the Naval War College . Before entering on his duties , College President Rear Admiral Stephen B . Luce pointed Mahan in the direction of writing his future studies on the influence of sea power . For his first year on the faculty , he remained at his home in New York City researching and writing his lectures . Upon completion of this research period , he was to succeed Luce as President of the Naval War College from June 22 , 1886 to January 12 , 1889 and again from July 22 , 1892 to May 10 , 1893 . There , in 1887 , he met and befriended Theodore Roosevelt , then a visiting lecturer , who would later become president of the United States . Mahan plunged into the library and wrote lectures that drew heavily on standard classics and the ideas of Henri Jomini . The lectures became his sea - power studies : " The Influence of Sea Power upon History , 1660 – 1783 " ( 1890 ) ; " The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire , 1793 – 1812 " ( 2 vols . , 1892 ) ; and " Sea Power in Relation to the War of 1812 " ( 2 vols . , 1905 ) . " The Life of Nelson : The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain " ( 2 vols . , 1897 ) supplemented the series . Mahan stresses the importance of the individual in shaping history , and extols the traditional values of loyalty , courage , and service to the state . Mahan sought to resurrect Horatio Nelson as a national hero in Britain and used the book as a platform for expressing his views on naval strategy and tactics . Criticisms of the work focused on Mahan ' s handling of Nelson ' s love affair with Lady Emma Hamilton , but it remained the standard biography until the appearance of Carola Oman ' s " Nelson " fifty years later . In addition to these works , Mahan wrote more than a hundred articles on international politics and related topics , which were closely read by policy makers . Upon being published , Mahan struck up a friendship with pioneering British naval historian Sir John Knox Laughton , the pair maintaining this relationship through correspondence and visits when Mahan was in London . Mahan was later described as a ' disciple ' of Laughton , although the two men were always at pains to distinguish between each other ' s line of work , Laughton seeing Mahan as a theorist while Mahan called Laughton ' the historian ' . Strategic views . Mahan ' s views were shaped by the seventeenth century conflicts between Holland , England , France and Spain , and by the nineteenth century naval wars between France and Britain , where British naval superiority eventually defeated France , consistently preventing invasion and blockade ( see Napoleonic war : Battle of Trafalgar and Continental System ) . To a modern reader , the emphasis on controlling seaborne commerce is commonplace , but in the nineteenth century , the notion was radical , especially in a nation entirely obsessed with expansion on to the continent ' s western land . On the other hand , Mahan ' s emphasis of sea power as the crucial fact behind Britain ' s ascension neglected the well - documented roles of diplomacy and armies ; Mahan ' s theories could not explain the success of terrestrial empires , such as Bismarckian Germany . However , as the Royal Navy ' s blockade of the German Empire was a critical direct and indirect factor in the eventual German collapse , Mahan ' s theories were vindicated by the First World War . In the context of his time , Mahan backed a revival of Manifest Destiny through overseas imperialism . He held that sea power would require the United States to acquire defensive bases in the Caribbean and Pacific as well as take possession of Hawaii . This came at the time when the United States launched a major shipbuilding program to move the United States to the third place amongst worldwide naval powers by 1900 . Sea power . Mahan used history as a stock of lessons to be learned — or more exactly , as a pool of examples that exemplified his theories . Mahan believed that national greatness was inextricably associated with the sea , with its commercial usage in peace and its control in war . His goal was to discover the laws of history that determined who controlled the seas . His theoretical framework came from Jomini , with an emphasis on strategic locations ( such as chokepoints , canals , and coaling stations ) , as well as quantifiable levels of fighting power in a fleet . The primary mission of a navy was to secure the command of the sea . This not only permitted the maintenance of sea communications for one ' s own ships while denying their use to the enemy but also , if necessary , provided the means for close supervision of neutral trade . This control of the sea could not be achieved by destruction of commerce but only by destroying or neutralizing the enemy fleet . This called for concentration of naval forces composed of capital ships , not unduly large but numerous , well manned with crews thoroughly trained , and operating under the principle that the best defense is an aggressive offense . Mahan contended that with command of the sea , even if local and temporary , naval operations in support of land forces can be of decisive importance and that naval supremacy can be exercised by a transnational consortium acting in defense of a multinational system of free trade . His theories — written before the submarine became a factor in warfare against shipping — delayed the introduction of convoys as a defense against German U - Boats in World War I . By the 1930s the U . S . Navy was building long - range submarines to raid Japanese shipping , but the Japanese , still tied to Mahan , designed their submarines as ancillaries to the fleet and failed to attack American supply lines in the Pacific in World War II . Mahan argued that radical technological change does not eliminate uncertainty from the conduct of war , and therefore a rigorous study of history should be the basis of naval officer education . Sumida ( 2000 ) argues Mahan believed that good political and naval leadership was no less important than geography when it came to the development of sea power . Second , his unit of political analysis insofar as sea power was concerned was a transnational consortium rather than the single nation - state . Third , his economic ideal was free trade rather than autarchy . Fourth , his recognition of the influence of geography on strategy was tempered by a strong appreciation of the power of contingency to affect outcomes . Mahan prepared a secret contingency plan of 1890 in case war should break out between Britain and the United States . Mahan concluded that the British would attempt to blockade the eastern ports , so the American Navy should be concentrated in one of these ports , preferably New York with its two widely separated exits , while torpedo boats should defend the other harbors . This concentration of the U . S . fleet would force the British to tie down such a large proportion of their navy to watch the New York exits that the other American ports would be relatively safe . Detached American cruisers should wage " constant offensive action " against the enemy ' s exposed positions , and if the British were to weaken their blockade force off New York to attack another American port , the concentrated U . S . fleet should seize the opportunity to escort an invasion fleet to capture the British coaling ports in Nova Scotia , thereby seriously weakening the British ability to engage in naval operations off the American coast . This contingency plan is a clear example of the application of Mahan ' s principles of naval war , with a clear reliance on Jomini ' s principle of controlling strategic points . Mahan was a frequent commentator on world naval , strategic and diplomatic affairs . In the 1890s he argued that the United States should concentrate its naval fleet and obtain Hawaii as a hedge against Japanese eastward expansion and that the U . S . should help maintain a balance of power in the region in order to advance the principle of the Open Door policy both commercially and culturally . Mahan represented the United States at the first international conference on arms control that was initiated by Russia in 1899 . Russia sought a " freeze " to keep from falling behind in Europe ' s arms race . Other countries attended in order to mollify various peace groups . No significant arms limitations agreements were reached . A proposal on neutral trade rights was debated but ruled out of order by the Russians . The only significant result of the conference was the establishment of an ineffective Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague . Impact on naval thought . Timeliness contributed no small part to the widespread acceptance and resultant influence of Mahan ' s views . Although his history was relatively thin ( he relied on secondary sources ) , the vigorous style and clear theory won widespread acceptance of navalists across the world . Sea power supported the new colonialism which was asserting itself in Africa and Asia . Given the very rapid technological changes underway in propulsion ( from coal to oil , from boilers to turbines ) , ordnance ( with better fire directors , and new high explosives ) and armor and emergence of new craft such as destroyers and submarines , Mahan ' s emphasis on the capital ship and the command of the sea came at an opportune moment . Mahan ' s name became a household word in the German navy , as Kaiser William II ordered his officers to read Mahan , and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz ( 1849 – 1930 ) used Mahan ' s reputation to finance a powerful surface fleet . Between 1890 and 1915 , Mahan and British admiral John Fisher ( 1841 – 1920 ) faced the problem of how to dominate home waters and distant seas with naval forces not strong enough to do both . Mahan argued for a universal principle of concentration of powerful ships in home waters and minimized strength in distant seas , while Fisher reversed Mahan by utilizing technological change to propose submarines for defense of home waters and mobile battle cruisers for protection of distant imperial interests . The French were less susceptible to Mahan ' s theories . French naval doctrine in 1914 was dominated by Mahan ' s theory of sea power and therefore geared toward winning decisive battles and gaining mastery of the seas . But the course of World War I changed ideas about the place of the navy , as the refusal of the German fleet to engage in a decisive battle , the Dardanelles expedition of 1915 , the development of submarine warfare , and the organization of convoys all showed the navy ' s new role in combined operations with the army . The navy ' s part in securing victory was not fully understood by French public opinion in 1918 , but a synthesis of old and new ideas arose from the lessons of the war , especially by admiral Raoul Castex ( 1878 – 1968 ) , from 1927 to 1935 , who synthesized in his five - volume " Théories Stratégiques " the classical and materialist schools of naval theory . He reversed Mahan ' s theory that command of the sea precedes maritime communications and foresaw the enlarged roles of aircraft and submarines in naval warfare . Castex enlarged strategic theory to include nonmilitary factors ( policy , geography , coalitions , public opinion , and constraints ) and internal factors ( economy of force , offense and defense , communications , operational plans , morale , and command ) to conceive a general strategy to attain final victory . Ideologically , the United States Navy initially opposed replacing its sailing ships with steam - powered ships after the Civil War ; Mahan argued that only a fleet of armored battleships might be decisive in a modern war . According to the decisive - battle doctrine , a fleet must not be divided ; Mahan ' s work encouraged technological improvement in convincing opponents that naval knowledge and strategy remained necessary , but that domination of the seas dictated the necessity of the speed and predictability of the steam engine . His books were greatly acclaimed , and closely studied in Britain and Imperial Germany , influencing the build up of their forces prior to the First World War . Mahan influenced the naval portion of the Spanish - American War , and the battles of Tsushima , Jutland , and the Atlantic . His work influenced the doctrines of every major navy in the interwar period . Mahan ' s concept of sea power extended beyond naval superiority ; that in peace time , states should increase production and shipping capacities , acquire overseas possessions — either colonies or privileged access to foreign markets — yet stressed that the number of coal fuel stations and strategic bases should be few , not to drain too many resources from the mother country . Although Mahan ' s influence on foreign powers has been generally recognized , only rather recently have scholars called attention to his role as significant in the growth of American overseas possessions , the rise of the new American navy , and the adoption of the strategic principles upon which it operated . Japan . " The Influence of Seapower Upon History , 1660 – 1783 " was translated to Japanese and used as a textbook in the Imperial Japanese Navy ( IJN ) . This strongly affected the IJN ' s doctrine on stopping Russia n naval expansion in the far east , which culminated in the Russo - Japanese War from 1904 - 1905 . It has been argued that the IJN ' s pursuit of the " decisive battle " contributed to Imperial Japan ' s defeat in World War II The development of the submarine and the aircraft carrier , combined with advanced in technology , largely rendered obsolete the doctrine of the decisive battle between fleets . However , the IJN did not adhere entirely to Mahan ' s doctrine , as their forces were often tactically divided , particularly in the extensive division of warships in complicated arrangements during the attack on Pearl Harbour and the Battle of Midway . Later work . Between 1889 and 1892 Mahan was engaged in special service for the Bureau of Navigation , and in 1893 he was appointed to command the powerful new protected cruiser " Chicago " on a visit to Europe , where he was received and feted . He returned to lecture at the War College and then , in 1896 , he retired from active service , returning briefly to duty in 1898 to consult on naval strategy for the Spanish - American War . Mahan continued to write voluminously and received honorary degrees from Oxford , Cambridge , Harvard , Yale , Columbia , Dartmouth , and McGill . In 1902 , Mahan popularised the term " Middle East " , which he used in the article " The Persian Gulf and International Relations " , published in September in the " National Review " . Mahan became rear admiral in 1906 by an act of Congress promoting all retired captains who had served in the Civil War . At the outbreak of World War I , he initially engaged in the cause of Great Britain , but an order of President Woodrow Wilson prohibited all active and retired officers from publishing comments on the war . Death . Mahan died in Washington , D . C . of heart failure on December 1 , 1914 , a few months after the outbreak of World War I .