Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840- 1914) [RE-EDIT]
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. Mahan grew up in West Point and attended boarding school. Mahan studied at Columbia for two years w 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 War of Secession 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). Despite his success as a Naval theorist, 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 affection for old square-rigged vessels and did not like the smoky, noisy steamships of his time; he tried to avoid active sea duty. In the 1870s in various shore installations, he burned with resentment at what he saw as the insanely reckless policy of a small Navy supported by Democrat Presidents in the interwar period. After the Panic of 1875, President Cox sold several warships to foreign nations and halted naval construction. An outraged officer serving with the Lighthouse Board, Captain Mahan began putting his thoughts on the supremacy of seapower to paper that year. These writings would begin Mahan’s career as the most important naval theorist of the 19th and 20th Century.
In 1876 he became an instructor at the naval academy. His series of lectures at the Naval Academy on the use of sea power during the Napoleonic Wars earned him wide acclaim, and he began writing a book on the subject. When war loomed in 1800 over the pending Confederate acquisition of Chihuahua and Sonora. As a rising star in the naval intelligencia he was given the command of the USS Charles Ellsworth. For him, the Second Mexican War was the last straw. Serving as skipper of the USS Charles Ellsworth, he watched in rage as the superior armor and gunnery of the Royal Navy wrecked a flotilla sent to intercept British troops moving to Canada. He remained in command for another three years, raging to anyone who would listen on the Blaine’s negligence in risking war when the nation was so unready.
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 supported Mahan’s proposal of researching the 17th and 18th centuries naval arm race and. 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 succeeded Luce as President of the Naval War College from June 22, 1886 to January 12, 1889. There, in 1887, he met and befriended Theodore Roosevelt, then a visiting lecturer.
While President of the Naval War College, Mahan plunged into the library and wrote lectures that drew heavily on standard classics and the ideas of Henri Jomini. (His father having been the foremost American scholar of Jomini and making Jomini’s writing the source of strategic thinking for the War of Secession Army Commanders in both the North and South) These lectures became his sea-power studies and led to his writing of The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1890).
In The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Mahan explored the seventeenth century conflicts between Holland, England, France and Spain, where British naval superiority eventually defeated other continental naval powers and consistently prevented invasion and blockade. To a modern reader, the emphasis on controlling seaborne commerce is commonplace, but in the nineteenth century, the notion was radical, especially in the United States where the nation focused with expansion on to the continent's western land and the threat posed by Confederate land power. He argued that Britain’s rise to global dominance was the result of her Naval Dominance. Further that other nations like France also gained greater influence through the possession of their own fleet. Conversely, 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.
Where most American Imperialists were focusing on irredentist claims on the Confederate States and Canada. Mahan backed a revival of Manifest Destiny through overseas imperialism. He held that sea power would necessitate the United States to acquire defensive bases in the Caribbean and Pacific. Specifically to take possession of the Sandwich Island’s and all of Britain’s possessions in the western Atlantic and Caribbean after any future war with Britain. This came at the time when the United States launched a major rearmament program following the disaster of the Second Mexican War. His book was right in time to capture the imaginations of the growing Remembrance movement.
His vigorous style and clear theory won widespread acceptance of navalists across the world. Sea power supported the new the Great European Powers colonialist projects 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 concept of sea power extended beyond naval superiority; he preached that in peacetime, states should increase production and shipping capacities, to acquire overseas possessions. As a result of the modern industrial economy, great powers required he acquisition of either colonies or privileged access to foreign markets. He stressed that the number of coal fuelling stations and strategic bases should be few, not to drain too many resources from the mother country. He believed the British Empire and French Empires had overstretched themselves. Therefore the United States and Germany were in the perfect positions to exploit this weakness. Making it possible for the US to capture the Sandwich Island’s and Britain’s North American possessions.
By 1891 his book became an international best seller, 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 used Mahan's reputation to finance a powerful surface fleet. At home President Reed, who had long held a deep interest in naval power and naval affairs, was looking to beef up the US Navy since the 1870’s. This desire only intensified after the bombardment of his home district of Portland, Maine by the Royal Navy.
President Reed was given a copy of the Influence of Sea Power on History by then Assistant Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt. Through the young Assistant Secretary, Reed became familiar with Mahan’s theories and invited Mahan to join the cabinet as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. There he became a forceful advocate of a modern, two-ocean navy. Under Reed and Mahan’s Stewardship the US Congress passed legislation for an all steel modern battle fleet built entirely in the United States. The two also lobbied for a new Naval Staff Bill mirroring the Army’s new General Staff. After the passing of the Steel Fleet & Staff bill in 1891, Mahan was elevated to full Secretary of the Navy. By 1895 the United States produced 4 all steel Battleships, 6 steel armored cruisers, more than a dozen ocean/Great Lake monitors.
By 1895 the United States felt a resurgence of national confidence thanks to the reforms of Secretary of the Navy Alfred Thayer Mahan and Army Chief of Staff Emory Upton. For the first time since the Second Mexican War the US felt capable of resisting further Confederate- British and French expansion in the Western Hemisphere. In 1895 The Confederate Congress pushed to annex Haiti over failed debt payments to CSA Banks. President Reed however ordered squadron of warships sent to Port- au- Prince. President Reed followed this up by declaring Haiti a protectorate, preventing the islands annexation by Confederate filibusters. Because of the United States growing military confidence and the British reticence to enter in a new war on the North American continent, the United States scored its first diplomatic victory in thirty years. The pivotal role the new navy played in its successful conclusion of the Haiti Crises helped turn Mahan into a hero in Remembrance circles.
It was during this time that Mahan first met then Chief of Staff Emory Upton. Both admired each others work and both were theorists who were now attempting to turn their ideas into reality. It was during the Reed administration that the first Inter-service Coordination Conference was established. Until this time all inter-service meetings happened at the cabinet level, between Secretary of the Navy and War. However in 1892 Secretary of War Sickles, proposed to the President Tri-annual Inter-service Coordination Conference. (This was really the work of Assistant Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt, his last contribution before leaving to become the Inspector General of the New York National Guard).
The first meeting was held in 1893, it was a full meeting of the Army General Staff and the new Naval Staff. There the two Staffs convened a board to coordinate how each could mutually support each other’s strategic objectives. It was agreed there that the Navy’s North Atlantic Squadron would set its first objective as capturing the Canadian Maritimes and preventing British reinforcements of its forces already in Canada. The Army in turn pledged to support an attack through Maine, despite its primary effort being the invasion of Kentucky. The Navy also requested an Army attack on British Columbia, but this was rejected. It was during this meeting that the Army attempted to bind the Navy into an agreement that the Army’s conquest of Confederate Territory should be allocated priorities in resources and funding. The Army further demanded that the Navy should not attempt to make any territorial acquisitions that might be a drain on these objectives. The Navy emphatically, refused to agree to these terms. This was the first indication that the Army under Chief of Staff Upton would likely attempt to subordinate all that stood in the way of its objectives.
In 1896, the barons of the Democratic Party have become restless under eight years of a single administration. Two of these titans, Grover Cleveland of New York and Robert Pattison of Pennsylvania, deadlocked at the convention. The party brokers then handed the nomination to the relative-unknown Alfred Mahan. Though uninterested in partisan politics, Mahan saw this as n opportunity to put his ideas fully into practice. He defeated both the Republican nominee William Jennings Bryan, and the Socialist Congressman Terence Powderly. This was the first election where a Socialist candidate has outpolled the Republican.
In his inauguration speech Mahan laid out his vision for two ocean Navy capable of repelling attacks by the Royal Navy on the American coastal cities, preventing the British from reinforcing their forces in Canada, projecting the United States’ interested abroad and bringing the fight to the home waters of the nation’s enemies. In the first year in office he won approval by Congress for a new Fleet Bill that guaranteed funding for a two Ocean Navy. During his eight years in office, the US built a modern two-ocean navy, consisting of the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and Great Lakes Squadrons, with riverine operations becoming the Army's province. As befitting US strategic interests, the Atlantic Fleet received the bulk of funding.
The cost of building such a fleet however put tremendous strain on the nation and the economy. Thus in Mahan’s first term in office a Federal Reserve was established, to cope with the financial strain of Army and Navy expansion. The Government also began to implement the wide scale rationing of strategically important commodities like steel, coal, nitrates, cotton and sometimes meat. Though the rationing Bill was passed in 1889 and reinforced by the 16th amendment, it had not yet required implemented.
To further reduce costs that Mahan also pushed through Congress a plan to establish wage and price controls for all “strategic industries,” much to the ire of more conservative elements of the Democratic Party like Nelson Aldrich and Mark Hanna. Because of the row it created among his own party members, Mahan agreed to scale down the scope of the powers. His original proposal, would also have applied wage and price controls to the mining, oil, steel, and chemical industries. The Wage and Price Control bill passed in 1899, setting wages at munitions plants, shipyards, railways, and dockyards.
It was the impact of the rationing, which is attributed to the rapid growth of the Socialist Party in this period. During his first administration the nation wracked by violent strikes. Mahan a staunch Democrat often ordered the army to violently intercede on behalf of factory owners. The use of the military and impact of rationing on the household necessities finally gave the beleaguered Socialist Party its big push. However it never lived up to Socialist Party strategist expectations. The violent reputation of the party kept many blue-collar workers and middle class white collar workers away. It was not until the party renounced violence or “direct action” that it really expanded. It was only 1898 that the socialist party replaced the Republicans as the second largest Party in Congress.
The expanding Navy and its voracious appetite for funding and national resources, not only strained relations for with labor, but the Army as well. By 1898 the ever-expanding naval budget and army budget was bankrupting the nation. Congress was for the first time since the Remembrance Democrats came to power did not have the votes for the increase in defense spending. The President and the House Committees on Military and Naval Affairs, had to make hard choices. The choice boiled down to in many minds, either continue with the Naval Expansion or continue with the Army expansion program suggested by Chief of Staff Emory Upton. The President and The House Committees compromised and the 1899 budget saw a reduced spending for both the Army and Navy.
Unfortunately for the administration, Chief of Staff Upton did not agree. Years of exponential Naval growth and only slightly slower increase in the army, made the General Staff question the Presidents priorities. The lack of army budget increases meant that the United States would only have the resources to draft ½ of the eligible male population. Tension between the President and Chief of Staff’s continued into next year, despite their effective cooperation during the Nicaraguan crises. At the third triennial Naval review Upton again presented a plan for a beefed up Army expanding the number of Field Armies from four to six, fixing the number of divisions at fifty-four and establishing new training facilities to increase the percentage of eligible men drafted from 50% to 80%. At that time the CS Army currently drafted 88% of its male white population. At the same time he presented a counter Naval budget and plan that would only support a missions of; preventing the British from supplying Canada, a small coastal defense fleet in the Pacific and a expanded Great Lakes and Riverine force. President Mahan supported the expansion of the army to its new six-army force structure, but rejected the increase in draftees and rebuked Upton for meddling in Naval Affairs. It was becoming clear the President and the Chief of Staff, had deeply different views on the future of the United States defense policy.
Early in his first term the Entente tests Mahan with a plan to build a transoceanic canal through Nicaragua. In 1897 the Confederacy finally had the funds and the agreement with Nicaragua to construct a trans-oceanic canal across the isthmus. They also had an agreement with the British to support and finance a canal scheme, as long as it did not anger the “other Americans.” At first Confederacy attempted to make an agreement with the United States to recognize the building of a Confederate- British canal across the isthmus. President Mahan threatened war the second the first Confederates shovel dug into Nicaraguan earth. Mahan argued before Congress that a canal across the isthmus would allow the Confederacy and its allies the ability to move ships between the Atlantic and Pacific at more that three times the speed than if they had to sail around South America. The Canal would give an overwhelming advantage to who ever owns it and allow the Confederacy to build their own two ocean Navy.
The bellicose Confederate President States Rights Gist immediately demanded support from his allies to build the canal under the threat of possible war. Mahan knew that neither the Navy nor Army was ready for war with the Confederacy or Great Britain. The Navy was far from a match to the might of the Royal Navy and Upton’s Army reforms were still under way. However Mahan gambled that the British people were not interested in a renewed war with the United States, especially given the threat of war looming in South Africa. Mahan’s gamble paid off. With its attention turned towards South Africa, Britain would not risk a war.
Without British support the humiliated President Gist was forced to end all Confederate aspirations for a trans-oceanic canal. After President States Rights Gist, the C.S.A. turned its back on former Generals as Presidents. In 1898 the Confederate citizens elected Robert Taylor and Champ Clark in 1904. Both Presidents pursued a policy of preventing further exploitation of the Caribbean by European Powers and non-conflict with the United States. Meanwhile under Mahan’s leadership, Germany and the United States continued to cultivate alliances across South America, most notably with Chile, Paraguay and Venezuela.
When 1900 arrived Mahan easily captured the Democratic Party nomination. His success in handling the Nicaraguan crises and his humiliation of President Gist gave the people of the United States a sense of pride it had not felt since the First Mexican War. Mahan went on to crush Socialist candidate Jacob Coxey and Republican candidate John Hay. President Mahan was a friendly acquaintance had recently appointed Hay ambassador France, .
Despite his success tension still festered between the President and Chief of Staff Upton. Upton continued to malign the president to his allies in congress. Upton even tried to coax his allies into running a more Army centric candidate for President like Theodore Roosevelt. Mahan was aware of his machinations, but Upton was too popular and there was no other Army officer with the reputation to replace him. No one else in the army had his vision or foresight. Mahan’s overwhelming re-election in 1900, greatly increased his influence in Philadelphia, where he was always seen as an outsider. The President plied his new found influence into pushing for a new Navy Bill, which if passed would be put the nation on track to match the power of the Royal Navy by 1922. It's objective was not just dominance in the Western Atlantic, but across the planet, making the US the dominant global Naval Power. Chief of Staff Upton overtly attempted to block the bill. When he failed, Upton wrote a scathing editorial for the Philadelphia Tribune, A Republican news outlet. In it Upton railed against the growing dangers of the Confederate Army and the US Army’s criminally negligent lack of resource. Mahan attempted to sooth things over with Upton through the new Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt’s overtures went unanswered, Upton now Chief of Staff for twelve years, was developing a distain for civilian control. General Upton again presented a proposal to the Committee on Military Affairs and the President for an increase in the number of Armies from six to eight, an increase in the percentage of the eligible male population conscripted to 88% and an increase in the conscription period service men served from two to three years. This had become standard in the Confederate Army. Upton raised fears that the average Confederate soldier was now better trained. When Upton threatened to resign if his demands were not met, Mahan called his bluff. In fall of 1901 Chief of Staff Upton, resigned. Charles Francis Adams, brother of the Speaker of the House Henry Adams, replaced him. A fact that made Upton’s retirement more palatable for Congress. Chief of Staff Adams quickly proved easier to work with and more deferential to civilian oversight.
Mahan continued to remain aloof in domestic politics, outside of his support for the Federal Reserve and rationing policies. He did not take sides in the growing issue over the power of Corporate Trust’s nor did he way in on the growing movement to establish oversight of the food and drug industries. In 1902, however he did use his offices to end a major anthracite coal minor strike. Mahan unexpectedly sided with the striking workers and forced the mine owners to give into nearly all of the striker’s demands. For the first time a Democratic President reached out to Socialist Party Congressmen in ending a strike, instead of calling in the Army or National Guard. In forcing an end to the strike Mahan prevented a possible major disruption in the nations coal supplies that winter.
In Foreign Policy Mahan continued the Reed administrations policy of increasing ties with Germany. The two regularly exchanged military officers to report on innovations in their partner’s countries. Mahan focused on increasing ties between the two nation’s Navies. Mahan signed agreements allowing the West Atlantic Squadron of German High Seas Fleet to use Boston as a coaling station and secured reciprocal agreements, which allowed the US fleet to use German Ports in the Pacific to coal US warships. US and German warships began joint exercises in the Pacific and Atlantic. He did however prevent the Kaiser from seizing control of Venezuela, which cause a slight rift between the two powers. However by 1903 he was able to mend this relationship and formally bring the United States into the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. In October 1903 the Triple Alliance officially became the Quadruple Alliance. This marked the most radical departure in US foreign Policy, since the founding of the Republic. By signing the agreement the nation officially rejected President Washington’s warnings against entanglement in foreign alliances.
By 1904 the United States had completed twenty battleships, and became the dominant Naval power in the Western Atlantic, eclipsing the British, Canadian and CSA in Naval strength in the Western Atlantic. After no major international incidents since Nicaraguan Crises of 1897, President Mahan gambled again. Mahan sent 12 Battleships of the US Atlantic Squadron on a goodwill trip around the world; formally announcing that the US had become a major global power. Mahan left office in 1905, happy to return to his studies.
After leaving office Mahan took a grand European tour. Beginning in 1906 it lasted more than sixteen months. In Europe he was requested by the Naval Academies of friend and foe alike, to lecture about the future of naval power. While lecturing at Portsmouth he met future First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill and First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher. He was given a heroes welcome in Berlin and joined the Kaiser on his yacht for a tour of the Norwegian coast. He returned to the United States in late 1907, in time of President Aldrich’s proposed Philadelphia Naval Conference. Mahan reacted with horror on hearing of Aldrich’s proposal and overtly acted to kill any of its proposals. Having protected his legacy he settled in New York City and returned to writing.
While in office as Secretary of the Navy Mahan still found time to write, finishing two books; The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (2 vols. 1892); and the Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain (2 vols. 1897). After he left office he continued his writing completing John Paul Jones: The origins of American Sea Power (2 vols. 1910). In this biography Mahan stressed the importance of the individual in shaping history, and extoled the traditional values of loyalty, courage, and service to the state. Mahan sought to resurrect John Paul Jones as a national hero in the United States and used the book as a platform for expressing his views on naval strategy and tactics. Mahan’s friend President Roosevelt successfully petitioned the return of Jones body from France in 1913, where he was re-interned. Roosevelt sent an armored cruiser to retrieve Jone’s body. Jones was buried with full honors in Annapolis.
Thanks to Mahan's vision, the US was not far behind when the Royal Navy put the Dreadnought to sea, and the first ship of the US's competing New York class was commissioned the next year. Unlike many of the other Naval Powers the US did not experiment with Battlecruisers and saved itself from the embarrassment the Royal Navy suffered at the battle of Jutland. Mahan had his limits, however. His love of the surface navy caused him to underestimate the submersibles, which would wreak much havoc in both Great Wars. In 1914, the US's submarine fleet was nearly the same size as Confederacy's, and somewhat inferior in design. Despite the Submarine being invented by the United States naval engineer John Holland. But the war did much to break hidebound tradition, and in 1917 Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels approved the far-sighted USS Remembrance airplane carrier, restoring the US's reputation as a naval innovator.
The US entered the Great War with 16 Dreadnought type battleships, 20 Pre-dreadnought Battleships, 10 Great Lake Battleships, 6 armored cruisers, 30 cruisers, 120 Destroyers, 30 river monitors and 20 submersibles. The US focused mainly on a decisive battle doctrine, with a powerful surface fleet. Its mission was to Blockade the Confederacy and prevent UK forces from reaching Canada. The Atlantic Fleets first objective was supporting the US invasion of Canada and aggressive pursuit of any open Entente movement into the Western Atlantic. At the same time the Pacific Fleet was to neutralize the threat posed by the Royal Navy in the Sandwich Islands. The Riverine Fleet and Great Lake fleets mission was to support the US invasion across the Ohio and landings on the St. Lawrence peninsula.
When war broke out in 1914, he was invited by Roosevelt to come to Philadelphia and consult on Naval Strategy. He lived to see the Navy’s success in capturing the Sandwich Islands and the Canadian Maritimes. He also lived to see the growing threat from asymmetrical naval attacks like mines and submersibles. Before he died, he counseled Roosevelt that the main problem with republics is that "over time, the voters are apt to get tired of paying for what their country needs to defend itself.” He cautioned Roosevelt to either defeat the Confederacy and Britain so thoroughly that they can never pose a threat again or make allies of them.
Mahan died in Philadelphia of heart failure on December 1, 1914. In part because of his leadership the US defeated the Confederate States and the British Empire, the dominant naval power for the last 200 years. The US eclipsed the Royal Navy and its German allies in size and strength by the early 1920’s. Thanks to his Naval Program and leadership the US became the world's greatest Naval powerful.
