"The Worship of Naval Power – 1900" Topic

"The two decades before the outbreak of the First World War saw naval power being perceived as an essential feature of any self-respecting nation's power and prestige. Captain, and later Admiral, Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) of the US Navy was to be the supreme apostle of this view and his early 1890s book "The Influence of Sea Power on History" was to have an immense impact on the policies of emerging powers, not least Germany, the United States and Japan. At the time of the book's publication all three nations possessed small navies – virtually coast defence forces in the case of Germany and the United States – and Mahan's insights were influential in convincing leaders that possession of "blue water navies" were essential to national greatness.

The first vindication of such policies came in the mid-1890s when Japan, with still-limited forces, scored a smashing victory over China and laid the foundations for a yet more decisive victory over Russia a decade later. In 1898 the US Navy, still small, but modernising and expanding rapidly, annihilated Spanish power in the Americas and in the Philippines and established the United States as a global player. Most significant of all was that Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II read the book, decided that every officer in the tiny Imperial German should have a copy and determined to build a fleet that would match that of Britain, thereby setting off a "naval race" in terms of construction, that was a major factor in promoting rivalry between two nations that had not previously seen each other as a threat…"

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Armand

I've read the book and I thought an overwhelming meh..

The main tenet of the book seemed to be "it should have been France not England…"

Yet, without the US following the theme, we would have not been able to save Britain in the First War (our huge fleet of
DD's made the convoys fully practical), nor ourselves in the Second.

No US "Blue Water" Navy--in two fleets--and Japan owns the Pacific, and Germany has the best chance of winning the U-Boat War.

Like Mahan or not, if the rest of the world does, you'd better, too!

TVAG

Thanks

Armand