(1840–1914). The key to national greatness is a strong industrial economy coupled with a powerful navy. This view, stated by Alfred T. Mahan in his book The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, published in 1890, was eagerly accepted by the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and other modern industrial states in the decades before World War I. Mahan was a naval officer and historian whose writings were avidly studied in these countries. For stating his views so clearly in his books, he was honored by their governments and educational institutions.
Alfred Thayer Mahan was born on September 27, 1840, in West Point, New York, where his father was a professor of military engineering at the United States Military Academy. He studied at Columbia College for two years before entering the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. He graduated in 1859, just before the American Civil War broke out, and entered a career of nearly 40 years of naval service. He saw action during the war and afterward continued to progress in rank and responsibility. In 1885, as a captain, he was called to lecture at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He also served as that institution’s president from 1886 to 1889 and from 1892 to 1893. When his lectures were published as The Influence of Sea Power upon History, he won immediate recognition as a naval expert both at home and abroad. He followed it with a sequel in 1892: The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire. Like its predecessor, it became a classic.
Mahan retired from the service in 1896 but was recalled temporarily during the Spanish-American War. In 1899 he was a member of the American delegation to the peace conference at The Hague. In 1902 he was elected president of the American Historical Association. His other books include The Life of Nelson and The Interest of America in Sea Power (both 1897). Mahan died in Washington, D.C., on December 1, 1914.
