“The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice.”

Alfred Thayer Mahan is arguably the most influential military strategist in American history, and one of the world’s most important naval theorists. His work has been nearly as influential as the famous German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), and the lesser-known but nearly as influential Swiss military writer Antoine-Henri Jomini (1779-1869).

Alfred decided to go to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, which he was admitted to via the influence of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. He graduated in 1859 and started a career lasting almost 40 years. He served aboard a wide variety of ships, from a powerful frigate under sail to a variety of steam sloops, corvettes, and gunboats, many of which were side wheelers and all of which had auxiliary sails.

He started as a Midshipman and worked his way up the naval ranks to Captain and Commander. He also had several independent commands. He was stationed off the Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico during the Union blockade of the Confederacy. He was on a sidewheeler tasked with keeping an eye on the French in Mexico, where Napoleon II had installed a Hapsburg archduke as emperor. He spent more than two years on station in the Far East, spent a couple of years with the South Atlantic Squadron based in Montevideo in Uruguay, and then a year off the west coast of South America, in a ship observing events during the War of the Pacific.

After a lengthy naval career, Mahan had assignments at the Naval Academy and the Brooklyn Naval Yard. He was invited to lecture at the Naval War College, and it was there that he collected together his notes and wrote a book, The Influence of Naval Power upon History, which somehow became an international best seller in 1890. His book resulted in an invitation to dine with the Queen in Britain. It was translated into German and the Kaiser ordered a copy be placed on every German warship and in every school. It was translated into Japanese and became required reading for every officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy. In time, it was praised by Admiral Tojo, the commander at the Battle of Tsushima when the Japanese destroyed the huge Russian fleet. The British were almost as enthusiastic, although the French were less enchanted. 

Mahan went on to write twenty books and hundreds of essays and articles. Most were related to naval affairs, but he also wrote an autobiography and a religion-oriented book. He is credited with coming up with the term “Middle East” in a book about the Persian Gulf.

The Battle of Jutland in 1916 was the kind of clash Mahan had envisioned, and the Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor was by a navy thoroughly indoctrinated with Mahan’s ideas, adapted to Japan’s situation in the western Pacific vying with the Americans for dominance. Like American battleships, Japan’s battleships were based off the “bigger is better” philosophy so heavily influenced by Alfred Mahan, but overall, her ships were light and fast, lacking the endurance and armor of those in the more traditional American fleet yet still packing a heavy punch. 

In fact, the Imperial Japanese Navy was highly trained for high-tempo night surface actions, with an emphasis on large salvoes of long-range torpedoes. Indeed, despite the success of its operation at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese High Command truly longed for a Tsushima-style decisive surface action with the Americans which they believed might determine the outcome of the war. It has often been pointed out that the American carriers’ absence from Pearl Harbor ultimately spelled Japan’s doom, but the attack on Pearl Harbor was heavily focused on hitting the battleships that Japan perceived as the key index of naval power.