![]() To Mahan were attributed reigning doctrines of maritime military strategy: the importance of achieving fleet superiority and concentration, of securing distant ports for naval resupply, and of protecting strategic sea lanes for commerce and communications, among others.īut little did I know, until reading God and Sea Power, that Mahan was not only a father of geopolitics but also a father of the Episcopal Church he was a churchman no less than a seaman. MacKinder, he was introduced to me as a founding father of the discipline for his seminal 1890 work, The Influence of Sea Power on History. I read God and Sea Power while crossing the North Atlantic this winter on the Queen Mary II, which only added to my appreciation for the daring project Bowles undertook in this spiritual travel log of America’s greatest naval historian and strategist.įiguratively, I first met Mahan in Geopolitics 101 as an undergraduate at Georgetown University. Scholar Suzanne Bowles (née Geissler) explores the interesting nexus between church and sea – and, more pointedly, sea power – in her telling of the life, career and faith of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914). Had the Romans not ruled the waves, the Jesus movement may never have spread with such success. Such symbolism resonated in a world centered around the Mediterranean, Christianity’s cradle and the “lake” of the Roman Empire. The ancient church adopted the fish as a shibboleth signifying their secret fellowship, an acrostic derived from the Greek for “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior,” the initial letters of each word spelling “ichthys,” or fish. He pledged to his disciples, “I will make you fishers of men” (Mark 1: 16-18). Like Moses’ parting of the Red Sea, Jesus conquered primordial fears of the deep when he walked on water. Indeed, life at sea was a metaphor of the early church. The nave, or long expanse in the cruciform design where worshippers gather under a vaulted ceiling, derives its name from “naval” because its shape reminded church builders of an inverted ship’s hull. ![]() Although his reputation as an imperialist has been overstated, his insistence that the United States must become and remain a sea power is Mahan’s greatest contribution to America’s modern superpower status.Step inside a traditionally built church and, in a sense, you’re boarding a capsized ship. Eventually he published twenty-one books and attained the presidency of the American Historical Association. Mahan retired from active duty in 1895 to write voluminously on the naval, military, and diplomatic issues of his era. Notwithstanding the limits of Mahan’s proposals, contemporary American imperialists like Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, and Henry Cabot Lodge used Mahan’s basic thesis to justify a more aggressive and acquisitive American expansionism in emulation of England and other leading European powers. ![]() His expansionism was strategic and defensive. He did so, however, for security reasons. Mahan argued for a modern naval build-up that would protect America’s coasts–Caribbean, Gulf and Pacific–and he espoused an ishmian canal. Two years later Mahan followed his blockbuster book with a sequel The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812. According to Mahan’s biographer “the book electrified foreign offices and war departments all over the world” and furnished a rationale (unintended by Mahan) for the great naval arms race of the next quarter century. Mahan became college president in 1886 after Luce’s reassignment, and he published his class lecture notes in 1890 under the title The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, a volume that attributed England’s global influence to the power and scope of the Royal Navy. Mahan’s volume The Gulf and Inland Waters impressed Captain Stephen Luce prompting the latter to invite Mahan to lecture on naval history at the newly-established U.S. ![]() Naval Academy in 1856, he was selected by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1883 to write a book for their series, The Navy in the Civil War. Despite a less than inspiring career as a naval officer in the quarter-century following his graduation from the U.S. Military Academy.Īdmiral Mahan was a man of contradictions–an army brat who became a navy officer, a brilliant intellectual who disdained formal study, and a captain who was prone to seasickness and hated sea duty. Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), the best known and most influential naval officer of the late 19th century, ironically was born at West Point, the son of Dennis Hart Mahan, a professor of military engineering and dean of faculty at the U.S.
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