Alfred Thayer Mahan

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Alfred T. Mahan, 1904.

Alfred Thayer Mahan (born September 27, 1840 in West Point , New York , † December 1, 1914 in Washington DC ) was a rear admiral in the US Navy , naval writer and strategist. His most famous work is The Influence of Sea Power upon History , the "him in the English naval history a wide recognition as Clausewitz the sea" (Clausewitz of the sea) earned.

Mahan's marine history writings had a significant impact on both his military environment and the broader American public. Both his geostrategic observations and his description of the United States as a seafaring nation have an impact up to the present day.

Towards the end of the 20th century also began Indian and the Navy of the People's Liberation Army in China to conceptually rely on Mahan.

Life

Alfred Thayer Mahan was the eldest child of Dennis Hart Mahans and Mary Okhills in West Point, New York . born. At the US Military Academy there, his father worked as dean and professor of engineering and introduced a large number of officer candidates to the writings of Antoine-Henri Jominis . Mahan's family traditionally followed episcopalism and his uncle was a professor of church history . His childhood, which he hardly mentions in his autobiography From Sail to Steam (New York, 1907), was marked by military discipline and ecclesiastical faith.

After studying for two years at Columbia University , Mahan moved to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis , Maryland , in 1856, against the opposition of his parents , and passed there in 1859 as the second-best graduate of his class, and was seconded to the USS Congress , which at that time was in Brazil anchored. In 1861 he was appointed Ensign . During the Civil War he served as an officer on various Union ships . He participated in several blockade patrols off the Gulf Coast and in the South Atlantic without distinguishing himself. He then taught nautical service for a year at the Naval Academy, which had been relocated to Newport , Rhode Island because of the war . In 1865 he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander . In view of this relatively high rank for a 26-year-old , he decided to continue serving in the US Navy after the end of the war. Various uses followed at home and abroad, on board and on land, since 1872 with the rank of Commander . In the same year he married Ellen Lyle Evans, with whom he had three children, two daughters and a son.

In 1883, the New York publisher Charles Scribner's Sons asked him to write a contribution to his new series The Navy in the Civil War as quickly as possible . Mahan, who was serving at the New York Navy Yard at the time, accepted and wrote The Gulf and Inland Waters within five months , which was immediately published as the third volume in the series.

Mahan established the modern US Navy doctrine of sea superiority with his book The Influence of Sea Power upon History , published in 1890 . The work The Interest of America in Sea Power followed in 1897 . In addition to these writings, Mahan published something on the tactics and strategy of naval battles and received a great deal of attention even in the United Kingdom and Germany . For this he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the British universities of Cambridge and Oxford and in 1902 was appointed President of the American Historical Society . In 1898 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1903 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

In 1896 Mahan was promoted to captain and retired at that rank. For his service in the Civil War, President Theodore Roosevelt , whom Mahan had befriended as President of Naval War College , promoted him to Rear Admiral in 1906 . From 1897 to 1898, Mahan served as defense policy advisor to the federal government of the United States in the tensions with Spain that culminated in the Spanish-American War . In 1899 the federal government sent him as a delegate to the first of the Hague Peace Conferences .

Mahan died on December 1, 1914 and was buried in Qogue , Long Island .

Four US Navy destroyers were named after Alfred T. Mahan. Three were Wickes- class , Farragut- class, and Arleigh Burke- class ships . During the Second World War, a destroyer of the same name acted as the type ship and namesake of an entire class of ships .

Works

literature

Web links

Commons : Alfred Thayer Mahan  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ cf. e.g. McLaughlin, Rob: United Nations Naval Peace Operations In The Territorial Sea , Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 2009, p. 10.
  2. ↑ cf. Holmes, James R .; Yoshihara, Toshi: China and the United States in the Indian Ocean: An Emerging Strategic Triangle? (PDF; 182 kB), in: Naval War College Review , Summer 2008, Volume 61, Issue 3.
  3. ↑ a b c d cf. Hattendorf, John B .: Alfred Thayer Mahan , in: Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History , Oxford University Press 2007. Accessed December 13, 2011.
  4. ^ Members: Alfred Thayer Mahan. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 12, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Mahan, Alfred Thayer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mahan, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American naval officer, writer and strategist
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH West Point , New York , USA
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1914
Place of death Washington, DC , USA