Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Life and Legacy of America’s Most Influential Naval Strategist

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 bestseller 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.