Alfred thayer mahan
Alfred thayer mahanAlfred Thayer Mahan, born on September 27, 1840 in West Point, New York was son of dean of the faculty at the United States Military Academy and one of the most important naval historians and strategists of his time. Although both Philip A. Crowl and Paul M. Kennedy have their own opinions on the degree to which Mahan influenced society and naval doctrine as a strategist and historian, the validity and brilliance of some of his ideas can't be denied.
Mahan was a firm believer that sea power was the single most important factor in determining national dominance. He said sea power was the command of the sea through naval superiority. His second important principle concentrated on the importance of shipping and commerce to national economy, with a large fleet to protect this overseas activity. Mahan believed not only in the importance of the navy as a fighting force but also as a tool of national policy.
Philiip A. Crowl's assessment of Alfred Thayer Mahan is skeptical at best. He gives credit only where credit is absolutely due and never in the form of compliment. Crowl believed "Mahan's failure as a logican (and therefore as a historian) was the direct result of his methodology: he began his labors with an insight, a light dawning on his ‘inner consciousness'; the insight hardened into a predetermined
conclusion; facts were then mustered as illustration and proof." Crowl goes on to argue that "There was no pretense on the historian's part to scientific objectivity, nor any claim to having reached his conclusions on the basis of exhaustive research." Crowl seems to think that much of Mahan's theory was based on whim stemming from his "inner conscious" which turned quickly turned into a final conclusions with out any real proof supporting their validity. Mahan, according to Crowl was constantly confusing his necessary with his sufficient causes. Crowl for example said that sea power was the necessary cause, possibly even the most important, but not the sufficient cause in Britain's domination of France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Crowl was a firm believer that the military operations of England and its allies on the European continent as well as successes of British statesmen played a large part in manipulating balance of power played a sizable role in the triumph of France. Crowl used the War of the League of Augsburg as example. He said it was the "long-drawn-out bleeding of France's strength on the continent", instead of sea power that finally forced Louis XIV to make peace. Mahan believed that "wars were won by the economic strangulation of the enemy from the sea." Although Crowl couldn't totally disregard this concept, he argued the validity these strategies played in the more modern the age of steam. Crowl effectively pointed out Mahan's major theories on naval doctrine, then preceded to pick them apart....
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