Gilded Era Marines – 1897 : Setting the Stage 13 July, 2021
To Navy planners, as Captain Mahan observed in 1890, the Marine Corps would be the “backbone to any force landing on the enemy’s coast.” – Jack Shulimson, The Marine Corps Search for a Mission 1880 – 1898 Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan made this statement in 1890. He was among the most influential theorists in the Navy in the last two decades of the 19th century. One of the first instructors at the Naval War College, founded in 1884, and author of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 published in 1890, Mahan had delineated a mission for the Marine Corps that the organization would not be altogether prepared to shoulder for another decade. Mahan understood that in an age before underway replenishment and nuclear power, a fleet required safe harborage in order to refit, refuel and rearm. In foreign waters the Navy required a force that could secure said safe harborage, and the Marines seemed an decent fit. The Marine Corps had other thoughts ...