Review: THE NEPTUNE FACTOR - ALFRED THAYER MAHAN and the Concept of $EA POWER by Nicholas A. Lambert

Review:

THE NEPTUNE FACTOR – ALFRED THAYER MAHAN and the Concept of $EA POWER 

Nicholas A. Lambert. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2024. Kindle Edition. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

Reviewed by John S. Naylor

 

“In most books, and not just books on naval history, Mahan is presented as a theorist of naval power who preached a crude gospel about the paramount importance of battle, battleships, and battle fleets. Too often his concept of sea power is reduced to, or rather conflated with, his advocacy for securing command of the sea. Parts of his argument are mistaken for the whole, and his ideas are critiqued before they are understood. Confirmation bias and the rush to judge thus have fed each other in a vicious loop.”

-       Nicholas Lambert

 

Mr. Lambert’s thesis is that students of Mahan, and historians, have failed to accurately identify his focus on the destruction of an adversary’s commerce as the key to sea power. In writing THE NEPTUNE FACTOR – ALFRED THAYER MAHAN and the Concept of $EA POWER he corrects this failure, meticulously assembling Mahan’s writings, correspondence, as well as historical interpretations of his work in a concise, and digestible volume that sheds light on areas of his work not available in traditional histories. In his first section he offers a history of the U.S. Navy following the Civil War; a biography of Mahan, including his relationship with Stephen Luce and the Naval War College; and an analysis of Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783. 

 

Aside from Mahan’s veiled critique of the U.S. Navy in Influence, Lambert sets straight the relationship that Mahan had with Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce, who founded the Naval War College, and was responsible for much of the development of the modern professionalism of the Navy officer corps, in founding the NWC, Luce sought to increase the professionalism of naval officers through the examination of history. His goal was to create a school of thought regarding naval strategy along the lines of Antoine-Henri Jomini’s writings about the Napoleonic Wars. 

 

Lambert’s work shows that despite his historic reputation for being an adherent of of forcing large, decisive battles between major fleets of great powers to determine outcomes, Mahan developed an interest in attacking an adversary’s commerce at sea, to disrupt an enemy’s economy, and in turn undermine their political situation. Mahan’s first great work, Influence, was more about economics and the coordination of resources, in the pursuit of national hegemony. Lambert argues that the misunderstandings about Mahan’s work arise from his being a writer about contemporary issues for a contemporary audience, and a convoluted presentation. Because Mahan was writing about his times, and the state of the Navy, Influence can be seen as a call for action because of the U.S. failing to match the pace of foreign navies. Mahan argued that if the U.S. were to compete with the great powers, she’d need a fleet capable of dominating the adversaries’ fleets and conducting effective blockades. 

 

Lambert points out that while Stephen B. Luce was instrumental in the development of historian Alfred Thayer Mahan, his thoughts and writing matured increasingly independent of the NWC. Lambert makes the argument that Luce created the Naval War College with the specific aim to derive lessons through the “study of tactics and naval operations (not strategy)”. Luce sought officers capable of writing and teaching in the style of Jomini[1], but Mahan found his inspiration in historians focusing on commercial and maritime policy. 

 

Lambert highlights the ambiguous interpretation of Mahan’s focus on commerce destruction versus decisive battle, and how it created confusion in the communication of his message. Mahan did advocate for decisive battle as a means to being able to limit an adversary’s ability to use maritime highways for trade, yet generations of professionals and historians failed to realize this nuance. “In this context, the most important and extraordinary feature of Influence was its emphasis on the symbiotic connection between naval power and economics and between international commerce and national prosperity”, as Lambert puts it. 

 

In the second part of his argument, Lambert examines the development of the “new navy” through the 1890s, and the politics surrounding. In the wake of the popular success of Influence, he looks at Mahan’s succeeding writings, which reflect a maturation in both composition and thought. 

 

In 1892 Mahan followed up Influence with The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812. Lambert regards this a significant improvement on his first work. Empire focused more on the relationship between economics and war, and Lambert identifies that his theory of sea power was more about political-economic factors than naval warfare. Mahan made the argument that it was the Royal Navy that was responsible for the defeat of Napoleon. As Mahan’s thoughts evolved, destruction of enemy commerce was identified as the ultimate goal, by means of the destruction of an adversary’s battle fleet. Britain’s successes at sea resulted in the French having to find other ways to support their war efforts ashore. Lambert regards Mahan’s work in Empireas his finest. 

 

In the last section of his book, Lambert covers the final portion of Mahan’s life, and in it, his advocacy for sea control as an economic and political weapon. Retired from active duty before the publication of Influence, Mahan continued in his association with the Navy through his work. Because he was regarded an expert in naval affairs, he served during the Spanish War at the highest level, reluctantly sitting on a board advising the President on strategy. After the war he emerged in the camp of those against “immunity” for commerce on the high seas. The immunity movement arose from the international law proposed for the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899. Between penning Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812, and numerous magazine articles, Mahan advocated for the U.S. not to sign on to any international agreement preventing blockades, as “material considerations (i.e., economic considerations) almost always trumped moral ones.” Mahan was troubled by the pro-immunity position taken by the U.S. delegation at the second Hague Peace Conference in 1907, but President Roosevelt had little interest in the conference, and U.S. support for “immunity” evaporated. 

 

Lambert devotes his closing to an argument that Mahan was writing about economics in the first era of globalism. His aversion to “immunity” expressed his understanding that the denial of access to high-seas commerce was the denial of participation in the international economy. Lambert argues that when Mahan was asked to reshape his Naval War College lectures for the modern day, Mahan got over his belief that economics was the ultimate domain in sea power, in order to pay the bills. 

 

Mahan’s star faded in the wake of his death in 1914, and with the passage of the Great War, which lacked the instance of a great, decisive engagement “Mahanists” had been advocates of, navies became concerned with operating within treaty limits. Lambert argues that in the wake of WWI the global economy witnessed the end of the first era of Globalism. In ensuing decades and conflicts, the Navy’s role in sea power shifted from domination of the high seas to projection of power; Mahanist theory became largely irrelevant. Lambert’s close makes the argument that the Navy will be required to shift away from projection of power to a focus on the economics of controlling the highways of the sea once again. 

 

By now, it’s a given that when someone writes about the New Navy of the 1890s, a reference must be made of Mahan, and Frederick Jackson Turner’s historical analysis about the closing of the American West. So it makes sense that a large part of Lambert’s argument is made in the examination of the historiography surrounding Mahan’s writings. Lambert observes that Mahan’s oeuvre is not an easy read, more people may read summaries of his work, than actually reading him, cherry picking quotes as needed to amplify someone else’s interpretations of naval history. As a result of incisive analysis, Lambert dispels much of the mythology surrounding Mahan’s writings, in turn minimizing the popular conceptions amongst naval historians regarding the genesis of the “New Navy” and misconceptions about what motivated Mahan’s writing. Beyond misconceptions about Mahan’s motivation, Lambert points out how historians of certain schools bent the truth about events to “fit their chain of causality”, ignoring others. Regarding naval policy, Lambert’s most important revelation may be that the Point A to Point B line in the development of the New Navy that so many historians describe was never as certain as made out. At the time he wrote Influence, Mahan saw no clear focus in U.S. policy regarding sea power. His writing energized a generation of naval officers and politicians in the prospects that changes in appropriations and policies might allow the U.S. to achieve ascendancy among the great powers. Lambert’s work updates this enthusiasm as the role of the navy is in flux in the face of conflict with near-peer adversaries today. 

 

History is never a straight line between one point and another. Actors never know what is in their future. A historian may be able to make a summary of a battle on the day it ended, years removed, but the soldiers on the field that day may not, at the time, understood that the battle was over. Mahan was writing for his times, and as time moves on, his writing became outdated, and misinterpreted. The purpose of the Navy changed in time; however current threats may require an examination of past schools of thought. Lambert’s work makes this easier for anyone who finds themselves faced with the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan.  

Fin

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[1] Antoine-Henri Jomini, 1779-1869, a Swiss military officer who served with the French and Russians, wrote about military strategy during the Napoleonic era. He focused on the importance of interior lines, logistics, and using the minimum amount of force to win in battle. His teachings guided generations of American military officers in the mid-1800s, including Mahan’s father, Dennis Hart Mahan, a revered instructor at the USMA.