ABSTRACT
Alfred Thayer Mahan began his writing career just as the United States was becoming a world power in the late nineteenth century. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy who saw limited action in the Union navy during the Civil War (mostly blockade duty), Mahan taught at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island and emerged as this nation’s greatest and most celebrated naval historian and strategist after the publication in the 1890s of his second book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History 1660-1783, and a two-volume sequel, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire. These works were translated into most major foreign languages and are said to have influenced the shipbuilding programs and naval strategies of all of the great powers, including, most conspicuously, Germany and Japan.
