ABSTRACT
Seapower is the product of an amalgam of interconnected constituents that are difficult to tease apart. These constituents are attributes of countries that make it easier or harder for them to be strong at sea. If seapower is indeed to be defined as the capacity to influence the behaviour of other people by what you do at or from the sea, then these attributes must be accepted as part of the mix. Historians have drawn clear distinctions between organic seapower, which develops naturally 'bottom-up', and the artificial 'top-down' variety that is the product of governmental fiat. Most seem to think that governments can, and indeed should want to, develop their seapower and so need to work out a strategy for doing so. Traditional writers on seapower tend to extol the virtues of the kind of community produced by a maritime economy. tocracies do seem to have problems that militate against the effective and sustained development of many aspects of seapower.
