On the other hand, wars arising from other causes have been greatly modified in their conduct and issue by the control of the sea. Alfred Thayer Mahan was a United States naval officer and historian, whom John Keegan called 'the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century. The clash of interests, the angry feelings roused by conflicting attempts thus to appropriate the larger share, if not the whole, of the advantages of commerce, and of distant unsettled commercial regions, led to wars. To secure to one's own people a disproportionate share of such benefits, every effort was made to exclude others, either by the peaceful legislative methods of monopoly or prohibitory regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence. The profound influence of sea commerce upon the wealth and strength of countries was clearly seen long before the true principles which governed its growth and prosperity were detected. Alfred Thayer Mahan was born on 27 September 1840 at West Point, New York, where his father, Dennis Hart Mahan, was a distinguished professor of Civil and Military Engineering at the US Military.
“The history of sea power is largely, though by no means solely, a narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war.
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