Alfred Thayer Mahan

Alfred Thayer Mahan

Alfred Thayer Mahan (; September 27, 1840 – December 1, 1914) was a United States naval officer and historian, whom John Keegan called "the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century." His 1890 book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 won immediate recognition, especially in Europe, and with the publication of its 1892 successor, The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812, he affirmed his status as a globally-known and regarded military strategist, historian, and theorist. Mahan's works encouraged the development of large capital ships — eventually leading to dreadnought battleships — as he was an advocate of the 'decisive battle' and of naval blockades. Critics, however, charged him with failing to adequately explain the rise of largely land-based empires, such as the German or Ottoman Empires, though Mahan did accurately predict both empires' defeats in World War I. Mahan directly influenced the dominant interwar period and World War II-era Japanese naval doctrine of the "decisive battle doctrine" (艦隊決戦, Kantai Kessen), and he became a "household name" in Germany. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Alfred Thayer Mahan has received more than 1,513,279 page views. His biography is available in 33 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 31 in 2019). Alfred Thayer Mahan is the 1,079th most popular writer (down from 951st in 2019), the 1,266th most popular biography from United States (down from 1,116th in 2019) and the 122nd most popular American Writer.

Alfred Thayer Mahan is most famous for his book "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History." In this book, he argues that a nation's naval power is the key to global dominance.