Word: mahan
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...eagerly read works on the history of war. Yet it would be fair to say that his notions about sea power--build bigger warships, concentrate the fleet--were primitive until the late 1880s, when he was introduced to one of the greatest luminaries of naval thought, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan. At the time of their first meeting, Mahan, then in his late 40s, was giving lectures at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., lectures that would culminate in the 1890 publication of his international best seller, The Influence of Sea Power upon History...
...Mahan's book, which Roosevelt devoured in one reading, is at first sight a detailed account of the many battles fought by the British Royal Navy as it rose to become sovereign of the seas. But it is much more than that, for Mahan claimed to have detected the principles that underlay the workings of sea power, and had determined the rise and fall of nations. With great skill, the author showed the intimate relationships among productive industry, flourishing seaborne commerce, strong national finances and enlightened national purpose. Great navies did not arise out of thin air; they...
Here was a road map for the rest of T.R.'s life, or at least the part of it that would be focused on foreign affairs. In Roosevelt's future naval policies we see the embodiment of Mahan's larger principles. Moreover, this conjuncture of Mahan the theoretician and Roosevelt the man of action arrived at just the right time in the history of the U.S. Its industries were booming, its commerce thriving and its merchants fighting to gain markets overseas in the face of tough foreign competition. All of that pointed to the need for a strong Navy...
Roosevelt had previously confided in Mahan his belief that the U.S. should push Spain out of not only Cuba but also the Philippines, though at the time acquiring the Philippines was by no means a goal of the McKinley Administration. Ten days after the Maine went down, on a late Friday afternoon when Long was temporarily out of the office, his dynamic assistant cabled instructions to Admiral William T. Sampson in the Caribbean and Commodore George Dewey in Hong Kong to prepare for decisive action. Long, though by his own account somewhat bemused, did nothing later to counter those orders...
...Without the political capital gained by [the assaults], I don’t know if the University and the city would have been convinced,” then-Undergraduate Council president Matthew W. Mahan ’05 told The Crimson at the time. “The city and the University were not initially...