The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783

Front Cover
Little, Brown, 1918 - Literary Criticism - 557 pages
Influential classic of naval history and tactics still used as text in war colleges. Read by Kaiser Wilhelm, both Roosevelts, other leaders. First paperback edition. 4 maps. 24 battle plans.
 

Contents

I
1
II
25
IV
90
VI
139
VII
173
VIII
201
IX
232
X
254
XII
281
XIV
330
XV
359
XVI
401
XVII
419
XVIII
468
XIX
505
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Page 398 - If France delays a timely and powerful aid in the critical posture of our affairs, it will avail us nothing should she attempt it hereafter.
Page 112 - The Second in Command will, after my intentions are made known to him, have the entire direction of his Line to make the attack upon the Enemy, and to follow up the blow until they are captured or destroyed.
Page 275 - ... the Carnatic,* unless some very unforeseen event interpose in their favour. The superiority of our squadron, and the plenty of money and supplies of all kinds which our friends on the coast will be furnished with from this province, while the enemy are in total want of everything, without any visible means of redress, are such advantages as, if properly attended to, cannot fail of wholly effecting their. ruin in that as well as in every other part of India.
Page 25 - ... a wide common, over which men may pass in all directions, but on which some well-worn paths show that controlling reasons have led them to choose certain lines of travel rather than others.
Page 138 - It is not the taking of individual ships or convoys, be they few or many, that strikes down the money power of a nation ; it is the possession of that overbearing power on the sea which drives the enemy's flag from it, or allows it to appear only as a fugitive...
Page 1 - Therefore the history of sea power, while embracing in its broad sweep all that tends to make a people great upon the sea or by the sea, is largely a military history ; and it is in this aspect that it will be mainly, though not exclusively, regarded in the following pages.
Page iv - has there been witnessed the struggle of the highest individual genius against the resources and institutions of a great nation, and in both cases the nation has been victorious. For seventeen years Hannibal strove against Rome ; for sixteen years Napoleon Bonaparte strove against England : the efforts of the first ended in Zama ; those of the second in Waterloo.
Page 532 - I beg to inform your lordship, that the port of Toulon has never been blockaded by me : quite the reverse. Every opportunity has been offered the enemy to put to sea : for it is there that we hope to realize the hopes and expectations of our country.
Page iv - One point, however, of the similitude between the two wars has scarcely been adequately dwelt on ; that is, the remarkable parallel between the Roman general who finally defeated the great Carthaginian, and the English general who gave the last deadly overthrow to the French emperor. Scipio and Wellington both held for many years commands of high importance, tut distant from the main theatres of warfare.
Page 26 - The necessity of a navy, in the restricted sense of the word, springs, therefore, from the existence of a peaceful shipping, and disappears with it, except in the case of a nation which has aggressive tendencies, and keeps up a navy merely as a branch of the military establishment.

About the author (1918)

Alfred Thayer Mahan was born on September 27, 1840 at West Point, New York, where his father was a professor of Civil and Military Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1859 and embarked on a nearly 40-year naval career seeing duty in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico against the Confederacy. He taught briefly at Annapolis, but spent most of his academic career at the newly founded Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where he eventually served as president. He wrote twenty books during his lifetime including The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783; The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812; The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future; The Life of Nelson; and The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence. He died on December 1, 1914.

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