The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812 - Vol. I.

by Alfred Thayer Mahan

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, Military History, Military Fiction, France

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Alfred Thayer Mahan was a United States Navy flag officer, geostrategist, and historian, who has been called "the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century." His concept of "sea power" was based on the idea that countries with greater naval power will have greater worldwide impact; it was most famously presented in his 1890 book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783. The concept had an enormous influence in shaping the strategic thought of navies across the world, especially in the United States, Germany, Japan and Britain, ultimately causing the World War I naval arms race. His ideas still permeate the U.S. Navy Doctrine.

Reviews

[John Winterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is essentially a sequel to Mahan’s hugely influential ‘Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660 – 1783.’

As such, it is book on naval strategy, but one suspects Mahan took particular note of which aspects of his previous book generated most discussion, because he seems to have taken the deliberate decision to shift the emphasis of this one away from the tactical end of strategy and more towards the grand strategic end.

So the tactical discussions of the familiar naval battles are perhaps fewer and shorter than readers of the earlier books might expect. Against that, his analysis of the grand strategy goes well beyond the naval aspect. It incorporates politics, diplomacy, and economics. Indeed, it sometimes reads like a militant version of Adam Smith’s Wealth of ‘Nations.’

On this level, the book succeeds brilliantly. Mahan is particularly good on Pitt the Younger’s far-seeing vision and on why the Continental System failed – and was doomed to fail. The section on how and why the Peace of Amiens collapsed is one of the most informative and fair-minded descriptions of the diplomatic history of that period.

Indeed, the book as a whole still provides one of the most perceptive overviews of the course of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in general. Well-researched, especially for its time, it does not detract from that to say that the actual naval operations are described in greater detail elsewhere, especially in more recent publications which have access to the fruits of modern research methods.