Alfred Thayer Mahan and George Dewey

Despite President McKinley's wishes to avoid a war, he was forced to support a war with Spain after the American navy vessel USS Maine suffered an explosion in Havana harbor. McKinley had sent the ship there to help protect American citizens in Cuba from the violence that was taking place there, but the explosion devastated the ship, which sunk quickly in the harbor. 266 American sailors aboard the USS Maine died.

Although the Spanish fought the U.S. Army to a stalemate in Puerto Rico, Spain was forced to make peace after the U.S. Navy destroyed both its Pacific and Atlantic fleets. The military defeat in Cuba meant that Spain would have to give Cuba its independence, and the destruction of its navy meant that Spain would have to cede its overseas colonies to the United States. The United States subsequently gained possession of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam, marking the true beginning of American imperialism.

While many are familiar with Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, the naval exploits of George Dewey were seemingly nothing short of miraculous. A former veteran of various naval engagements in the Civil War, Dewey managed to find himself in charge of the Asiatic Squadron, and in its most famous battle at Manila Bay, Dewey scored a decisive victory that destroyed Spain’s Pacific fleet and subdued Manila’s shore batteries while suffering just one American death.
Dewey’s success in the war led to ticker tape parades upon his return to America, and he was so popular that he briefly ran for president in 1900. While he would never enjoy political success, his distinguished naval career resulted in a promotion to Admiral of the Navy, the equivalent of a six-star admiral. Dewey remains the only American to ever attain that rank, and he became the benchmark by which future naval officers measured themselves, especially during the 20th century’s cataclysmic world wars.

Alfred Thayer Mahan is arguably the most influential military strategist in American history, and one of the world’s most important naval theorists. His work has been nearly as influential as the famous German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), and the lesser-known but nearly as influential Swiss military writer Antoine-Henri Jomini (1779-1869).

After a lengthy naval career, Mahan had assignments at the Naval Academy and the Brooklyn Naval Yard. He was invited to lecture at the Naval War College, and it was there that he collected together his notes and wrote a book, The Influence of Naval Power upon History, which somehow became an international bestseller in 1890. His book resulted in an invitation to dine with the Queen in Britain. It was translated into German and the Kaiser ordered a copy be placed on every German warship and in every school. It was translated into Japanese and became required reading for every officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy. In time, it was praised by Admiral Tojo, the commander at the Battle of Tsushima when the Japanese destroyed the huge Russian fleet. The British were almost as enthusiastic, although the French were less enchanted.

Mahan went on to write twenty books and hundreds of essays and articles. Most were related to naval affairs, but he also wrote an autobiography and a religion-oriented book. He is credited with coming up with the term “Middle East” in a book about the Persian Gulf. Mahan’s theories of the necessity of a powerful big gun fleet were used in Germany to justify the huge German naval construction program before the First World War, and his theories were used in Japan in the infighting between the army and navy over military appropriations. The naval race between Britain and Germany was a principal cause of that war, and Mahan’s ideas were important in the competition.