Sea-Power and Other Studies | Page 3

part of this extract, though often
translated 'command of the sea,' or 'dominion of the sea,' really has the
wider meaning of sea-power, the 'power of the sea' of the old English
poet above quoted. This wider meaning should be attached to certain
passages in Herodotus,[13] which have been generally interpreted
'commanding the sea,' or by the mere titular and honorific 'having the
dominion of the sea.' One editor of Herodotus, Ch. F. Baehr, did,
however, see exactly what was meant, for, with reference to the
allusion to Polycrates, he says, _classe_maximumvaluit. This is
perhaps as exact a definition of sea-power as could be given in a
sentence.
[Footnote 13: Herodotus, iii. 122 in two places; v.83.]
It is, however, impossible to give a definition which would be at the
same time succinct and satisfactory. To say that 'sea-power' means the
sum-total of the various elements that go to make up the naval strength
of a state would be in reality to beg the question. Mahan lays down the
'principal conditions affecting the sea-power of nations,' but he does not
attempt to give a concise definition of it. Yet no one who has studied
his works will find it difficult to understand what it indicates.
Our present task is to put readers in possession of the means of doing
this. The best, indeed--as Mahan has made us see--the only effective
way of attaining this object is to treat the matter historically. Whatever
date we may agree to assign to the formation of the term itself, the
idea--as we have seen--is as old as history. It is not intended to give a
condensed history of sea-power, but rather an analysis of the idea and
what it contains, illustrating this analysis with examples from history
ancient and modern. It is important to know that it is not something
which originated in the middle of the seventeenth century, and having
seriously affected history in the eighteenth, ceased to have weight till
Captain Mahan appeared to comment on it in the last decade of the
nineteenth. With a few masterly touches Mahan, in his brief allusion to
the second Punic war, has illustrated its importance in the struggle

between Rome and Carthage. What has to be shown is that the
principles which he has laid down in that case, and in cases much more
modern, are true and have been true always and everywhere. Until this
is perceived there is much history which cannot be understood, and yet
it is essential to our welfare as a maritime people that we should
understand it thoroughly. Our failure to understand it has more than
once brought us, if not to the verge of destruction, at any rate within a
short distance of serious disaster.
SEA-POWER IN ANCIENT TIMES
The high antiquity of decisive naval campaigns is amongst the most
interesting features of international conflicts. Notwithstanding the
much greater frequency of land wars, the course of history has been
profoundly changed more often by contests on the water. That this has
not received the notice it deserved is true, and Mahan tells us why.
'Historians generally,' he says, 'have been unfamiliar with the
conditions of the sea, having as to it neither special interest nor special
knowledge; and the profound determining influence of maritime
strength on great issues has consequently been overlooked.' Moralising
on that which might have been is admittedly a sterile process; but it is
sometimes necessary to point, if only by way of illustration, to a
possible alternative. As in modern times the fate of India and the fate of
North America were determined by sea-power, so also at a very remote
epoch sea-power decided whether or not Hellenic colonisation was to
take root in, and Hellenic culture to dominate, Central and Northern
Italy as it dominated Southern Italy, where traces of it are extant to this
day. A moment's consideration will enable us to see how different the
history of the world would have been had a Hellenised city grown and
prospered on the Seven Hills. Before the Tarquins were driven out of
Rome a Phocoean fleet was encountered (537 B.C.) off Corsica by a
combined force of Etruscans and Phoenicians, and was so handled that
the Phocoeans abandoned the island and settled on the coast of
Lucania.[14] The enterprise of their navigators had built up for the
Phoenician cities and their great off-shoot Carthage, a sea-power which
enabled them to gain the practical sovereignty of the sea to the west of
Sardinia and Sicily. The control of these waters was the object of
prolonged and memorable struggles, for on it--as the result
showed--depended the empire of the world. From very remote times the

consolidation and expansion, from within outwards, of great
continental states have had serious consequences for mankind when
they were accompanied by