America, Sea Power, and the World

James C. Bradford

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118927960
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'armée et de la marine

This survey of American naval history features original chapters from key scholars in the field that trace the relationship between the American Navy and the position of the United States on the global political stage over the past 250 years.

• Places equal weight on the influence of major wartime campaigns and naval efforts to defend and expand America's political and economic interests during times of peace
• Includes an array of illustrations and 56 new maps, seamlessly integrated within each chapter
• Each chapter features sidebars with biographical sketches of influential leaders and descriptions of weapons and technological developments of the era

CHAPTER 1
Sea Power and the Modern State System

Sea power played a key role in the rise and fall of ancient Mediterranean empires, but was less important during the Middle Ages because feudal institutions could not sustain the construction and maintenance of navies. Modern nation states could support navies, and in the Balance of Power System that developed during the seventeenth century Britain and France established navies with fleets of purposed-built warships supported by permanent shore establishments. During the mid-eighteenth century Britain developed a national strategy that focused on its empire and a peripheral strategy to guide military operations. These led Britain to victory in the Seven Years' War but also laid the seeds for the American Revolution.

Sea Power played a major, often decisive, role in the wars that led to the rise and fall of ancient empires. Once rivers and seas became avenues rather than barriers to communication and commerce, conflict followed in the form of rivalry between traders, pirates who preyed on shipping, and governments that formed navies to protect their own commerce and seize that of others. The latter gave rise to the first warships, most of which were galleys (i.e., long vessels, propelled by oarsmen).

Sea Power in the Ancient World

Bronze-Age Minoa (c. 2000–1420 BCE) was the first thalassocracy (i.e., civilization dependent on the sea) and the first sea power. Located on the island of Crete at the nexus of trade routes between the Aegean, Adriatic, and eastern Mediterranean Seas, Minoan civilization relied largely on coastal fortifications for defense until its conquest by Mycenaeans from mainland Greece (c. 1470–1420 BCE), who operated the western world’s first navy.

Sea power saved the Greek city-states from Persian domination when an Athenian-led flotilla of galleys defeated the Persian navy at the Battle of Salamis (480 BCE) and destroyed the remainder of their galleys at Mycale (479 BCE). Later during the same century Athens’ fleet provided the city and its allies with their main defensive bulwark during the Peloponnesian Wars with rival Sparta. Those wars decimated Greece and led to the region’s decline at the same time that Rome was rising to power in the central Mediterranean. Though best known for its infantry legions, it was the Roman navy that brought Rome victory over its rival Carthage in the Punic Wars (264–146 BCE) by allowing Rome to isolate Carthage from its colonies, cut Hannibal’s army off from support from home when it invaded the Italian Peninsula, and, finally, to invade and defeat Carthage itself. Roman control of the Mediterranean facilitated commerce, including the grain trade vital to support of a city the size of Rome, and the movement of army legions to trouble spots in the empire.

Transition to the feudal system of medieval Europe brought with it myriad small states—none, except Venice, large or wealthy enough to support a significant navy—and a decline in overseas commerce. When Vikings reached North America (c.1100) and established L’Anse aux Meadows on Newfoundland, there was no political entity capable of sustaining the settlement and there were no ships with the capacity to conduct transoceanic commerce. Four centuries later, when Columbus visited the West Indies, this had changed. Poised on the brink of the modern era, Europe was developing the technology needed for overseas trade and the political and economic institutions to maintain overseas empires.

The Modern World and the Great Power System

The transition from the medieval to the modern world was marked by technological advances in metallurgy, chemistry, and navigation, and by the replacement of oar-powered galleys by sailing ships of a much greater size that, by tacking, could sail against the wind. Equally important was the rise of nation states—that is, political units (states) composed of a common people (nations). These new unified entities could and often did support trade, establish overseas colonies, and construct navies.

The first nation states developed on the Iberian Peninsula; Portugal dates its emergence as a nation state from the reign of John I (1385–1433), who initiated European exploration of the Atlantic coast of Africa, and Spain became a nation state following either the 1475 marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile or newly unified Spain’s expulsion of the Moors from the whole of the peninsula except Gibraltar in 1492. That year coincided with Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas. Over the next century, Portugal and Spain established the first great oceanic empires before England and France formed nation states: England after the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487) and France after the War of the Three Henrys (1587–1589). These civil wars had kept England and France from developing the characteristics of a strong nation state—that is, one with a central government (in that era a monarch) that had the allegiance of the political classes, a bureaucracy that administered an efficient tax system, and a standing army (though in England’s case its Royal Navy was more important than its army).

The seventeenth century proved a transitional era during which emerged the Great Power System, which would continue for three hundred years. By 1600 Iberian power was eroding. Seven northern Netherlands provinces declared their independence from Spanish Hapsburg rule, formed the Dutch Republic, fought the Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648), and challenged the Iberians by establishing settlements on the Cape of Good Hope, the north coast of South America, Java, and elsewhere. England and France also began forming overseas empires while Prussia, Russia, and Austria rose to prominence in central and eastern Europe.

The Thirty Years’ War swept Europe between 1618 and 1648. While virtually every nation was involved, the main fighting occurred in central Europe, where it decimated populations and devastated large sections of land. Following its settlement in the Treaty of Westphalia there emerged an enduring Great Power System in which five nation states—Russia, Austria, Prussia (Germany after 1870), France, and England (Great Britain after 1707)—played dominant roles. The goal was to maintain a “balance of power” that would prevent total wars such as the Thirty Years’ War in the future.

Though never formally enunciated in a single document, five core tenets underlay the Great Power System: 1) five is the correct number of powers to maintain a healthy balance; 2) no great power should ever be destroyed or reduced to a position that prevented it from playing an independent role in the system; 3) no single nation should ever be allowed to grow powerful enough to threaten the continued existence of any other great power; 4) no nation has permanent friends, just permanent interests, so alliances should shift to preserve the balance; and 5) wars are acceptable tools for upholding the system. Within the system, a great (first-rate) power was one that possessed sufficient political, economic, and/or military strength that every other nation had to consider the great power’s interest and possible reaction to any diplomatic or military action it might take. A great power possessed total sovereignty in its internal affairs and would consider any interference in its domestic business a casus belli.

Lesser nations played roles in the system based on their relative power. Second-rate, or regional, powers could pursue independent foreign policies and control their internal affairs. Great powers had to consider the interests of second-rate powers when operating in the sphere of influence of such a power. Third-rate powers controlled their foreign policy and, in a major conflict, could chose, if not to remain neutral, at least which side to join as an ally. A fourth-rate power did not have such a choice and was basically a client or satellite of a more powerful state, usually a neighbor. Fifth-rate, even weaker, powers rarely controlled even their internal affairs.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Spain, the Ottoman Empire, Switzerland, and Sweden maintained regional-power status. The Netherlands and several lesser German states were third-rate powers, whi...