His argument was that every nation that had ruled the waves, from Rome to Great Britain, had prospered and thrived, while those that lacked naval supremacy, such as Hannibal's Carthage or Napoleon's France, had not. The theme of this book was naval supremacy as the key to the modern world. In 1887, he published The Influence of Sea Power upon History. Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan was an American naval officer, extremely interested in British naval history. German leaders desired a navy in proportion to their military and economic strength that could free their overseas trade and colonial empire from dependence on Britain's good will, but such a fleet would inevitably threaten Britain's own trade and empire.Įver since the First Moroccan Crisis (over the colonial status of Morocco, between March 1905 and May 1906), there had been an arms race, involving their respective navies. Germany's attempt to build a battleship fleet to match that of the United Kingdom, the dominant naval power of the 20th-century and an island country that depended on seaborne trade for survival, is often listed as a major reason for the enmity between those two countries that led the UK to enter World War I. The naval arms race between Britain and Germany to build dreadnought battleships in the early 20th century is the subject of a number of books. Major fleet actions were extremely rare and proved less decisive. The Allied Powers, with their larger fleets and surrounding position, largely succeeded in their blockade of Germany and the other Central Powers, whilst the efforts of the Central Powers to break that blockade, or to establish an effective counter blockade with submarines and commerce raiders, were eventually unsuccessful. Naval warfare in World War I was mainly characterized by blockade.
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