This time also saw great technological change, including the founding of a new service with a new dimension of warfare. Within three decades after 1918, the world’s largest and most powerful navy would cede first place to the United States Navy.
The service reached its zenith by fighting wars large and small around the world, culminating in victory in World War I. In the 56 years after Mahan’s book, the Royal Navy endured a turbulent period. Despite challengers from growing powers, the Navy today still fields the most powerful naval force on the planet and finds itself in a broadly analogous position to the Royal Navy of Mahan’s time. For the past 75 years the United States Navy has worn the crown as the world’s leading naval force. Within 60 years of Mahan’s book, the US Navy had succeeded in its goal, even exceeding the Royal Navy’s size and stature. The US Navy aspired to develop into a global power and looked to its British cousin as an exemplar of how to proceed. When Mahan wrote his landmark study, the Royal Navy wore the crown as the largest and greatest navy yet seen on the globe. “It is then particularly in the field of naval strategy,” he wrote, “that the teachings of the past have a value which is no degree lessened.” 1
While surveying that period, Mahan focused clearly on the Royal Navy as an illustrative example of his theories of sea power and the importance of naval strength to a nation’s fortunes. In 1890 Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan published his landmark book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783.
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