The Influence of Sea Power Upon History
Alfred Thayer Mahan, 1890
From the Introduction
The history of Sea Power is largely, though by no means solely, a narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war. The profound influence of sea commerce upon the wealth and strength of countries was clearly seen long before the true principles which governed its growth and prosperity were detected. To secure to one's own people a disproportionate share of such benefits, every effort was made to exclude others, either by the peaceful legislative methods of monopoly or prohibitory regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence. The clash of interests, the angry feelings roused by conflicting attempts thus to appropriate the larger share, if not the whole, of the advantages of commerce, and of distant unsettled commercial regions, led to wars. On the other hand, wars arising from other causes have been greatly modified in their conduct and issue by the control of the sea…
Having… no foreign establishments, either colonial or military, the ships of war of the United States, in war, will be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To provide resting-places for them, where they can coal and repair, would be one of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the development of the power of the nation at sea....
Questions
1)Who is the author of this passage, and what do you think is his professional background?
2)What two advantages does a strong navy give a nation, according to the author?
3)What does the author mean when he says that the warships of the United States are like “land birds”?
4)Think back to what you have learned about the Civil War. What role did the Union navy play in winning the war?
5)Do you agree with Mahan that a strong navy is just as important to a nation’s security as a strong army? Why or why not?
6)Why do you think the U.S. was building a stronger navy in the late 1800s?
Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis
Josiah Strong, 1885
John Adams… recalled a couplet that had been inscribed or rather drilled, into a rock on the shore of Monument Bay in our old colony of Plymouth:
The Eastern nations sink, their glory ends,
And empire rises where the sun descends. . .
[A] marked characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon is what may be called an instinct or genius for colonizing. His unequaled energy, his indomitable perseverance, and his personal independence, made him a pioneer. He excels all others in pushing his way into new countries. It was those in whom this tendency was strongest that came to America, and this inherited tendency has been further developed by the westward sweep of successive generations across the continent…
It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world's future. Heretofore there has always been in the history of the world a comparatively unoccupied land westward, into which the crowded countries of the East have poured their surplus populations. But the widening waves of migration, which millenniums ago rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates, meet to-day on our Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken… If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond. And can any one doubt that the results of this competition of races will be the "survival of the fittest?"
Questions
1)Who is the author of this passage, and what do you think is his professional background?
2)What are “Anglo-Saxons”?
3)What colonies had “Anglo-Saxons” established at the time of this writing?
4)What does Strong mean when he says “there are no new worlds”?
5)What arguments does the author use to justify colonization and imperialism?
The Frontier Thesis
Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893
The Frontier
The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement, explain American development.
Safety Valve
So long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency exists, and economic power secures political power. But the democracy born of free land, strong in selfishness and individualism, intolerant of administrative experience and education, and pressing individual liberty beyond its proper bounds, has its dangers as well as its benefits.
Successive Frontiers
Stand at Cumberland Gap and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file--the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur-trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer--and the frontier has passed by. Stand at South Pass in the Rockies a century later and see the same procession with wider intervals between.
Questions
1)Do you agree with Turner that the western frontier was “free”? Why or why not?
2)In what ways was the western frontier a “safety valve”, as Turner writes?
3)What waves of immigration crossed the west? What were the motivations behind these migrations?
4)How might the closing of the frontier relate to the expansion of U.S. power in the world?
Progress: Its Law & Cause
(Social Darwinism)
Herbert Spencer, 1857
Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, [the]… evolution of the simple into the complex, through a process of continuous differentiation, holds throughout. From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress essentially consists....
In the course of ages, there arises, as among ourselves, a highly complex political organization… Simultaneously there has been going on a second differentiation of a still more familiar kind; that, namely, by which the mass of the community has become segregated into distinct classes and orders of workers… which has resulted in that minute division of labour characterizing advanced nations… That exchange of commodities which freetrade promises so greatly to increase, will ultimately have the effect of specializing, in a greater or less degree, the industry of each people. So that beginning with a barbarous tribe, almost if not quite homogeneous in the functions of its members, the progress has been, and still is, towards an economic aggregation of the whole human race.
Questions
1)Social Darwinists believed that society naturally evolved by individual competition and the "survival of the fittest." Do you agree or disagree? Why?
2)Spencer himself opposed imperialism, but what arguments in Spencer’s writings might be used to justify imperialism?