Volume 7, Issue 4, Winter 2022 17 their ideas in opposition to one another.[i] This caricature is likely offered because highlighting differences appears an easier pedagogy than explaining similarities. But the result of this is a general understanding that the two strategists disagreed and sets up the need to choose between them. However, this is a historically and conceptually flawed way to approach them and their naval thinking. By examining the two men in width across their published work, in depth through their biographies, and in context by acknowledging the time and audiences which they wrote for, we can help explain the differences between the two men and understand the significance of the fact that in general they came to the same or similar conclusions.[ii] Looking at them and their writings through these historical lenses rather than via a focus on theory offers a different perspective. This more historically informed approach demonstrates that the most important part of a comparison between the two men and their writing is how, despite the differences in their background and methods, they largely agree on the key elements of naval strategy. Almost all the staff colleges and war colleges in the modern world, including those in the People’s Republic of China for more than a decade, teach about what Mahan and Corbett wrote.[iii] Yet few of them appear to spend much time teaching about who they were. For historians engaged in strategic studies this presents a problem. In learning only about theory, only about selective excerpts of what these strategists said about sea power and strategy but ignoring who they were and where their ideas came from, we are only presented with a theoretical foundation. This does not help us comprehend how they themselves meant their ideas to be applied. Theory alone is useless. As Corbett himself wrote, it’s only useful to naval professionals if they understand how to adapt that theory, to modify it, to think about it, within their modern or contemporary context. [iv] For strategic scholars and historians the same rule of thumb applies. Theory is valuable as an element of study that informs analysis, but it cannot be the only element, and we must recognize the unique nature of every historical event. Width - One Book or Many Both Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian Corbett were hard working and prolific authors. Despite this fact, nearly every discussion of their work, and in particular the surface level comparisons of the two men and their strategic ideas, focus entirely on their single most famous book. Some professors have insisted that this is the proper way to assess them, telling us that “although both authors published numerous other works displaying nuanced views on seapower and world affairs, for better or worse, great strategic thinkers are judged by their masterworks.”[v] However, at the very least some historians might suggest that a brief look at what those “other works” entail may be in order. The vast majority of those who say that they “have read” Alfred Thayer Mahan seem to have focused on a very limited number of pages. In fact, it most often seems that their quotations and citations come from roughly the first eighty pages of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783. These are the pages of the preface, the introduction, and the portion of the first chapter where Mahan lays out his definitions and conceptual ideas. For example, this section contains his “six elements” of sea power. Mahan, however, wrote or contributed to twenty books. A skim through John Hattenforf’s bibliography of Mahan’s work demonstrates the daunting nature of how voluminous his historical and international affairs writing was.[vi] There are over 160 articles, but if we start including the letters to the editor and interviews done with New York newspapers and others we start to get closer to 300 pieces. Almost all of this, save for one book and one article, came after he published the Influence of Sea Power Upon History. In this way Mahan differs from that other oft-quoted great strategist, Carl Von Clausewitz. Clausewitz’s Vom Krieg, or On War, was written closer to the end of his life. It was his magnum opus, the sum total of his knowledge about war and warfare. He did not even finish the book and his wife Marie had to complete the editing and publication for him.[vii] As opposed to the end of his career, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History was arguably written at the start of Mahan’s career as a naval thinker and as a strategist. When we consider Mahan in width, a historian or strategist today might ask whether a book written at the start of his career should be the one that we are using to represent the totality of what he thought. It seems unfair or incomplete to ignore where he may have changed his mind, like in his understanding of the Battle of Tsushima, or where he broadened or added nuance, as in his discussion of the determinative links between naval power and a merchant marine. Scholars of strategy should be nervous about those who tell us to limit our sources, those who suggest that a single book, or worse an eighty-page excerpt from that book, is all that is needed for understanding. As Geoffrey Till wrote in his book Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, “who wrote what” does matter if we are going to understand the subject.[viii] Considering Corbett in width is a similar, but also slightly different case. For Corbett, the book on which theoretically focused scholars place all their attention on is Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. In many ways, this is fair when compared to thinking about The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, because Corbett published it roughly twenty years into his career as a writer and historian, and ten years after he started teaching at the Naval War Course at Greenwich. Yet, there was still another decade of Corbett’s writing after Some Principles was published, and this included nine additional volumes.[ix] Corbett’s output was similar to Mahan’s. He published over twenty books and dozens of articles during his time Mahan Versus Corbett in Width, Depth, and Context Benjamin ‘BJ’ Armstrong
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