Volume 7, Issue 4, Winter 2022 18 as a historian and naval educator. For an example of how reading him widely informs our understanding, Corbett’s nervousness with “decisive” naval battles developed over time and throughout his writing, but becomes most clear in the moments after Jutland and his writing of the official history a decade after the publication of Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.[x] When considering everything that Corbett and Mahan had to say, pigeonholing our understanding of them into summaries of only their most famous single volumes seems not only unfair. It also seems like a methodologically poor approach to understanding them. In order to truly understand their views on strategy, naval power, and maritime affairs, we must read both Mahan and Corbett in width. Looking for a quick summary of only their most famous books, a “Cliffs Notes” version of their theories that can be summarized in a few sentences, defeats the purpose of what each man was trying to achieve and ignores the wide sea of their thinking on maritime power. By relying on only one of their books or passages from that single book, strategists are left with what Jon Sumida called a “paradox: a body of famous work that has received a great deal of study but has been misunderstood completely.”[xi] From the very meaning of the phrase “command of the sea,” to the “decisive” nature of fleet battle, both Mahan and Corbett wrote with nuance across multiple publications, nuance which is entirely missed by those who seek to read and consider as little as possible.[xii] Depth - The MenWielding the Pen In examining Corbett and Mahan in depth, it may be most valuable to consider the biography of each man and how their background may have had a role in their approach and their writings. To say that Julian Corbett and Alfred Thayer Mahan were different men seems a bit glib. Yet, there are fundamental differences between the two men, and how they came to naval affairs, which must have had serious effects on their mindset and how they approached the subject. Alfred Thayer Mahan was a career naval officer. He spent forty years in uniform, from his induction at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1856 to his retirement in 1896. He rose through the ranks, fought in the American Civil War, commanded ships, had his share of incidents at sea and landing forces ashore, and retired at the rank of Captain. His introduction to intellectual pursuits was almost entirely naval. He finished second in his class at Annapolis. Even before his time in Annapolis, Mahan had grown up on the banks of the Hudson River, “on post” at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His father, Denis Hart Mahan, was a renowned military professor and future Academic Dean of West Point, and much of Mahan’s life as a young man was surrounded by the study of military and naval affairs.[xiii] Mahan’s first published article came in 1879, an essay on naval education and the curriculum in Annapolis which he wrote during his second tour of duty as an instructor at the Naval Academy.[xiv] The work was published by the Naval Institute, which Mahan had immediately gravitated toward when he returned to Annapolis in 1878. He quickly assumed the role of President of the institute, surrounded by naval officers studying and writing about naval affairs, and discussing it as part of their lifelong intellectual pursuit of their profession.[xv] And this was all before Stephen Luce asked him to come to Newport and help found the Naval War College, before he became the “prophet of sea power.” Sir Julian Corbett was raised in an entirely different context as the son of an architect and real estate developer, not a military man. He attended Cambridge University and once he graduated at the top of his class he joined the bar. As a lawyer, or barrister, he mastered his briefs and the value of succinct writing and clear argumentation.[xvi] His engagement with maritime affairs, rather than practical or professional, instead appears to have started as a romantic engagement. After the death of his father, Corbett left the law in order to run his family’s estate and become a novelist. His books, romantic tales of the Renaissance, Vikings, and of Elizabethan era sea rovers, were well reviewed but of mixed success.[xvii] While he seems to have blamed his publisher, the hard facts are that many of the books did not sell.[xviii] During a short period as journalist for the Pall Mall Gazette he hadhis first, and onemight say only, direct engagementwith military activities when he covered the Dongola Expedition for the newspaper as what the twenty first century would call an embedded reporter.[xix] When he returned, Corbett began working with the noted naval historian John Knox Laughton, who also served as something of a mentor to Mahan via correspondence.[xx] Laughton brought him into the Naval Records Society, and Corbett began learning to work with original sources and started to do the hard work of researching and writing detailed and documented naval history.[xxi] It was these histories, and Laughton’s support, which brought him to the attention of the Royal Navy and resulted in the offer for him to become the lecturer on naval history and strategy at the War Course. Corbett and Mahan had nearly the same job descriptions in their respective naval educational enterprises. Both taught naval history and strategy to officers, and both men became most famous for that work. However, they came to those positions from dramatically different backgrounds. Mahan was a career officer who had years of practical experience which informed but did not dictate his analysis and thinking, and Corbett was a career civilian with almost zero real experience who instead based his work on a deeply scholarly and historical methodology. When looking at the two men in depth, it appears that while they came at their shared subject from these varied and different directions they still arrived at the same conclusions. Mahan Versus Corbett in Width, Depth, and Context Benjamin ‘BJ’ Armstrong
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