The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future

by A. T. Mahan

The same national characteristics that of old made Great Britain the chief contestant in all questions of maritime importance—with the Dutch in the Mediterranean, with France in the East Indies, and with Spain in the West—have made her also the exponent of foreign opposition to our own asserted interest in the Isthmus. The policy initiated by Cromwell, of systematic aggression in the Caribbean, and of naval expansion and organization, has resulted in a combination of naval force with naval positions unequalled, though not wholly unrivalled, in that sea. And since, as the great sea carrier, Great Britain has a preponderating natural interest in every new route open to commerce, it is inevitable that she should scrutinize jealously every proposition for the modification of existing arrangements, conscious as she is of power to assert her claims, in case the question should be submitted to the last appeal.

Nevertheless, although from the nature of the occupations which constitute the welfare of her people, as well as from the characteristics of her power, Great Britain seemingly has the larger immediate stake in a prospective interoceanic canal, it has been recognized tacitly on her part, as on our side openly asserted, that the bearing of all questions of Isthmian transit upon our national progress, safety, and honor, is more direct and more urgent than upon hers. That she has felt so is plain from the manner in which she has yielded before our tenacious remonstrances, in cases where the control of the Isthmus was evidently the object of her action,—as in the matters of the tenure of the Bay Islands and of the protectorate of the Mosquito Coast. Our superior interest appears also from the nature of the conditions which will follow from the construction of a canal. So far as these changes are purely commercial, they will operate to some extent to the disadvantage of Great Britain; because the result will be to bring our Atlantic seaboard, the frontier of a rival manufacturing and commercial state, much nearer to the Pacific than it now is, and nearer to many points of that ocean than is England. To make a rough general statement, easily grasped by a reader without the map before him, Liverpool and New York are at present about equidistant, by water, from all points on the west coast of America, from Valparaiso to British Columbia. This is due to the fact that, to go through the Straits of Magellan, vessels from both ports must pass near Cape St. Roque, on the east coast of Brazil, which is nearly the same distance from each. If the Nicaragua Canal existed, the line on the Pacific equidistant from the two cities named would pass, roughly, by Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Melbourne, or along the coasts of Japan, China, and eastern Australia,—Liverpool, in this case, using the Suez Canal, and New York that of Nicaragua. In short, the line of equidistance would be shifted from the eastern shore of the Pacific to its western coast, and all points of that ocean east of Japan, China, and Australia—for example, the Hawaiian Islands—would be nearer to New York than to Liverpool.

A recent British writer has calculated that about one-eighth of the existing trade of the British Islands would be affected unfavorably by the competition thus introduced. But this result, though a matter of national concern, is political only in so far as commercial prosperity or adversity modifies a nation's current history; that is, indirectly. The principal questions affecting the integrity or security of the British Empire are not involved seriously, for almost all of its component parts lie within the regions whose mutual bond of union and shortest line of approach are the Suez Canal. Nowhere has Great Britain so little territory at stake, nowhere has she such scanty possessions, as in the eastern Pacific, upon whose relations to the world at large, and to ourselves in particular, the Isthmian Canal will exert the greatest influence.

The chief political result of the Isthmian Canal will be to bring our Pacific coast nearer, not only to our Atlantic seaboard, but also to the great navies of Europe. Therefore, while the commercial gain, through an uninterrupted water carriage, will be large, and is clearly indicated by the acrimony with which a leading journal, apparently in the interest of the great transcontinental roads, has lately maintained the singular assertion that water transit is obsolete as compared with land carriage, it is still true that the canal will present an element of much weakness from the military point of view. Except to those optimists whose robust faith in the regeneration of human nature rejects war as an impossible contingency, this consideration must occasion serious thought concerning the policy to be adopted by the United States.

The subject, so far, has given rise only to diplomatic arrangement and discussion, within which it is permissible to hope it always may be confined; but the misunderstandings and protracted disputes that followed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and the dissatisfaction with the existing status that still obtains among many of our people, give warning that our steps, as a nation, should be governed by some settled notions, too universally held to be set aside by a mere change of administration or caprice of popular will. Reasonable discussion, which tends, either by its truth or by its evident errors, to clarify and crystallize public opinion on so important a matter, never can be amiss.

This question, from an abstract, speculative phase of the Monroe Doctrine, took on the concrete and somewhat urgent form of security for our trans-Isthmian routes against foreign interference towards the middle of this century, when the attempt to settle it was made by the oft-mentioned Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, signed April 19, 1850. Great Britain was found then to be in possession, actual or constructive, of certain continental positions, and of some outlying islands, which would contribute not only to military control, but to that kind of political interference which experience has shown to be the natural consequence of the proximity of a strong power to a weak one. These positions depended upon, indeed their tenure originated in, the possession of Jamaica, thus justifying Cromwell's forecast. Of them, the Belize, a strip of coast two hundred miles long, on the Bay of Honduras, immediately south of Yucatan, was so far from the Isthmus proper, and so little likely to affect the canal question, that the American negotiator was satisfied to allow its tenure to pass unquestioned, neither admitting nor denying anything as to the rights of Great Britain thereto. Its first occupation had been by British freebooters, who "squatted" there a very few years after Jamaica fell. They went to cut logwood, succeeded in holding their ground against the efforts of Spain to dislodge them, and their right to occupancy and to fell timber was allowed afterwards by treaty. Since the signature of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, this "settlement," as it was styled in that instrument, has become a British "possession," by a convention with Guatemala contracted in 1859. Later, in 1862, the quondam "settlement" and recent "possession" was erected, by royal commission, into a full colony, subordinate to the government of Jamaica. Guatemala being a Central American state, this constituted a distinct advance of British dominion in Central America, contrary to the terms of our treaty.

A more important claim of Great Britain was to the protectorate of the Mosquito Coast,—a strip understood by her to extend from Cape Gracias á Dios south to the San Juan River. In its origin, this asserted right differed little from similar transactions between civilized man and savages, in all times and all places. In 1687, thirty years after the island was acquired, a chief of the aborigines there settled was carried to Jamaica, received some paltry presents, and accepted British protection. While Spanish control lasted, a certain amount of squabbling and fighting went on between the two nations; but when the questions arose between England and the United States, the latter refused to acquiesce in the so-called protectorate, which rested, in her opinion, upon no sufficient legal ground as against the prior right of Spain, that was held to have passed to Nicaragua when the latter achieved its independence. The Mosquito Coast was too close to the expected canal for its tenure to be considered a matter of indifference. Similar ground was taken with regard to the Bay Islands, Ruatan and others, stretching along the south side of the Bay of Honduras, near the coast of the republic of that name, and so uniting, under the control of the great naval power, the Belize to the Mosquito Coast. The United States maintained that these islands, then occupied by Great Britain, belonged in full right to Honduras.

Under these de facto conditions of British occupation, the United States negotiator, in his eagerness to obtain the recession of the disputed points to the Spanish-American republics, seems to have paid too little regard to future bearings of the subject. Men's minds also were dominated then, as they are now notwithstanding the intervening experience of nearly half a century, by the maxims delivered as a tradition by the founders of the republic who deprecated annexations of territory abroad. The upshot was that, in consideration of Great Britain's withdrawal from Mosquitia and the Bay Islands, to which, by our contention, she had no right, and therefore really yielded nothing but a dispute, we bound ourselves, as did she, without term, to acquire no territory in Central America, and to guarantee the neutrality not only of the contemplated canal, but of any other that might be constructed. A special article, the eighth, was incorporated in the treaty to this effect, stating expressly that the wish of the two governments was "not only to accomplish a particular object, but to establish a general principle."

Considerable delay ensued in the restoration of the islands and of the Mosquito Coast to Honduras and Nicaragua,—a delay attended with prolonged discussion and serious misunderstanding between the United States and Great Britain. The latter claimed that, by the wording of the treaty, she had debarred herself only from future acquisitions of territory in Central America; whereas our government asserted, and persistently instructed its agents, that its understanding had been that an entire abandonment of all possession, present and future, was secured by the agreement. It is difficult, in reading the first article, not to feel that, although the practice may have been perhaps somewhat sharp, the wording can sustain the British position quite as well as the more ingenuous confidence of the United States negotiator; an observation interesting chiefly as showing the eagerness on the one side, whose contention was the weaker in all save right, and the wariness on the other, upon whom present possession and naval power conferred a marked advantage in making a bargain. By 1860, however, the restorations had been made, and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty since then has remained the international agreement, defining our relations to Great Britain on the Isthmus.

Of the subsequent wrangling over this unfortunate treaty, if so invidious a term may be applied to the dignified utterances of diplomacy, it is unnecessary to give a detailed account. Our own country cannot but regret and resent any formal stipulations which fetter its primacy of influence and control on the American continent and in American seas; and the concessions of principle over-eagerly made in 1850, in order to gain compensating advantages which our weakness could not extort otherwise, must needs cause us to chafe now, when we are potentially, though, it must be confessed sorrowfully, not actually, stronger by double than we were then. The interest of Great Britain still lies, as it then lay, in the maintenance of the treaty. So long as the United States jealously resents all foreign interference in the Isthmus, and at the same time takes no steps to formulate a policy or develop a strength that can give shape and force to her own pretensions, just so long will the absolute control over any probable contingency of the future rest with Great Britain, by virtue of her naval positions, her naval power, and her omnipresent capital.