MAHAN, ALFRED THAYER (1840- ), American naval officer and historian, was born on the 27th of September 1840 at West Point, New York. His father, Dennis Hart Mahan (1802-1871) was a professor in the military academy, and the author of textbooks on civil and military engineering. The son graduated at the naval academy in 1859, became lieutenant in 1861, served on the “Congress,” and on the “Pocahontas,” “Seminole,” and “James Adger” during the Civil War, and was instructor at the naval academy for a year. In 1865 he was made lieut.-commander, commander in 1872, captain in 1885. Meanwhile he saw service in the Gulf of Mexico, the South Atlantic, the Pacific, and Asia, and did shore duty at Boston, New York and Annapolis. In 1886-89 he was president of the naval war college at Newport, Rhode Island. Between 1889 and 1892 he was engaged in special service for the bureau of navigation, and in 1893 was made commander of the “Chicago,” of the European squadron. In 1896 he retired from active service, but was a member of the naval board of strategy during the war between the United States and Spain. He was a member of the peace congress at the Hague in 1899. This long and varied service gave him extensive opportunities for observation, which he supplemented by constant study of naval authorities and reflection on the interpretation of the problems of maritime history. His first book was a modest and compact story of the affairs in The Gulf and Inland Waters (1883), in a series of volumes by various writers, entitled The Navy in the Civil War; in 1890 he suddenly acquired fame by the appearance of his masterly work entitled The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. Having been impressed by the failure of historians to allow for the influence of sea power in struggles between nations, he was led to make prolonged investigations of this general theme (see [Sea Power]). The reception accorded the volume was instant and hearty; in England, in particular, it was deemed almost an epoch-making work, and was studied by naval specialists, cabinet ministers and journalists, as well as by a large part of the general public. It was followed by The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire (2 vols. 1892); The Life of Nelson, the Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain (1897); and Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 (1905). The author’s general aim in these works—some of which have been translated into French, German and Japanese—was to make the consideration of maritime matters paramount to that of military, political or economic movements, without, however, as he himself says “divorcing them from their surroundings of cause and effect in general history, but seeking to show how they modified the latter, and were modified by them.” He selected the year 1660 as the beginning of his narrative, as being the date when the “sailing-ship era, with its distinctive features, had fairly begun.” The series as a whole has been accepted as finally authoritative, supplanting its predecessors of similar aim, and almost—in the words of Theodore Roosevelt—founding a new school of naval historical writing.
Other works by Mahan are a Life of Admiral Farragut (1892); The Interest of America in Sea Power (1897); Lessons of the War with Spain (1899); The Story of the War with South Africa and The Problem of Asia (1900); Types of Naval Officers drawn from the History of the British Navy (1901); Retrospect and Prospect, studies of international relations (1902).
MAHANADI, or Mahanuddy (“The Great River”), a river of India. It rises in 20° 10′ N., 82° E., 25 m. S. of Raipur town, in the wild mountains of Bastar in the Central Provinces. At first an insignificant stream, taking a northerly direction, it drains the eastern portion of the Chhattisgarh plain, then a little above Seorinarayan it receives the waters which its first great affluent, the Seonath, has collected from the western portion of the plain; thence flowing for some distance due E., its stream is augmented by the drainage of the hills of Uprora, Korba, and the ranges that separate Sambalpur from Chota Nagpur. At Padampur it turns towards the south, and struggling through masses of rock, flows past the town of Sambalpur to Sonpur. From Sonpur it pursues a tortuous course among ridges and rocky crags towards the range of the Eastern Ghats. This mountain line it pierces by a gorge about 40 m. in length, overlooked by forest-clad hills. Since the opening of the Bengal-Nagpur railway, the Mahanadi is little used for navigation. It pours down upon the Orissa delta at Naraj, about 7 m. west of Cuttack town; and after traversing Cuttack district from west to east, and throwing off numerous branches (the Katjori, Paika, Biropa, Chitartala, &c.) it falls into the Bay of Bengal at False Point by several channels.
The Mahanadi has an estimated drainage area of 43,800 sq. m., and its rapid flow renders its maximum discharge in time of flood second to that of no other river in India. During unusually high floods 1,500,000 cub. ft. of water pour every second through the Naraj gorge, one-half of which, uncontrolled by the elaborate embankments, and heavily laden with silt, pours over the delta, filling the swamps, inundating the rice-fields, and converting the plains into a sea. In the dry weather the discharge of the Mahanadi dwindles to 1125 cub. ft. per second. Efforts have been made to husband and utilize the vast water supply thrown upon the Orissa delta during seasons of flood. Each of the three branches into which the parent stream splits at the delta head is regulated by a weir. Of the four canals which form the Orissa irrigation system, two take off from the Biropa weir, and one, with its branch, from the Mahanadi weir. On the 31st of December 1868 the government took over the whole canal works from the East Indian Irrigation Company, at a cost of £941,368. The canals thus taken over and since completed, are the high-level canal, the Kendrapara canal, the Taldanda canal and the Machgaon canal, irrigating 275,000 acres.
MAHANOY CITY, a borough of Schuylkill county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., 56 m. N.E. of Harrisburg. Pop. (1890), 11,286; (1900), 13,504, of whom 3877 were foreign-born, mostly Slavs; (1910 census) 15,936. It is served by branches of the Lehigh Valley and the Philadelphia & Reading railways. The borough is situated in the valley of Mahanoy Creek, and has an elevation of 1240 ft. above the sea; Broad Mountain (1795 ft.), a ridge extending through Schuylkill county, overlooks it on the S.E. The valley is a part of the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania, fire clay abounds in the vicinity, and the borough’s principal industries are the mining and shipping of coal, and the manufacture of shirts and foundry products. Mahanoy City, originally a part of Mahanoy township (pop. in 1910, 6256), was incorporated as a borough in 1863.
MAHAR, the name of a servile caste in the Deccan, India. Their special function, apart from that of scavenger, is to act as village watchman, as guardian of the village boundaries, and as public messenger. In some parts they are also weavers of coarse cotton cloth. In 1901 their total number in all India was just under three millions.