Mahan wrote for a US Navy that had contracted from nearly six hundred Civil War vessels to a deployable force of about fifty-two ships. That navy was not organized to fight a major fleet action, while the country remained focused on continental expansion and protected its economy with high tariffs. In 1890, the year The Influence of Sea Power upon History appeared, the census no longer classified an American frontier and the Wounded Knee massacre marked the violent close of an expansionist era. Mahan's call for the United States to look outward joined arguments for overseas trade, fleet construction, and a new international role. Armstrong places these ideas among the contributions to the country's movement toward the 1898 war with Spain and an overseas imperial phase.
Notable Point · 42:37-46:50
The continental United States that Mahan asked to look outward
Mahan's emphasis on fleets and decisive battle answered the needs of a small post-Civil War navy and a country reaching the end of its continental frontier.