Event Details

CWD Maritime Power Lecture

Professor Andrew Lambert (King’s College London), 'Seapower or Sea Power: culture, identity and strategy’

In 1890, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan of the United States Navy deliberately divided the word “seapower,” derived from an ancient Greek word, into the phrase sea power. In doing so, he separated two critical concepts – the idea that states consciously chose to focus their identity on the sea, for security and economic advantage, as opposed to the narrower focus of the strategic role of naval power. Historically, great seapowers were small, agile sea-facing states that exploited the asymmetric advantage of naval power and maritime economics to leverage their security and influence though conscious policy choices. This model was shaped by the Periclean Athens, while Victorian Britain used it to dominate the global economy until the era of great powers ended. For the United States, although American military expansion had created a vast continental empire with an immense internal market, Mahan recognised in 1890 that the United States was not a seapower. As highlighted in Mahan’s six elements of sea power, his country needed an oceanic battlefleet to guarantee hemispheric security and support economic expansion across the Pacific. This sea power model was adopted by the United States and other continental military powers, most notably Germany, Russia and Japan – empires with no interest in shaping maritime identities or inclusive governments. Today, the United States remains the world’s naval hegemon. Its only challenger is the People’s Republic of China – which is neither a political nor cultural seapower.

Professor Andrew Lambert is the Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King's College. After completing research in the Department he taught at Bristol Polytechnic,(now the University of West of England), the Royal Naval Staff College, Greenwich, and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and also Director of the Laughton Naval Unit housed in the Department. In 2020 he was made a Fellow of Kings College London (FKC).

His work focuses on the naval and strategic history of the British Empire between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War, and the early development of naval historical writing. His work has addressed a range of issues, including technology, policy-making, regional security, deterrence, historiography, crisis-management and conflict. He received the 2014 Anderson Medal for The Challenge: Britain against America in the Naval War of 1812.