The Pacific and U.S. Sea Power

Drawing on extensive and impressive archival work and a good grasp of relevant literature, Thomas Jamison, Assistant Professor of Strategic Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School, puts the Pacific far more central in the development of American naval power than existing analyses that focus on Atlantic and Caribbean dimensions. The process of naval buildup is considered in terms of rivalries in the Pacific and an argument that the Americans were responding to the development and modernisation of other navies from Japan and China to Peru and Chile. In doing so there is a question of contemporary perception. Jamison’s argument that the reinvention of the navy in the 1880s and 1890s was a reaction to wars in the Pacific, notably between Chile and Peru, and between China and Japan, rather than preparation for imperialism, rests in large part on contemporary commentators' weaponisation of a sense of fear that Jamison explicitly compares to current anxiety about China. Concern about Peru and Chile reflected in part protecting American round-the-Cape trade from possible insult and may have been affected by the racism of not letting allegedly primitive Latins look stronger than America. As argued by Edward Rhodes, this buildup also served industrial interests, notably Pennsylvania shipyards and steelworks. If they were linked to politicians and commentators keen not only to present America as a great power but also as able to take a central role in global power politics, that should not lead to an underplaying of anxiety. Thus, Jamison emphasises rivalry with Chile and argues that as that lessened so concern about Japan increased. America was not alone in its worries about Chile. The success of the latter over that of Peru in the War of the Pacific of 1879–83 led to a transformation in the Argentine navy, with a considerable expansion in ship numbers from 1880, although in 1902, part of the British arbitration that settled the Argentine-Chile boundary dispute included a naval disarmament agreement. Internal politics repeatedly played a role. Thus, in Chile in 1890–1, the army backed the President, and the navy, eventually victorious, the Congress.

In part, there is the question of what is meant by “the Pacific”. It has a unity in rhetorical terms, but there is no real equivalent to, say, the Black Sea. The Pacific is the closest to the world ocean, far larger than the Atlantic which, itself, in strategic terms is usually divided most clearly into the Southern and the Northern Atlantic, but, also, with clear usage of North Western (or “American Atlantic”), and North Eastern; and with the need to understand the separate significance of what could be termed the Central Atlantic, that linking West Africa, the Caribbean and North-East Brazil.

So, even more, with the Pacific. Jamison is very good on the impact of technology. However, the move from sail to steam while, by the late-nineteenth century, significant to the speed and reliability of maritime travel (provided coaling was available), was not a simple banisher of the constraints of distance. This was particularly the case with the Pacific, which, in fact, comprised a number of strategic spaces. From the perspective of Jamison’s book, the most significant were Latin American waters and the China Station. Those of course scarcely encompassed the vast distances of the South-West Pacific into which America moved with its commitment to Samoa, nor the earlier extension in the late 1860s into Alaskan waters in the North-East Atlantic that had flourished from the expansionism of the 1840s. These distances and spaces were turned into strategic geography not only by the (changing) ambitions and imaginations of America (itself an aggregating term), but also by the actions of others.

Here, Jamison could have made more of the major Pacific players of the 1780s–1820s, all of whom were “external”, for a key element of Pacific maritime history was the long-term failure of the ambitions of indigenous powers, notably Hawai’i, but with the conspicuous exception of Japan. “External”, however, might not describe Pacific powers present since the sixteenth (Spain) and seventeenth (Russia) centuries, although it does capture the presence of Britain from the 1760s following the short-term capture of Manila in 1762.

The American presence tends to be active in standard accounts, from California in 1846 to Perry in Japan in 1853, from Alaska in 1867 to Dewey at Manila in 1898. Yet, as Jamison shows, reaction is an element. Crucially, Russia did not maintain a presence in the North East Pacific or indeed develop earlier interest in the Hawai’ian archipelago. Jamison does not really engage with Russia which is a pity as the earlier prospect of Russian power spreading southward from Alaska had certainly troubled both Britain and Spain. So also with the British willingness to pull back from confrontation, whether over Oregon and California, or the Pig War, the Alaska border and Hawai’i. American Pacific navalism ultimately rested on this forbearance and, indeed, support, as with the British wanting America rather than Germany in the Philippines and, later, with the coaling of the Great White Fleet. Earlier, in 1898, to ensure supplies, Dewey had purchased British merchant colliers for his Philippine campaign. As such, America’s naval rise in the Pacific came, as for Japan, with British acceptance, indeed support. Russia, which founded Vladivostok in 1860, and with which Britain was at war or apparently close to war in 1854–56, 1878, 1885 and 1898, was the main issue for Britain in the Pacific. Indeed, in 1885, the Anglo-Russian Penjdeh crisis over Afghanistan saw British anxiety about a possible Russian naval attack on Sydney and a British plan for an attack on Vladivostok. Russia appeared an even greater threat when it built bases at Darien and Port Arthur on the Liaotung Peninsula which were leased to them by China. Furthermore, the Franco-Russian alliance of the 1890s increased British anxiety about the latter.

In the event, America, prior to 1898, gained nothing in the North-West Pacific and little in the South-West or South-East, while the North-East is essentially empty of islands. This provides a perspective to which Jamison’s work contributes greatly. Hopefully, he can be persuaded to write a general study of Pacific naval geopolitics from 1850.

In the meantime, this is a valuable account, one that has much to offer not only scholars of American great power development but also those interested in technological developments, navies and strategies in the late nineteenth century. The argument about the justification of naval investment in response to security concerns and prestige considerations is of course also all-too-relevant today.

Note: This review originally appeared on July 7, 2025, on the New Diplomatic History website, https://newdiplomatichistory.org, and is used by the kind permission of Prof. Black and the editors.

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Our Reviewer: Jeremy Black, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Exeter, is a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of an impressive number of works in history and international affairs, frequently demonstrating unique interactions and trends among events, including The Great War and the Making of the Modern World, Combined Operations: A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare, and The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon. He has previously reviewed The Boundless Sea, On a Knife Edge. How Germany Lost the First World War, Meat Grinder: The Battles for the Rzhev Salient, Military History for the Modern Strategist, Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions, Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare, Sing As We Go: Britain Between the Wars, Maritime Power and the Power of Money in Louis XIV’s France, Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe, Why War?, Seapower in the Post-Modern World, Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions, Augustus the Strong, Military History for the Modern Strategist, The Great Siege of Malta, Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation, Superpower Britain, Josephine Baker’s Secret War, Captives and Companions. A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World, and War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why.

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Note: The Pacific’s New Navies is also available in hardcover & e-editions.

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