The Neptune Factor - Nicholas A. Lambert

Winner of the 2024 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval LiteratureThe Neptune Factor is the biography of an idea—the concept of “Sea Power,” a term first coined by Capt. A.T. Mahan and the core thread of his life’s work.  His central argument was that the outcome of rivalries on the seas have decisively shaped the course of modern history.  Although Mahan’s scholarship has long been seen as foundational to all systematic study of naval power, Neptune Factor is the first attempt to explain how Mahan’s definition of sea power shifted over time.    Far from presenting sea power in terms of combat, as often thought, Mahan conceptualized it in terms of economics.  Proceeding from the conviction that international trade carried across the world’s oceans was the single greatest driver of national wealth (and thus power) in history, Mahan explained sea power in terms of regulating access to ‘the common’ and influencing the flows of trans-oceanic trade.  A nation possessing sea power could not only safeguard its own trade and that of its allies but might also endeavor to deny access to the common to its enemies and competitors.    A pioneering student of what is now referred to as the first era of globalization, lasting from the late nineteenth century until the First World War, Mahan also identified the growing dependence of national economies upon uninterrupted access to an interconnected global trading system.  Put simply, access to ‘the common’
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