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| Alfred Thayer Mahan (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Akhilesh Pillalamarri
Asians’ perceptions of seapower have changed over time, but not as much as you’d think.
The 21st century is witnessing a relatively new development in history: the rise of Asian blue-water navies and naval strategy. While Japan and the Ottoman Empire did develop a strategic sense of oceanic power in the 19th century, the rest of Asia is now beginning to catch up, as countries without much of a naval tradition such as India, China, and Iran have begun to understand that sea power is key to national influence, as Alfred T. Mahan pointed out.
This is not an argument that Asian states have no historical connection to the sea. Quite to the contrary, states in China, India, and elsewhere have long histories of oceanic trade, shipbuilding, and naval battles. The 11th century conquest of the Chola Empire, 15th century voyages of the Ming Dynasty admiral Zheng He, or the 18th century exploits of the Maratha naval commander Kanhoji Angre are proof enough of a historical Asian involvement with the ocean. Asian powers also fought many naval battles in pre-modern times.
What really separates pre-modern from contemporary Asian views on the ocean is that prior to modern times, the sea itself was not viewed as a strategic space, to be controlled, like land. Instead, it was a conduit for ships that traded, ferried troops, or pirated. Blockades were few and far. As William J. Bernstein points out in his book A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, prior to the arrival of Europeans in the Indian Ocean, “none of [the Asian] nations projected naval power over the high seas….as long as merchants paid customs, provided local sultans with gifts, and kept pirates at bay, the Indian Ocean was, more or less, a mare liberum. The idea that any nation might seek to control all maritime traffic would have struck merchants and rulers alike as ludicrous.” We know this idea today as freedom of navigation, which is in many ways, the default pattern across Asia.
Read the full story at The Diplomat