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The Context of Mahan's 'Debatable Zone'

William D. Walters, Jr. Professor

Department of Geography and Geology Illinois State Un iversity Normal, Illinois 61 790-4400

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ABSTRACT

At the turn of the 19th century Ameri ­can naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840- 1914) developed a concept which he called the "Debatable Zone" . This was a wide arc stretching from Turkey to China which Mahan argued was the key to future world development. Mahan's Debatable Zone has become the best known Ameri­can contribution to early geopolitical thinking, and is often seen as one of the roots of Mackinder's heartland theory. However, Mahan's ideas can be better un­derstood in the context of popular writing on Asia at the time. Although he had the ear of key American political figures, they often rejected Mahan's views on Asia. Moreover, after developing the idea ofthe Debatable Zone, Mahan immediately abandoned the concept. This abandon­ment may have been because changing events had ceased to make it useful in pro­moting his real interest, increased Amer­ican naval strength .

KEY WORDS: Alfred T. Mahan, Debatable Zone, geopolitics, Asia , Russia.

MAHAN AND HIS WRITING

One who ventures to deal with any as­pect of the thinking of Alfred Thayer Ma­han (1840-1914) must do so with a certain amount of trepidation . The literature on Mahan's thinking is enormous and rap­idly expanding . Moreover, as several au­t horities have pointed out, Mahan's ideas, especially his more journalistic efforts, were strongly influenced by events at the time of his writing. Mahan's thinking changed considerably over time. This is particulary true of the years between 1900 and 1914, when Mahan the naval historian was slowly, and perhaps reluc­tantly, giving way to Mahan the journalist. In particular, great caution should be ex­ercised when trying to reconstruct a uni­fied world vision by mixing arguments f rom his early and late writings. This problem has been compounded because after his death Mahan's writings from the immediate World War One period were paraphrased, or selectively quoted, and used to warn Americans about the dan­gers of German and Japanese expansion .

Yet, there are compelling reasons for revisiting Mahan's writings. Recent years have seen an explosion of new writing on geopolitics and, while the authors often disagree with one another, there seems to be a general consensus that the ideas of those early twentieth century writers who set out to find global spatial patterns in historical events deserve to be reexam­ined. Professional geographers have gen­erally been critical of all such geopolitical writers. Geariod O'Tuathail had recently dismissed Mahan's geopolitical writings as superficial 'potboilers' and has con­demned this and all similar work as " Car­tesian perspectivalism." Still, he finds their work important enough to devote a substantial portion of his book to discuss­ing their shortcomings (O'Thuathail , 1996, p. 37-43). Part of the reason for this attention may be that beyond the narrow realms of academic geography geopoli­cal ideas have flourished . In 1997 Harvard diplomatic historian John P. DeLanne published The Russian Empire and the World, 1700- 1917, an analysis of Russian foreign policy which has as its stated goal the creation of a "geopolitical model " based, among others, on the works of Mahan and Mackinder (DeLanne, 1997). In the same year former American Na­tional Security Advisor Zvigniew Brezin­ski's The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives which, although does not acknowledge Mahan, is equally an explicit revival of many of Mackinder's geopolitical ideas (Brezinski , 1997). Many recent books and articles had added to the flood ofthinking on geopolitics (Agnew, 1998; Murphy, 1997; Robertson, 1996). Charles Clover has recently called public attention to the revival of geopolitical writing in Russia and to its particular focus on Asia (Clover, 1999). Probably never before, even dur­ing the 1940s attacks on German theo­rists, has early geopolitical writing at­tracted so much scholarly attention .

Two areas of Mahan's thought have passed into the cannon of political geog­raphy: his thoughts on the geographical factors influencing naval power which come from his 1890 and 1892 books on the influence of seapower on history (Ma-

han, 1890 and 1892) and his 1900 ideas about the Debatable Zone (Mahan, 1900a; Mahan, 1900b; Mahan, 1900c). It is the second ofthese ideas which is the subject of this paper. In following Mahan's think­ing it must always be remembered that Mahan was not a geographer who re­garded what we would now call geopoli­tics as the end product of intellectual analysis; he was a naval historian who sought to use geography (much as he used race) in an attempt to understand worldwide patterns of sea power. Indeed, there is no clean evidence in Mahan's published correspondence or in numer­ous writings that he had read any of the geographers whose names are today most closely associated with geopolitics.

This Debatable Zone is of particular interest to geographers, because it has been seen as one of the possible roots of Halford Mackinder's Heartland thesis (Blouet, 1987, p. 116-122; Lowe, 1981, p. 12- 13, p. 34-35, p. 43-48). In particular, the thoughts which follow seek to view the Debatable Zone in its proper turn-of­the-century intellectual and journalistic context. It is important to remember that the ideas published in book form as The Problem of Asia were originally written for popular journals ratherthan academic publications. The context in which they appeared is extremely important because it is directly related to a broader intellec­tual question, " why after developing the idea of the Debatable Zone in his two 1900 essays, and after receiving consid­erable praise for these ideas, did Mahan show no further interest in the idea of the Debatable Zone? "

THE ORIGINS OF THE PROBLEM OF ASIA

Alfred Thayer Mahan (Fig . 1) was a product of his time and class. Most of his life was spent in the company of profes­sional military officers. He was born in 1840, the oldest of six children of West Point engineering instructor Dennis Hart Mahan. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1859. He then served intermittently at sea and taught at the newly established Naval War College. In 1890, he publ ished The

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FIGURE 1. Alfred Thayer Mahan. Cour­tesy of United States Naval Institute.

Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (Mahan, 1890). The book brought him international fame, substan­tial income, and contact with important political and literary figures. Since its publication the work has been the subject of intense and continuing scholarly de­bate and it remains mandatory reading for anyone interested in sea power. By 1900, when Mahan introduced the con­cept of the Debatable Zone, he was re­tired from the navy and devoting much of his time to writing.

Mahan had close connections with a number of important and powerful men, particularly with northeastern Republi ­cans like Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, from Massachusetts, and a dominant fig­ure in American foreign policy. The most salient fact of this foreign policy during the years when Mahan was writing was the increasing involvement of the United States in world affairs and the rise of the United States from a position of obscurity to a force of world importance. In under-

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standing his ideas, it is also important to remember that Mahan was a child of the Northeast, born in New York and living in metropolitan New York City at the time the concept of the Debatable Zone was developed. The Northeast, which re­ceived the great bulk of contracts for new naval construction, tended to look favor­ably on America's international involve­ment, while the American South and the Interior remained more inward looking. The journals in which Mahan published were actively devoted to increased Amer­ican overseas involvement. One author, for example, has described the North American Review, which published one of Mahan's essays, as "Northeastern in character" (Schluter, 1995, p. 113).

Still, great caution must be exercised when trying to simplify 19th century American international politics. Whi le Mahan's views, with one major exception which will be discussed later, were gen­erally those of well-educated, expansion­minded Yankee elites and were far from opinions traditionally held in the United States. Mahan was a reformer and his politics voiced strident demands for a change in the status quo. When discuss­ing British politics of this period John A. Hutcheson has reminded us that "The right was as dissatisfied with the status quo as the left and had its own sugges­tions for dealing with it" (Hutchenson, 1989, preface XIV). He further reminds us that the British Right was as divided and as complex as the British Left. Certainly this is also true of the United States. Even the big-navy pro-expansionist wing ofthe American Republican party, with which Mahan was strongly associated, was strikingly divided. Beyond the general principal a larger fleet and a more active role in world politics, their disagreements were profound. In spite of their amiable relations, Mahan was frequently at odds with even Lodge and Theodore Roose­velt, and nowhere was this more evident than on the question of Asia.

Mahan's idea of the Debatable Zone appeared in an article with the title "The Problem of Asia" which was published in Harper's magazine in three parts, March, April and May of 1900 (Mahan, 1900a). It

was followed by a shorter sequel, "The Effect of Asiatic Conditions Upon World Politics " which was published in North American Review, in November 1900 (Mahan, 1900b). In the following year these two articles were reprinted, to­gether with a much shorter article "The Merits of the Transvaal Dispute" which had appeared in North American Review in March 1900 and in a book called The Problem of Asia (Mahan, 1900c). To avoid confusion, and because the book is much more accessible, all citations which fol­low are from the articles as published in book form.

The excellence of Mahan's political connections are illustrated by events at the time as he was working on these two articles. It was when Mahan was writing these articles that he first met his long­time admirer, Theodore Roosevelt. The correspondence between the two men just before and after this meeting has been published and it sheds light on their relationship. On January 17, 1900, Roo­sevelt wrote to Mahan saying that his sis­ter, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, was going to ask Mahan to lunch at 1 :00 at her home at 422 Madison Avenue, in New York City. "Do come!" wrote Roosevelt. "I shall be so glad to see you." On March 12, 1901 Mahan responded to Roosevelt, "I hope you may read-but don't ask to know whether you do-my Problem of Asia. It ought to be, and I intend it shall be, my swan's [sic.] song on contemporary poli­tics." Roosevelt replied, thanking him cordially for the book, and remarking that he knew most of the chapters, having read them "as magazine artic les." (Turk, 1987, p. 130).

Indeed, Roosevelt had been impressed by Mahan's thoughts on Asia. Rooseve lt sent a letter to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who had once been an editor of Harper's, and told Lodge that "Mahan has a really noble article in Harper's Monthly" (Lodge and Redmond, 1971, p. 1:274). However, it should also be noted, as John Turk has demonstrated at length, that Roosevelt's admiration for Mahan's writ­ing did not mean that he agreed with all of his ideas (Turk, 1987). The future pres­ident frequently took issue with Mahan's

arguments, and this was especially true of some of Mahan's ideas on Asia that Roosevelt feared might distract readers from more important areas closer to the United States. Still , it is clear that Mahan had the ear of important people and en­joyed what James Fetzer has called "enormous public prestige" (Fetzer, 1994, p. 11). Unlike the writings of many other geopolitical writers, there is no doubt that Mahan's ideas on the Debatable Zone were read and actively considered by men with the power to make foreign pol ­icy decisions.

THE DEBATABLE ZONE HYPOTHESIS

Why was it that Mahan had written these two articles? In the preface to the book version of Problem of Asia (Mahan, 1900c) he addresses this question. He tells readers that he has become con­vinced "The onward movement of the world is largely determined, both in rate and in direction, by geographical and physical conditions." He goes on to ex­plain, "Add to them racial characteristics and we probably have the chief constitu­ents of the raw material, which, under varying impulses from within and with ­out, is gradually worked up into history" (Mahan, 1900c, preface, V) . He wrote that incidents may appear chaotic and may at first perplex the inquirer butthey are gov­erned by "determinative conditions." The Problem of Asia had as one of its major aims the selection and exposition ofthese permanent features. Certainly, Mahan makes it clear that he is trying to draw lessons from history. However, he is also attempting to write a predictive state­ment based on what he believes are reoc­curring geographically based conditions.

The outlines of this predictive state­ment are straightforward. Mahan be­lieved that extending across Asia , be­tween 30 and 40° North Latitude, and including, "the most decisive natural fea­tures", [lay a] "debatable and debated ground." North and south ofthis zone po­litical conditions were relatively, but not absolutely, fixed. Within this zone there was a kind of polarity; while the zone's long axis extended east and west, move­ment in the zone was north and south . In

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fNDlAN

PACfFlC OCEAN

FIGURE 2. Mahan's Debatable Zone (Source: Mahan, 1900a, p. 22)

contrast to settled conditions elsewhere in the world, there " is assurance" that there will continue to be movement along this zone until an equilibrium is reached. What Mahan called "forces of northward and southward impulses" constituted the primary dynamic of the Debatable Zone and the zone was constantly "in a process of change already initiated and still con­tinuing." (Mahan, 1900c, p. 14).

Later works have published maps showing Mahan's Debatable Zone but while these maps are generally an accu­rate reflection of Mahan's ideas, they do not appear with the original text. The Harper's article did include a general "Or­ographical " map of Asia showing many of the places mentioned in the text (Ma­han, 1900a, p. 759), but the zone per se was not shown. Even this map was ex­cluded from the book version of The Problem of Asia (Mahan, 1900c). In so far as can be determined, no map showing Mahan's Debatable Zone was published until after his death.

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THE CONTEXT OF MAHAN'S DEBATABLE ZONE

Mahan wrote at the zenith of an im­passioned epoch. To move from popular considerations of race, power and terri ­tory in 1850 to similar considerations in 1900 is like moving from a Sunday tele­vision talk show into the center of a bar­room brawl. The language is strident, the rhetoric pugnacious, and the participants repeatedly stress the need for urgent ac­tion . Violence occupies center stage and the most repeated word is survival. The journalistic world of 1900 is a place where serious and talented scholars could, for example, write without blushing of a Saxon Race, a Teutonic Race, or a Slavic Race. Writers could accept a matter of in­disputable fact somehow these "races" were inevitably and uncontrollably pre­destined, in various combinations, totake part in a titanic struggle with each other for domination of the world.

Mahan's Debatable Zone emerged in a

world of clinched journalistic fists. Many readers of his prose accepted as "sci­ence" ideas like locational determinism and the use of expanding boundaries as proper indicators of unalterable national intent. American Manifest Destiny; Social Darwinism notions of human conflict were only a small part of the journalistic mix (Graebner 1968; Bannister 1979; De­gler 1991). Racial determinism, especially racial stereotypes about the supposed na­tional characteristics of Tuton, Slav, and Anglo-Saxon, were part of accepted jour­nalistic practice. In English-language press, these were supplemented by pow­erful anti-Russian sentiment. The use of such explanations, especially as they re­late to Asia, may either be seen as the groupings of serious intellectuals trying to confront problems of scientific predic­tion in a period when the tools for such prediction were very crude; or their use may be seen as the devices of propagan­dists intent primarily in advancing their own national interests.

In his essays Mahan stresses three ideas: the importance of Asia, the menace of Russia, and the use of maps to make predictive statements about future na­tional behavior. Each of these ideas were frequently found in journals where Ma­han published . For several years Harper's New Monthly Magazine had been trying to increase interest in Asia . In the Novem­ber, 1899 issue John Barrett, American minister to Siam, wrote about "the prin­cipal of expansion" which he said had dominated American life in the 19th cen­tury. He argued that in the new century this principle must be extended across the Pacific "where America 's opportuni ­ties for commerce and influence are un­rivaled by those of any other nation" (Bar­rett, 1899, p. 917).

The menace of Russia to Asia was a favorite Harper's theme. In 1898 Julian Ralph warned the magazine's readers that all intelligent Russians cherished the belief that "sooner or later they are to ab­sorb all Asia down to and including In­dia ." (Ralph, 1898, 826). In the same issue Archibald Colquhoun published an article simply called "Siberia" in which he pointed out the menace of Russia. The

following quote will give something of the flavor of his thinking. He is discussing the races of mankind . " Equally natural is it that the types should not be mutually sympathetic, and it is therefore sugges­tive of the homogeneousness of the Slav people that the rough Cossack and his gentler successor in spite of differences amounting to almost antagonism should be possessed body and soul with one ideal-Russia mistress of the world ." (Colquhourn, 1898, p. 285). Colquhoun could also write of "successive eruptions of central Asian populations have fol­lowed, some overflowing into the rich plains of China, while others sweeping north or south ofthe Caspian, poured into Europe; "it will not do for the Anglo­Saxon to plead that he has no notice of the jousts." (p. 292) . More of the same rabidly anti-Russian rhetoric followed in February, 1900, when Colquhoun pub­lished "Russia in Central Asia ." In North American Review (Colquhoun, 1900), which published "The Effect of Asiatic Conditions Upon World Politics" the sec­ond Mahan article invoking the Debatable Zone, had frequently published the ideas of authors with similar views.

Charles Denby, Jr., Secretary of the American legation in China wrote, "The Anglo-Saxon stands on the shores of the Pacific. He can not face back to Europe across three thousand miles of continent. The great barrier has become a high­way. " (Denby, 1898, p. 32). The same magazine asked a German army officer, Lt. Colonel Rogalla von Bieberstein to provide a quasi-technical assessment of Russian chances should they launch a land invasion of British India through cen­tral Asia. The article paid realistic atten­tion to the question of logistics. It con­cluded that the issue of such an action was in doubt, but it no doubt accom­plished its goal of focusing attention on the possibilities of a Russian invasion of India (von Bieberstein, 1898). Even stronger were the thoughts of Canadian minister of Justice David Mills who mixed unusually blatant racism with anti­Russian propaganda in June 1898 article called "Who Shall Rule, Saxon or Slav." concluded that the whole Pacific Ocean

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might "become a Russian lake, and her eastern frontiers would rest upon the western shores of North America. " (Mills, 1898, p. 737).

Mahan shared the common suspicion of Russia. One of his British admirers and correspondents was Leopold Maxse, owner and editor of the National Review. Maxse quoted Mahan on a number of oc­casions. (Hutcheson, 1889, p. 118-121). Mahan-Maxse links are important be­cause Maxse was a member of the "co­efficients", a small political and economic discussion group, which included, among many other notables, Halford Mackinder. However, while Maxse and Mahan agreed on many things, their views did differ sharply on what was at the crux of Mahan's Debatable Zone theory-the su­preme importance of Asia . In 1902 the two exchanged letters on the Persian Gulf. Maxse thought Germany was the great danger and Mahan argued that, on both spatial and racial grounds, Russia was the more dangerous threat. Mahan wrote that he had" a deep rooted distrust of the Slav-especially under Czardom­and a great faith in permanent conditions such as Tutonism vs [sic.] Siavism ... " (Hattendorf and Hattendorf, 1986; Mahan to Maxse 7 March 1902).

More rarely, the journals published pro-Russian sentiment, but the rhetoric is in many ways remarkably similar to the anti-Russian articles. Russia 's supporters, like the others, tied their arguments to race and to the logic of maps. In 1900, North American Review printed "Great Britain on the Warpath," (Holmstream and Ookhtomsky, 1900). They argued that British diplomacy and British military power were part of a vast preconceived scheme for world power. The authors went on, 'Study the maps'! Such was the advice tendered to his countrymen by Lord Salisbury in one of his speeches. 'Study the maps,' will I say to the great public in general, if you wish to form a correct idea of the English designs. By southern ways Great Britain is creeping north, making the English pressure irre­sistible." (Holmstream and Ookhotom­sky, 1900, p. 136). The authors accused Britain of masterminding an anti-Russian

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publicity campaign. Map study bolstered the cases of many other turn-of-the­century authors. The year after Mahan's, "The Problem of Asia" appeared, Col ­quhoun's book Russia Against India, was published (Colquhoun, 1901). Colquhoun, like Mahan, was a contributor to Harper's (Colquhoun, 1899b) and both in his anti­Russian views and in his geographical de­terminism may have influenced Mahan's writing . "When we take a birds-eye view of the progress of Russia since the time of Peter the Great, when we look at the maps of Russia then and now-or even maps of 60 years ago, we may not feel so certain of security even in our own times." (Colquhoun, 1899, p. iv-ix, p. 1-3) . Like Mahan at this time, he saw a world where Slav and Latin would inevi­tably align themselves against Teuton and Anglo Saxon. At the start of his "China in Transformation" he quotes Vic­tor Cousin, "Tell me the Geography of a country and I will tell you its future " (Colquhoun, 1899a, p. 3) .

Mahan understood that maps could easily make Russia seem a natural en­emy. He writes that, "Upon a glance atthe map one enormous fact immediately ob­trudes itself upon the attention-the vast, uninterrupted mass of the Russian Em­pire .. . " (Mahan, 1900c, p. 24). Writers complaining of Russian designs on Asia had a long standing feature of British journalism. However, this fear was al­ways balanced by a good deal of writing which ridiculed the notion of Russian de­scent from the north. Joseph Hume re­marked in Parliament in 1836 that the gentlemen in Whitehall and Downing Street "had talked so much about Russia, that they were afraid of the monster they had created." (Graham, 1965, p. 89).

MAHAN'S PARTICULAR VIEW OF THE RUSSIAN THREAT

It is not surprising, therefore, that Ma­han should use the themes of the impor­tance of Asia, the Russian threat, or that he used maps as indicators of evidence of national policy. What is interesting is the curious twist which Mahan puts on this thesis. To Mahan, the Russian threat is not spatially uniform: "Russia, in obe-

dience to natural law and race instinct, is working, geographically, to the south­ward in Asia, by both flanks, her centre covered by the mountains of Afghanistan and the deserts of Turkistan and Mongo­lia" (Mahan, 1900c, p. 26) . In other words, the Indian part of the Debatable Zone were presently stable. Mahan wrote that Russia's push to the sea would most likely be directed at the flanks of the Debatable Zone "on the east by the Chinese sea­board; on the west in two directions, viz. , to the Persian Gulf by way of Persia, and to the Mediterranean, from the Black Sea, or through Asia Minor" (Mahan, 1900c, p. 56). This was of course an extension of Mahan's land power vs. seapower con­flict, " the land power will try to reach the sea and to utilize it for its own ends, while the sea power must obtain support on land, through the motives it can bring to bear on its inhabitants." (Mahan, 1 900c, p. 63). What stood in the way of Russian expansion along both flanks of the zone were the Teutonic nations-Germany, Great Britain, along with the United States.

Mahan did not just see the threat of Russia as asymmetrical, stronger on the flanks than in the center; he viewed the southeastern flank as much more ex­posed than the southwestern flank. To Mahan, the Near Eastern flank of the De­batable Zone was primarily the respon­sibility of others, the British forces that dominated the Mediterranean. Because the Suez Canal offered a much more via­ble route to the Indian Ocean than did the Persian Gulf, the British were in a strong position to counter any Russian pressure in the direction of Africa or the Persian Gulf. It was the Chinese part of the De­batable Zone which was exposed and which was likely to be threatened in the near future . Mahan argued that Russia would be most likely to move in the di­rection of China, "Thus here again by in­evitable operation of a line of least resis­tance, we find on the eastern flank of the debatable zone, as on the western, the clustering of nationalities, the gathering of eagles, around a central interest . . . " (Mahan, 1900c, p. 120). Moreover, as Ma­han mentioned in his Harper's essay and

expanded greatly in the North American Review, the following November, the ex­istence of the navigable Yangtze river in­creased the importance of China. "The valley of the Yang-tze is clearly indicated as the central scene of our general inter­est" (Mahan, 1900c, p. 176).

In other words, Mahan argues that parts of the Debatable Zone, are unlikely areas for near-term conflict. Mahan's the­torical strategy is to identify a threat, then to focus that threat, and finally to suggest the need for an American response to the threat. The stable protected flanks of the Debatable Zone serve to focus the threat. There are other stable zones in the Ma­hanian world of 1900. Europe and North America were such areas. "Within the home dominions of the European and American powers no marked territorial changes are to be expected" (Mahan, 1900c, p. 131). Here, it is extremely impor­tant to separate what Mahan said in 1900 and what he wrote in later years when commenting on the growing problems in Europe. In many respects the argument for unthreatened parts of the Debatable Zone are the key to Mahan's thinking.

MAHAN'S ABANDONMENT OF THE DEBATABLE ZONE

One of the most interesting aspects of Mahan's Debatable Zone is the rapidity with which he abandoned the idea. Be­tween 1900 and his death in 1914 he wrote frequently about world problems. After 1900, these writings were increas­ingly focused on Europe. However, Ma­han never attempted to place these Eu­ropean problems in the context of a worldwide geopolitical scheme. Indeed, after 1900 he never again mentioned De­batable Zone in his writings.

Why the sudden abandonment of the naval writer's geographical stepchild? The most likely explanation is that the De­batable Zone was never seen by Mahan as more than an expedient tool, a lever to be discarded when the afternoon's work was done. Mahan's view was that of the shark, and his interests were never really focused on the tiger's world of interior land masses. In 1 gOO the Russian threat to Asia must have seemed a useful way

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to confront the American people with a challenge which could be met with greater naval strength . Because of the overwhelming strength of the Royal Navy, the world of 1900 was short of such challenges. Therefore Mahan first raised the Russian threat, and then minimized that threat in all areas except China where British naval strength was weakest. He could then argue for a powerful American presence on the western rim ofthe Pacific and in the Yangtze valley. Mahan in 1900 needed a Russian threat, but he needed that threat to be spatially concentrated. Hence the Debatable Zone.

This also suggests why Mahan aban­doned the idea of a Debatable Zone so soon after its development. After the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Rus­sian threats to China and the Near East became much less credible. After 1900 there was also a great increase in Japa­nese and German naval strength and this gave Mahan alternate journalistic de­mons which he could present to the American people as reasons for a stronger navy. This is not to suggest that Mahan was disingenuous, or intellectu­ally dishonest when he proposed the De­batable Zone. Nor does it mean that he did not genuinely fear a Russian advance in Asia. It does suggest that the Debatable Zone hypothesis was never central to Ma­han's thinking and that it lost what im­portance it once had because it could no longer be used as a goad to drive Amer­ican opinion in the direction of a more powerful fleet.

Therefore, when trying to understand Mahan's Debatable Zone, it is particularly important that today's readers under­stand the context in which it was written. It was not the product of a writer whose primary interest was worldwide spatial patterns, but the by-product of a genera­tion of writers who saw maps as impor­tant tools of journalistic persuasion and who were willing to find in maps expres­sions of long-term national intent. Mahan used the inevitability of conflict in ways that today make us uncomfortable and race in ways which we today find unac­ceptable, but he used these ideas in ways which would have seemed quite normal

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to his readers. Our rejection of many of Mahan's techniques of analysis is, how­ever, unrelated to the understanding of the lasting influence of his thinking. Ma­han made a case for the importance of Asia and, thanks to his personal prestige, was able to set that case before important people. The fact that today Mahan's think­ing remains the subject of vigorous schol­arly discussion, suggests that the notion of the Debatable Zone deserves to be more clearly understood.

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