Mahan argued that in the Anglo-French wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, domination of the sea was the deciding factor in the outcome, and therefore control of seaborne commerce was critical to military victory.
12.
Ishmael, surveying the clustered masts around the harbor, was contemplating the old economy of seaborne commerce that made New York, even then, a center of world trade . ( Melville, ever the prophet, also created, in Bartleby the Scrivener, the prototype of the alienated office worker belonging to a newer economic order .)
