sea-power
1. A nation or state having international power or influence on sea. Cf. power n.1 6 b.
| 1849 Grote Greece ii. xxxix. V. 67 The conversion of Athens from a land-power into a sea-power. 1890 Mahan Infl. Sea-power Hist. 225 Before that war [of the Spanish succession] England was one of the sea powers; after it she was the sea power, without any second. 1906 W. M. Ramsay in Expositor Apr. 365 Tarsus..became a harbour and a sea power. |
2. The strength and efficiency of a nation (or of nations generally) for maritime warfare.
The currency of the term in its more abstract use is due to Captain A. T. Mahan's book, Influence of Sea-power on History (1890). In a letter of 19 Feb. 1897, printed in E. Marston, After Work (1904) 257, Capt. Mahan states that the combination was deliberately adopted by him ‘in order to compel attention’.
| 1883 Sir J. R. Seeley Expansion Eng. 89 Commerce..was swept out of the Mediterranean by the besom of the Turkish sea-power. 1885 Encycl. Brit. XVIII. 574/1 Themistocles..the founder of the Attic sea-power. 1902 Sir C. Bridge in Encycl. Brit. XXXII. 493/1 In the first and greatest of the contests waged by the nations of the East against Europe—the Persian wars—sea-power was the governing factor. |