Even in its present form the term is not of very recent date.
Grote [2] speaks of 'the conversion of Athens from a land-power
into a sea-power.' In a lecture published in 1883, but probably
delivered earlier, the late Sir J. R. Seeley says that 'commerce
was swept out of the Mediterranean by the besom of the Turkish
sea-power.'[3] The term also occurs in vol. xviii. of the
'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' published in 1885. At p. 574 of that
volume (art. Persia) we are told that Themistocles was 'the founder
of the Attic sea-power.' The sense in which the term is used differs
in these extracts. In the first it means what we generally call
a 'naval power'--that is to say, a state having a considerable
navy in contradistinction to a 'military power,' a state with a
considerable army but only a relatively small navy. In the last
two extracts it means all the elements of the naval strength
of the state referred to; and this is the meaning that is now
generally, and is likely to be exclusively, attached to the term
owing to the brilliant way in which it has been elucidated by
Captain A. T. Mahan of the United States Navy in a series of
remarkable works.[4] The double use of the term is common in
German, though in that language both parts of the compound now
in use are Teutonic. One instance out of many may be cited from
the historian Adolf Holm.[5] He says[6] that Athens, being in
possession of a good naval port, could become '_eine_bedeutende_
_Seemacht_,' i.
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