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This chapter explains the rationale for the volume, arguing that historical studies of economic warfare require greater nuance than has traditionally been afforded by an overreliance on conceptions developed by classical naval theorists such as Alfred Thayer Mahan. It presents an overview of the chapters in this collection, which are grouped around four key themes: neutrals and neutrality; the role of non-naval bureaucracies in conducting campaigns of economic warfare; the ways in which non-state actors have interacted with and taken advantage of episodes of economic warfare; and studies of economic warfare as an element in the broader grand strategy of states. The chapter concludes by offering suggestions for new approaches to understanding economic warfare and the sea. A more international approach which deconstructs the workings of the global economy promises rich rewards for new studies. Similarly, interrogating ideas about economic warfare, and the rhetoric surrounding its potency, may offer a better guide to understanding the reasons for its use in the past. Lastly, given that sea power matters chiefly in the ways in which it influences events on land, more must be done to excavate the link between action at sea and how it impinges on military operations on land.

This chapter is divided into three components: 1. A review of the (lack of) utility of the concept of grand strategy in view of the prior chapters 2. A discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of our alternative formulation which we characterize as “calibrated strategies” in an evolving strategic environment (see chapter 2) where there are proliferating demands made on the military. 3. The implications of our findings for the future of the military, particularly the Navy (as the central branch of the military services in most grand strategic theorizing). Our overall assessment is that academics have to reappraise and focus on explanation, not prescription, and that an adaptive approach is required by policymakers in recognizing contingencies rather than strategizing in terms of generalities. Naval officials, however, will seek to avoid certain kinds of MOOTW whenever possible, preferring to pursue traditional naval functions, playing “away games” in the places like the South China Sea rather than “home games” guarding America’s shores from illicit flows.

This chapter examines the place of charts and hydrographic surveying in the consolidation of a formal American empire after 1898 and the central place of environmental knowledge in the broader strategic debates concerning American empire in the post war period, 1899-1903. It follows the work of surveying vessels off Cuba and the Philippines, the emerging role of the Hydrographic Office and its leaders, and the strategic debates among officer-students at the United States Naval War College and the Navy’s top leadership in the General Board of the Navy in recognizing and debating the importance of the marine environment generally and the specific strategic features of various harbors and coastlines from the Caribbean to the Western Pacific. The chapter argues that charts, hydrographic surveying, and a larger cartographic discourse were central to the geography of American empire, particularly in projecting American sea power into the Western Pacific and the Caribbean.