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293 Josep Baqués Quesada Fundamental lessons in the work of Mahan: from… or British ships doing the same with metals of Brazilian origin. That enterprise was to constitute the premise of the constant reinforcement of their navies. The final result of all this was a transfer of income between powers, a circumstance that some historians describe in a clear, respectful manner42, but Mahan, for his part, in a somewhat more sarcastic manner43. In his opinion, France was at an intermediate point between Iberian logic, more aligned with extractive tendencies, and the bourgeois free-market drive, typical of the Anglo-Saxon world. Louis XIV, to cite one example, freed his nobility of all reproach if involved in investing in business concerns (something frowned upon in the Old Regime). This included channelling their investments towards the shipping companies. But he continued to object to their involvement in retail trade, to avoid jeopardising their aristocratic status. So France only partially enjoyed the kind of attributes that can make a nation great, which, while it did not prevent it from competing with the United Kingdom for dominance of the seas, was not sufficient to bring about victory in that endeavour44. All this does not necessarily infer a causal relationship between the struggle for markets and the beginning of the war, although some of Mahan’s critics have tried to focus it in this way45, even suggesting that Mahan’s geopolitics were indeed deterministic, not from a geographical but from an economic perspective46. In fact, what Mahan argues is that, regardless of the causes of wars (economic, dynastic, religious, ideological or, what is very likely, a combination of these) only those achieving supremacy at sea will 42  CUENCA, José Manuel, 1973. Cuenca underlines that, throughout the seventeenth century, transactions between Spain and the other European powers «progressively transformed into a one-way current that the Spanish monarchy paid off with white metal from America» (idem: II, 20)), which did nothing but provide feedback to the problem of an obsolete model. 43  He contends that the English ended up «buying the vineyards of Oporto with Brazilian gold» (MAHAN, 2007, op. cit., p. 117), thanks to the revenue earned through its transport from America to the Old Continent. 44  Mahan is critical of France’s continental mentality and its obsession with focusing on central Europe, which he views as having been detrimental to its naval potential. It is an opinion accepted even by authors who are critical of Mahan (see Kennedy, 1988: pp. 88-90). However, it also connects entrepreneurship —including the associated risk-taking— with the military naval mind-set. That is to say, he considers that French faintheartedness when competing in the major markets suggested a parallel timidity when confronting risks on the high seas, especially when this meant being on the look-out for a combat. In justifying his claim, he quotes the observations of a French officer, Julien de la Gravière, according to whom... «our squadrons frequently left our port (...) with the intention of avoiding encounters with the enemy; if they stumbled upon them, this was already considered a stroke of bad luck, and in this vein our ships entered into combat, submitting to the wishes of the adversary, instead of forcing ours upon theirs». (MAHAN, op. cit., 2007, p. 141). 45  KENNEDY, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Unwin Hyman Ltd, London: Unwin Hyman Ltd, 1988, pp. 97-98; HOBSON, Rolf. Imperialism at Sea. Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002, p. 160. 46  ASADA, Sadao. From Mahan to Pearl Harbor. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2012. http://revista.ieee.es

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