Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind

Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind PDF Author: Peter Padfield
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
ISBN: 9781585671519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the great wars of modern history, maritime powers have always prevailed over land-based empires. This extraordinary book charts the growth of these powers in various western countries while revealing the way in which supremacy at sea freed thought and society itself. As noted historian Peter Padfield demonstrates, those nations attaining mastery at sea have been distinguished by liberty, flexibility, and enterprise, a historical lesson of burning relevance today. Maritime Supremacydetails the struggles of the first supreme maritime powers of the modern age, the Dutch and the British, and ends with the emergence of the ultimate successor, the United States world power was won. Immersing the reader in the drama of events, including riveting great sea battles, Padfield challenges our view of the evolution of today's world. "Outstanding . . . offers up naval campaigns and sea battles as vivid as any you will find in Patrick O'Brian." (John Lehman, former secretary of the US Navy, The Wall Street Journal) "[Padfield's] comprehension of the context and his natural, understandable absorption in the details are expressed in fine writing." (Stephen Howarth, Naval History)

Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind

Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind PDF Author: Peter Padfield
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
ISBN: 9781585671519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the great wars of modern history, maritime powers have always prevailed over land-based empires. This extraordinary book charts the growth of these powers in various western countries while revealing the way in which supremacy at sea freed thought and society itself. As noted historian Peter Padfield demonstrates, those nations attaining mastery at sea have been distinguished by liberty, flexibility, and enterprise, a historical lesson of burning relevance today. Maritime Supremacydetails the struggles of the first supreme maritime powers of the modern age, the Dutch and the British, and ends with the emergence of the ultimate successor, the United States world power was won. Immersing the reader in the drama of events, including riveting great sea battles, Padfield challenges our view of the evolution of today's world. "Outstanding . . . offers up naval campaigns and sea battles as vivid as any you will find in Patrick O'Brian." (John Lehman, former secretary of the US Navy, The Wall Street Journal) "[Padfield's] comprehension of the context and his natural, understandable absorption in the details are expressed in fine writing." (Stephen Howarth, Naval History)

The Boundless Sea

The Boundless Sea PDF Author: David Abulafia
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199934983
Category : Navigation
Languages : en
Pages : 1115

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Book Description
"David Abulafia's new book guides readers along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans-the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian-which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. Over time, as passage through them gradually extended and expanded, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks developed, evolving from local exploration to lines of regional communication and commerce and eventually to major arteries. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and of course people-free and enslaved-across vast expanses, transforming and ultimately linking irrevocably the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas"--

Patrick O'Brian

Patrick O'Brian PDF Author: Dean King
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453238336
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 679

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Book Description
DIVA revealing and insightful look at one of the modern world’s most acclaimed historical novelists/div DIVPatrick O’Brian was well into his seventies when the world fell in love with his greatest creation: the maritime adventures of Royal Navy Captain Jack Aubrey and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin. But despite his fame, little detail was available about the life of the reclusive author, whose mysterious past King uncovers in this groundbreaking biography./divDIV /divDIVKing traces O’Brian’s personal history, beginning as a London-born Protestant named Richard Patrick Russ, to his tortured relationship with his first wife and child, to his emergence from World War II with the entirely new identity under which he would publish twenty volumes in the Aubrey–Maturin series. What King unearths is a life no less thrilling than the seafaring world of O’Brian’s imagination./div

The Sea and Civilization

The Sea and Civilization PDF Author: Lincoln Paine
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101970359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 802

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Book Description
A monumental retelling of world history through the lens of the sea—revealing in breathtaking depth how people first came into contact with one another by ocean and river, lake and stream, and how goods, languages, religions, and entire cultures spread across and along the world’s waterways, bringing together civilizations and defining what makes us most human. The Sea and Civilization is a mesmerizing, rhapsodic narrative of maritime enterprise, from the origins of long-distance migration to the great seafaring cultures of antiquity; from Song Dynasty human-powered paddle-boats to aircraft carriers and container ships. Lincoln Paine takes the reader on an intellectual adventure casting the world in a new light, in which the sea reigns supreme. Above all, Paine makes clear how the rise and fall of civilizations can be linked to the sea. An accomplishment of both great sweep and illuminating detail, The Sea and Civilization is a stunning work of history.

Sea Power

Sea Power PDF Author: Admiral James Stavridis, USN
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735220611
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
From one of the most admired admirals of his generation—and the only admiral to serve as Supreme Allied Commander at NATO—comes a remarkable voyage through all of the world’s most important bodies of water, providing the story of naval power as a driver of human history and a crucial element in our current geopolitical path. From the time of the Greeks and the Persians clashing in the Mediterranean, sea power has determined world power. To an extent that is often underappreciated, it still does. No one understands this better than Admiral Jim Stavridis. In Sea Power, Admiral Stavridis takes us with him on a tour of the world’s oceans from the admiral’s chair, showing us how the geography of the oceans has shaped the destiny of nations, and how naval power has in a real sense made the world we live in today, and will shape the world we live in tomorrow. Not least, Sea Power is marvelous naval history, giving us fresh insight into great naval engagements from the battles of Salamis and Lepanto through to Trafalgar, the Battle of the Atlantic, and submarine conflicts of the Cold War. It is also a keen-eyed reckoning with the likely sites of our next major naval conflicts, particularly the Arctic Ocean, Eastern Mediterranean, and the South China Sea. Finally, Sea Power steps back to take a holistic view of the plagues to our oceans that are best seen that way, from piracy to pollution. When most of us look at a globe, we focus on the shape of the of the seven continents. Admiral Stavridis sees the shapes of the seven seas. After reading Sea Power, you will too. Not since Alfred Thayer Mahan’s legendary The Influence of Sea Power upon History have we had such a powerful reckoning with this vital subject.

World War II at Sea

World War II at Sea PDF Author: Craig L. Symonds
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190243686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 793

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Book Description
Author of Lincoln and His Admirals (winner of the Lincoln Prize), The Battle of Midway (Best Book of the Year, Military History Quarterly), and Operation Neptune, (winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature), Craig L. Symonds has established himself as one of the finest naval historians at work today. World War II at Sea represents his crowning achievement: a complete narrative of the naval war and all of its belligerents, on all of the world's oceans and seas, between 1939 and 1945. Opening with the 1930 London Conference, Symonds shows how any limitations on naval warfare would become irrelevant before the decade was up, as Europe erupted into conflict once more and its navies were brought to bear against each other. World War II at Sea offers a global perspective, focusing on the major engagements and personalities and revealing both their scale and their interconnection: the U-boat attack on Scapa Flow and the Battle of the Atlantic; the "miracle" evacuation from Dunkirk and the pitched battles for control of Norway fjords; Mussolini's Regia Marina-at the start of the war the fourth-largest navy in the world-and the dominance of the Kidö Butai and Japanese naval power in the Pacific; Pearl Harbor then Midway; the struggles of the Russian Navy and the scuttling of the French Fleet in Toulon in 1942; the landings in North Africa and then Normandy. Here as well are the notable naval leaders-FDR and Churchill, both self-proclaimed "Navy men," Karl Dönitz, François Darlan, Ernest King, Isoroku Yamamoto, Erich Raeder, Inigo Campioni, Louis Mountbatten, William Halsey, as well as the hundreds of thousands of seamen and officers of all nationalities whose live were imperiled and lost during the greatest naval conflicts in history, from small-scale assaults and amphibious operations to the largest armadas ever assembled. Many have argued that World War II was dominated by naval operations; few have shown and how and why this was the case. Symonds combines precision with story-telling verve, expertly illuminating not only the mechanics of large-scale warfare on (and below) the sea but offering wisdom into the nature of the war itself.

The Gulf and Inland Waters

The Gulf and Inland Waters PDF Author: Alfred Thayer Mahan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description


The Emergence of Britain's Global Naval Supremacy

The Emergence of Britain's Global Naval Supremacy PDF Author: Richard Harding
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843835800
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
Discusses the lessons which Britain learned in the war of 1739-48 which, when applied in later wars, brought about Britain's global naval supremacy.

Economic Warfare and the Sea

Economic Warfare and the Sea PDF Author: David G. Morgan-Owen
Publisher: Research in Maritime History L
ISBN: 1789621593
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
EconomicWarfare and the Sea examines the relationship between trade, maritimewarfare, and strategic thought between the early modern period and thelate-twentieth century. Using a variety of geographic and chronologicalexamples, it presents a longue duree approach to a crucial theme in maritimestrategic thought.

Edward III and the War at Sea

Edward III and the War at Sea PDF Author: Graham Cushway
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 1843836211
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
The story of the war at sea in the reign of Edward III, including the important sea battles, and an analysis of the development of the English navy in the period. This book describes naval warfare during the opening phase of the Hundred Years War, a vital period in the development of the early Royal Navy, in which Edward III's government struggled to harness English naval power in a dramatic battle for supremacy with their French and Spanish adversaries. It shows how the escalating demands of Edward's astonishing military ambitions led to an intense period of evolution in the English navy and the growth of a cultureof naval specialism and professionalism. It addresses how this in turn affected the livelihoods of England's mariners and coastal communities. The book covers in detail the most important sea battles of Edward III's reign -Sluys, Winchelsea and La Rochelle - as well as raids and naval blockades. It highlights the systems by which ships were brought into service and mariners recruited, and explores how these were resisted by mariners and coastal communities. It also tells the story of the range of personalities, heroes and villains who influenced the development of the navy in the reign of Edward III. GRAHAM CUSHWAY holds a PhD in Maritime History from the University of Exeter.