(Drivebycuriosity) - History is fascinating. Among many other things we can learn how cultures rose and fell and we might be able to draw some implications for today´s world. Andrew Lambert focuses in his book "Seapower States" on 5 civilizations: Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and England/the United Kingdom (amazon ). These states have in common that they all were relatively small & weak - not really powers - but they focused on the oceans and gained wealth by controlling maritime trade, at least for a while. And "seapower states give the commercial classes a significant share in political power."
Source Of Revenue
"The volume and value of trade made the sea an attractive source of revenue. Sailing ships needed secure harbors, pushing the developments of port cities, where increased populations provided seafaring manpower for commercial and constabulary functions. Trade enable strategically located cities and states to become rich, spreading people, customs and beliefs, and reshaping regional identities. Merchants gravitated towards cities that offered the best balance between protection, taxation and political participation".
We learn about the Phoenicians: Sea trade civilised them by compelling them to settle core values and sustain them by law. As their societies became stable, they shared political power across the populace. Their military forces evolved from chaos to order, from warriors and sea raiders to citizen armies and standing navies,serving the interests of the states, not elite rulers.
The Athenians borrowed ideas and methods from Phoenicia, but heir approach took a more militarized form. Already part of a democracy, the Athenians used a sudden windfall of silver to build a war fleet, which secured their independence, before acquiring an empire to sustain their fleet. The combination of democratic policies and naval might made Athens a great sea power.
Slave-propelled Galleys
By the fifth century BC Carthage had become a huge city state, powerful at sea, where it deployed slave-propelled galleys to extract tributes from distant ports. The Carthaginian economy was monetarized in the fifth century, primarily to pay mercenary armies. As a sea state Carthage bore the imprint of many cultures: Greek and Egyptian influences distinguished Chartaginian culture from its Phoencian origins. The city grew by assimilating immigrants, and Carthagnians had no ethnic or class restrictions on intermarriage, building a new society with strong north African, Greek and Italian connections.
Carthaginian strategic culture reflected a commercial/maritime focus, a concern for stability and prosperity over conquest and territory, the combination of wealth and a weal manpower base that emphasized the need for allies and mercenaries, and above all a willingness to compromise to preserve the state.
In 146 BC Carthage and Corinth were systematically destroyed, their books and inscriptions, art and statuary ruined or removed. Carthage was wiped of the map and denied a history. Lambert explains: The Romans concluded that a virulent revolutionary center was being formed on the most northern tip of Africa, close to Sicily and to southern Italy. Roman leaders incited a suitably xenophobic Senate to declare war on a defenseless state. The object was to destroy the very name of Carthage, the physical city, the people and above all the culture that it represented. The last Punic War was the ultimate response of continental hegemony to a seapower challenge, a shattering clash of culture, land against sea, a landed aristocratic oligarchy against a populist civic assembly, military empire against merchants.
Obsessive Intelligence
We learn about Venice: The physical city began as an assembly of tiny local communities on man-made islands, connected by boats, not roads, with foot-paths unsuited for horses and wheeled traffic. In the absence of taxable land the state relied on customs dues, taxes on salt and wine. Venice endured because it adopted an inclusive, oligarchic political structure, relying on elections, checks and balances top secure the Republic against dynastic rule and dramatic shift of policy. Unique among Italian republics, Venetian government was dominated by a powerful and highly legalistic structure.
The head of the state, the Doge, was elected by fellow aristocrats, and from the tenth century his powers were strictly limited.....Venice´s empire "was settled by the logistic of conducting trade with the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea in galleys. These small manpower-intensive vessels needed frequent stops at secure ports, no more than two days apart by oar, to refresh their crews"
"When two major powers collided the Venetians would support whichever was least likely to damage their commerce or provide the most lucrative trade privileges". "Banking system evolved to support costly voyages, while bills of exchange eased the movement of fund".
"The Venetians had long known the importance of recovering information and keeping secrets. Secrecy and obsessive intelligence gathering became defining characteristics of Venice, essential tools for a seapower state facing far larger foes".
Primus Inter Pares
We learn about the Dutch seapower: "In the republic, Amsterdam was primus inter pares, not a hegemonic city comparable to Athens, Carthage or Venice, cities that dictate the politics, economics and culture of the state. In the Dutch case a struggle identity pitted a seapower proto-city-state against agricultural provinces that had no interest in the ocean".
Lambert writes about the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), known as the Dutch East India Company, "which was rapidly evolving into a territorial empire in Asia. Although independent of national government the company was controlled by the men who dominated national politics. The VOC had been built by war, driving the Portuguese out of Asia and dominating the Indian Ocean and the Indonesian archipelago, by harnessing private capital. Authorized to conduct Asian trade, attack Spanish and Portuguese shipping, build fortresses, sign treatises and make defensive war, the VOC was either a state within a state or a semi-detached empire". It became "effectively a sovereign state, with forty or fifty warships and 20,000msoldieres, commanding the trade between northern Europe and Asia"..."The company became continental, emphasizing territorial control and monopolies of supply".
"After 1688 the VOC consistently lost money on Asian trade: costs rose three times more quickly then revenues, despite rising volumes of trade.... Unable to compete at sea and no longer in control of a staple trade, corruption, incompetence and the growing costs of running a distant territorial empire combined with a weak financial bae, reliant on loans to covers operating costs, meant that or the VoC disaster was inevitable."
National Priority
Lambert reports about Spain & Portugal: "The Iberian sea empires were directed by royal autocrats who emphasized religious faith over commercial success, continental expansion over sea control, and imposed monopolistic economic models that crushed initiative and enterprise".
We learn about Russia and Tsar Peter I "Peter was a very odd Tsar: He liked ships, sailors and sailing...he went to England. Between January and April 1698 he lived and worked at Deptford Dockyard, recruiting experts to build and sail his ships, teach navigation and create a modern navy... Making the fleet a national priority, working on it with his own hands by way of example, and taking pleasure in mastering the sea world at the heart of his reforms made Peter unique".
We learn about England: "The foundations of England as a seapower state were laid when Henry VIII removed England from the European system. He declared his kingdom to be an empire entire unto itself.. To secure his new-made state from foreign invasion Henry developed a standing Royal Navy with heavy-gun armed capital units, along with coastal forts and art in which bronze artillery connected ships, forts and royal authority".
"In 1546/t Henry`s fleet defeated as French invasion attempt, and the mythic power of the Mediterranean galley, taking control of the English Channel. Once the seapower strategy could secure England against larger states, insularity could be celebrated".
"The City of London would expect naval protection, whoever sat on the throne. The navy served the City, and the City provided the necessary funds".
Clearing The Land Of The Natives
And there was much more:
For instance Lambert refers to Plato and his "anxiety about the ´corrupting sea`. Plato advised to level the city and move its inhabitants 8 mile away from ´corrupting sea, to live as farmers" "Plato´s ideal society was landed, dominated by peasant labor and aristocratic control".
Lambert writes about the exploitation of America: "The immigrants who left the coast for the frontier were Scots/Irish and German, not English: the frontier made them Americans. The ocean gave way to frontier violence and overland exploration".
In the 18th & 19th century "Although Americans shared British anxieties about standing armies, they needed them to clear the land of Native Americans" (page 415 Kindle version.
What did Lambert learn? He writes:
"On its current trajectory Europe will become an empire, not a nation, closer to Russia and China than the liberal democratic nation states that are the legacy of seapower".
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