China's expanding air and naval capabilities, coupled with the proliferation of long-range anti-ship and anti-air missile systems, are making US naval diplomacy an increasingly risky enterprise. It is surprising therefore how little attention has been devoted to comparing the way in which different administrations have reacted in dissimilar manners to major naval incidents. This book provides the first comparative analysis of multiple cases. In particular, it examines three incidents: the Maine incident (1898), which led to war in the short term; the Lusitania crisis (1915), which set the trajectory for intervention; and the Panay incident (1937), which was settled diplomatically. After scrutinizing these incidents and the domestic and international factors shaping the subsequent crisis, Douglas Carl Peifer analyses the presidential decision making in terms of options considered and policies selected. The book draws upon international relations and coercion theory but emphasizes the importance of context, complexity, and contingency when assessing presidential decision making. The contemporary tensions in East Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Baltic, and the Black Sea are increasingly vexing US naval diplomacy. By analyzing how Presidents William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded to the Maine, Lusitania, and Panay incidents, this book provides an essential instrument to deal with the growing threats of a new naval crisis.

"Exploiting the Sea" offers new perspectives on Britain's vital but changing relationship with the sea since the late nineteenth century. It assesses the significance to the British economy of sea-reliant industries such as shipping, shipbuilding, fishing, coastal trading and seaside tourism. It also seeks to explain why the clear pre-eminence that Britain established in the maritime world during the Victorian era has not been sustained in the twentieth century. "Exploiting the Sea" is a new volume in the highly successful EXETER MARITIME STUDIES series, and brings together contributions from experts writing in their own specialist fields to give a wide-ranging but structured analytical approach to a misunderstood subject.

What is the ocean's role in human and planetary history? How have writers, sailors, painters, scientists, historians, and philosophers from across time and space poetically envisioned the oceans and depicted human entanglements with the sea? In order to answer these questions, Soren Frank covers an impressive range of material in A Poetic History of the Oceans: Greek, Roman and Biblical texts, an Icelandic Saga, Shakespearean drama, Jens Munk's logbook, 19th century-writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Jules Michelet, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Jonas Lie, and Joseph Conrad as well as their 20th and 21st century-heirs like J. G. Ballard, Jens Bjorneboe, and Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen. A Poetic History of the Oceans promotes what Frank labels an amphibian comparative literature and mobilises recent theoretical concepts and methodological developments in Blue Humanities, Blue Ecology, and New Materialism to shed new light on well-known texts and introduce readers to important, but lesser-known Scandinavian literary engagements with the sea.

This volume presents Greek Maritime History and unravels the historical trajectory of a maritime nation par excellence in the Eastern Mediterranean. At the core of the book lies the rise of the Greek merchant fleet and its transformation from a peripheral to an international carrier. Following the evolution of Greek shipping for more than three centuries (17th-20th century), the book traces a maritime nation in its making and provides proof of a different, yet successful pattern of maritime development compared to other European maritime nations. The chapters adopt a multidimensional and interdisciplinary approach - spanning from shipping, fishing and trade to piracy, technology, human resources and entrepreneurship - and reflect the main directions of Greek maritime historiography over the last thirty years. Contributors are: Apostolos Delis, Dimitris Dimitropoulos, Zisis Fotakis, Katerina Galani, Gelina Harlaftis, Evdokia Olympitou, Gerassimos D. Pagratis, Alexandra Papadopoulou, Socrates Petmezas, Evrydiki Sifneos, Anna Sydorenko, Ioannis Theotokas, and Katerina Vourkatioti.

Maritime piracy's improbable re-emergence following the end of the Cold War was surprising as the image of pirates evokes masted galleons and cutlasses. Yet, the number of incidents and their intensity skyrocketed in the 1990s and 2000s off of the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Somalia. As Ursula Daxecker and Brandon Prins demonstrate in Pirate Lands, Maritime piracy-like civil war, terrorism, and organized crime-is a problem of weak states. Surprisingly, though, pirates do not operate in the least governed areas of weak states. Daxecker and Prins address this puzzle by explaining why some coastal communities experience more pirate attacks in their vicinity than others. They find that pirates do well in places where elites and law enforcement can be bribed, but they also need access to functioning roads, ports, and markets. Using statistical analyses of cross-national and sub-national data on pirate attacks in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Somalia, Daxecker and Prins detail how governance at the state and local level explain the location of maritime piracy. Additionally, they employ geo-spatial tools to rigorously measure how local political capacity and infrastructure affect maritime piracy. Drawing upon interviews with former pirates, community members, and maritime security experts, Pirate Lands offers the first comprehensive, social-scientific account of a phenomenon whose re-appearance after centuries of remission took almost everyone by surprise.

This book investigates the Guinea Company and its members, aiming to understand the genealogy of several major changes taking place in the English Atlantic and in the Anglo-Africa trade in the seventeenth century and beyond. Little attention has been paid to the companies that preceded the Royal African Company, launched in 1672, and by presenting the Guinea Company - the earliest of England's chartered Africa companies - and its relationship with the influential men who became its members, this book questions the inevitability of the Atlantic reality of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through its members, the Guinea Company emerged as a purpose-built structure with the ability to weather a volatile trade undergoing fundamental change.

'What a fun book! Reading Sea Fever is enticing and intriguing, like watching floating treasure bob past your nose.' Tristram Gooley, author of The Natural Navigator Can you interpret the shipping forecast? Do you know your flotsam from your jetsam? Or who owns the foreshore? Can you tie a half-hitch - or would you rather splice the mainbrace? Full of charming illustrations and surprising facts, Sea Fever provides the answers to all these and more. Mixing advice on everything from seasickness to righting a capsized boat with arcane marine lore, recipes, history, dramatic stories of daring-do and guides to the wildlife we share our shores with, even the most experienced ocean-dweller will find something in these pages to surprise and delight.

This sweeping recasting of American naval history is a bold departure from the conventional "sea power" approach. Volume Two of History of the U.S. Navy shows how the Navy in World War II helped to upset the traditional balance in Europe and Asia. Days after Pearl Harbor, Admiral Ernest J. King took command of a navy overwhelmed by the demands of war. King devised grand strategies to defeat the Axis and promoted a cadre of fighting admirals-Halsey, Spruance, Hewitt, Kincaid, and Turner-who waged unprecedented in complexity and violence. New sources provide an entirely fresh look at the Battle of the Atlantic, the invasion of Europe, and the great naval campaigns in the Pacific. This book contains the first comprehensive interpretation of the U.S. Navy's role in the Cold War, when the United States found itself the global bailiff. Love demonstrated that the Navy's abiding priority was to capture and maintain a share of the strategic bombardment mission by building new ships, planes, submarines, and mission to

"Many peoples throughout history have fought pirates," writes Alfred Bradford in Flying the Black Flag. "Some have lost and some have won. We should learn from their experience." From Odysseus--the original pirate of literature and lore--through Blackbeard and the feared pirates of the Spanish Main, his book reveals the strategies and methods pirates used to cheat, lie, kill, and rob their way into the historical record, wreaking terror in their bloody wakes. The story begins with a discussion of Piracy and the Suppression of Piracy in the Ancient World. It details, for example, how the Illyrians used pirate vessels to try to wrest control of the Adriatic Coast from the mighty Romans, as well as how the intrepid Vikings went from pirate raids to the conquest of parts of Western Europe. Moving into the 17th century and to the New World, Bradford depicts the golden age of the pirates. Here are the Spanish Buccaneers and the fabled Caribbean stronghold of Tortuga. Here are Henry Morgan, Captain Kidd, and their fearsome counterparts. But piracy was hardly just a Western phenomenon. "The Barbary Pirates" looks East to examine the struggle between Christian and Muslim in the Mediterranean, while "To the Shores of Tripoli" details the American conflict with the Barbary Pirates. It reveals the lessons of a war conducted across a great distance against a nebulous enemy, a war in which victory was achieved only by going after the pirates' sponsor. On the South China Coast, we meet the first Dragon Lady, leader of Chinese pirates. As intriguing as these tales of the past are in and of themselves, the stories and their swashbuckling villains hold lessons for us even today. In "Conclusions andReflections," Bradford gathers all of the chords together, discussing the conditions under which piracy arises, the conditions under which pirates organize and become more powerful, and the methods used to suppress piracy. Finally, he examines similarities between pirates and terrorists--and whether the lessons learned from the wars against pirates of the past might also apply to modern day terrorists.

This book examines the political and social impact of English overseas merchants during the upheavals of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It explores the merchant societies of London, York, and Liverpool, and illuminates the growing prominence of the overseas trader in the press and in Parliament.