Between 1890 and 1913, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan published a series of books on naval warfare in the age of sail, which won a wide readership in his own day and established his reputation as the founder of modern strategic history. But Mahan's two principal arguments have been gravely misunderstood ever since, according to Jon Tetsuro Sumida. Instead of representing Mahan as an advocate of national naval supremacy, Sumida shows him asserting that only a multinational naval consortium could defend international trade. Instead of presenting Mahan as a man who adhered to strategic principles, Sumida shows that he stressed the importance of an officer's judgment and character formed by the study of history.

"Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command" includes a subject index to all Mahan's published books and an extensive bibliography. This is a book for scholars and students of military and strategic thinking and is a natural for libraries of U.S. service academies and U.S. armed services agencies and organizations.

Throughout the seventeenth century Dutch, French, and English freebooters launched numerous assaults on Spanish targets all over Central America. Many people have heard of Henry Morgan and Francois L'Olonnais, who led a series of successful raids, but few know that the famous buccaneers often operated in regions inhabited and controlled by Native Americans rather than Spaniards. Arne Bialuschewski explores the cross-cultural relations that emerged when greedy marauders encountered local populations in various parts of the Spanish empire. Natives, as it turned out, played a crucial role in the outcome of many of those raids. Depending on their own needs and assessment of the situation, indigenous people sometimes chose to support the colonial authorities and sometimes aided the intruders instead. Freebooters used native guides, relied on expertise and supplies obtained from local communities, and captured and enslaved many natives they encountered on their way. This book tells the fascinating story of how indigenous groups or individuals participated in the often-romanticized history of buccaneering. Building on extensive archival research, Bialuschewski untangles the wide variety of forms that cross-cultural relations took. By placing these encounters at the center of Raiders and Natives, the author changes our understanding of the early modern Atlantic World and the role that native populations played in the international conflicts of the seventeenth century.

Throughout the seventeenth century Dutch, French, and English freebooters launched numerous assaults on Spanish targets all over Central America. Many people have heard of Henry Morgan and Francois L'Olonnais, who led a series of successful raids, but few know that the famous buccaneers often operated in regions inhabited and controlled by Native Americans rather than Spaniards. Arne Bialuschewski explores the cross-cultural relations that emerged when greedy marauders encountered local populations in various parts of the Spanish empire. Natives, as it turned out, played a crucial role in the outcome of many of those raids. Depending on their own needs and assessment of the situation, indigenous people sometimes chose to support the colonial authorities and sometimes aided the intruders instead. Freebooters used native guides, relied on expertise and supplies obtained from local communities, and captured and enslaved many natives they encountered on their way. This book tells the fascinating story of how indigenous groups or individuals participated in the often-romanticized history of buccaneering. Building on extensive archival research, Bialuschewski untangles the wide variety of forms that cross-cultural relations took. By placing these encounters at the center of Raiders and Natives, the author changes our understanding of the early modern Atlantic World and the role that native populations played in the international conflicts of the seventeenth century.

This book is a compilation of papers presented at a day-long conference organised in Chennai, on March 28 2019 by the Chennai Centre for China Studies (C3S) in partnership with the National Maritime Foundation (NMF) and the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, University of Madras, and supported by the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard on the theme, "Securing India's Maritime Neighbourhood: Challenges and Opportunities". Contributors included a whole galaxy of luminaries from the serving and veteran echelons of the Indian Armed Forces, the diplomatic community, maritime industry, doyens of Indian academia, and distinguished personalities from the Fourth Estate. A number of facets of seminal importance to national security were addressed in the book. These included conceptual, geopolitical, economic, environmental and technological issues.

From AD 500-1000, the Indian Ocean emerged as a global commercial centre, and by around 750-800 a sophisticated trade network had been established involving the movement of goods from Japan and China in the east, to southern Africa and Spain in the west. However, the Indian Ocean's commercial system has been relatively understudied, with many of the key assumptions regarding its development based on narrative textual sources and selective archaeological evidence. This study sets out the case for the unique significance of quantified ceramic finds as an indicator of long-term changes in the scale and volume of maritime exchange in a period for which few other sources of systematic economic history survive. The publication presents archaeological data from thirteen sites distributed across the western Indian Ocean, including Siraf (Iran), Anuradhapura (Sri Lanka) and Manda (Kenya). The ceramic assemblages are considered in terms of their general compositional characteristics and the distinctions between local, regional and long-distance exchange. The volume concludes with a discussion of how this data can be used to address the broader issues of long-term economic change and the relationship between state power in the Middle East and the commercial networks of the Indian Ocean operating via the Persian Gulf.

This book looks to fill the 'blue hole' in Global History by studying the role of the oceans themselves in the creation, development, reproduction and adaptation of knowledge across the Atlantic world. It shows how globalisation and the growth of maritime knowledge served to reinforce one another, and demonstrates how and why maritime history should be put firmly at the heart of global history. Exploring the dynamics of globalisation, knowledge-making and European expansion, Global Ocean of Knowledge takes a transnational approach and transgresses the traditional border between the early modern and modern periods. It focuses on three main periodisations, which correspond with major transformations in the globalisation of the Atlantic World, and analyses how and to what extent globalisation forces from above and from below influenced the development and exchange of knowledge. Davids distinguishes three forms of globalising forces 'from above'; imperial, commercial and religious, alongside self-organisation, the globalising force 'from below'. Exploring how globalisation advanced and its relationship with knowledge changed over time, this book bridges global, maritime, intellectual and economic history to reflect on the role of the oceans in making the world a more connected place.

Efforts upon the waves played a critical role in European and Anglo-American conflicts throughout the eighteenth century. Yet the oft-told narrative of the American Revolution tends to focus on battles on American soil or the debates and decisions of the Continental Congress. The Untold War at Sea is the first book to place American privateers and their experiences during the War for Independence front and center. Kylie A. Hulbert tells the story of privateers at home and abroad while chronicling their experiences, engagements, cruises, and court cases. This study forces a reconsideration of the role privateers played in the conflict and challenges their place in the accepted popular narrative of the Revolution. Despite their controversial tactics, Hulbert illustrates that privateers merit a place alongside minutemen, Continental soldiers, and the sailors of the fledgling American navy. This book offers a redefinition of who fought in the war and how their contributions were measured. The process of revolution and winning independence was global in nature, and privateers operated at its core.

When she set sail from Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York on April 10, 1912, RMS "Titanic," the pride of the White Star fleet, was the largest ocean liner in the world. Deemed "practically unsinkable" because of her double-bottomed hull and watertight compartments, she carried more than 2,000 passengers and crew, although only sufficient lifeboats for just over half that number. Four days out of Southampton, on the night of April 14, she struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank within a matter of hours; 1,503 lives were lost. Logan Marshall interviewed the survivors in the immediate aftermath of the disaster and in this book he records the facts as they were known, together with numerous maps, diagrams, drawings, and photographs (including a picture of the actual iceberg that sank the "Titanic"). Well established as part of the canon of "Titanic" literature, this book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in the ship and her sorrowful fate.

Efforts upon the waves played a critical role in European and Anglo-American conflicts throughout the eighteenth century. Yet the oft-told narrative of the American Revolution tends to focus on battles on American soil or the debates and decisions of the Continental Congress. The Untold War at Sea is the first book to place American privateers and their experiences during the War for Independence front and center. Kylie A. Hulbert tells the story of privateers at home and abroad while chronicling their experiences, engagements, cruises, and court cases. This study forces a reconsideration of the role privateers played in the conflict and challenges their place in the accepted popular narrative of the Revolution. Despite their controversial tactics, Hulbert illustrates that privateers merit a place alongside minutemen, Continental soldiers, and the sailors of the fledgling American navy. This book offers a redefinition of who fought in the war and how their contributions were measured. The process of revolution and winning independence was global in nature, and privateers operated at its core.

Seaborne brigands were greatly feared in the ancient world. Pirates not only preyed on merchant ships and fishing craft in the Mediterranean but also wreaked havoc on coastal townstaking men, women, and children to ransom or sell as slaves; raiding treasures; and exacting tribute from fearful town leaders.

Responding to the threat of piracy, the Greeks established their primary cities inland for protection and even in their North African and Sicilian outposts they left coastal land uncultivated. Mariners feared pirate ships around every promontory and sought protection from the navies of such states as Rhodes and Crete. The Romans were beset in the time of their early Republic by "Tyrreanean" pirates based in the south of Italy and during the last years of the Empire by the Cilician pirates of Asia Minor. When one great pirate, Sextus Pompeiius, was finally suppressed, rather than being punished he was charged with ridding the seas of his former followers. His attempts failed.

Now available in paperback, Ormerod's classic "Piracy in the Ancient World" brings the treachery of the ancient high seas alive. Drawing on the works of Homer and Thucydides and the historical records that have survived from ancient Greece and Rome, Ormerod reconstructs the dangers of coastal living and seafaring and the attempts to protect against the threat of invasion from the seas. He describes the general nature of early piracy, ancient navigation, and the pirate's routines and tactics.

Captain Stanley Lord and his vessel, the Californian, were accused of ignoring the Titanic's distress calls. This book offers an evidence which prompted the British Government to re-open the case surrounding Captain Lord and the Californian and proved that the captain and his ship could not have been the ship seen from the decks of the Titanic.

Throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy had a peculiar problem: it had too many talented and ambitious officers, all competing for a limited number of command positions. Given this surplus, we might expect that a major physical impairment would automatically disqualify an officer from consideration. To the contrary, after the loss of a limb, at least twenty-six such officers reached the rank of commander or higher through continued service. Losing a limb in battle often became a mark of honor, one that a hero and his friends could use to increase his chances of winning further employment at sea. Lame Captains and Left-Handed Admirals focuses on the lives and careers of four particularly distinguished officers who returned to sea and continued to fight and win battles after losing an arm or a leg: the famous admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, who fought all of his most historically significant battles after he lost his right arm and the sight in one eye, and his lesser-known fellow amputee admirals, Sir Michael Seymour, Sir Watkin Owen Pell, and Sir James Alexander Gordon. Their stories shed invaluable light on the historical effects of physical impairment and this underexamined aspect of maritime history.