Warfare at Sea, 1500-1650: Maritime Conflicts and the Transformation of Europe

Rating:
Summary: An important work by an outstanding Naval historian
Review: The author of the remarkable two-volume work "Navies and Nations", Swedish Naval historian Jan Glete, gives us a fine comparative study of Warfare at Sea and its implications for early European states in this accessible, yet solid study. As a naval officer and PhD student in comparative politics, there are in particular two valuable features of the book that I would like to stress. Firstly, Glete has the ability to analyse how navies as organisations were vital aspects of European state formation. This means that he is also able to evaluate macro-sociological theories on state formation. In this way, historical data that have been only partially studied by social scientists are linked to theories that have been created on basis of data on purely territorial modes of violence and sovereignty. Secondly, Glete has a very solid base of empirical data on which to create a comparative macro-analysis. Thus, Glete has managed to avoid tedious narratives, and has rather created a masterful synthesis of historical work. His work on the rise of Nordic sea power, for example, sets the record straight in an area that has been neglected by most scholars of naval history.