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ABSTRACT
The concept of the command of the sea has its roots in medieval notions of the sovereignty of coastal waters, as claimed by several monarchs and polities of Europe. In the sixteenth century, a surge of intellectual creativity, especially in Elizabethan England, fused this notion with the Thucydidean term ‘thalassocracy’ – the rule of the sea. In the light of the explorations of the oceans, this led to a new conceptualisation of naval warfare, developed in theory and then put into practice. This falsifies the mistaken but widespread assumption that there was no significant writing on naval strategy before the nineteenth century.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Professors N.A.M. Rodger, Enrique García Hernan, Andrew Lambert, and John Hattendorf as well as Dr Michele Margetts, Dr David Reindorp, and Benjamin Redding for their invaluable guidance on this subject. All remaining mistakes are entirely my own. Thanks are due also to Dr Rosemary Gill who gave me very helpful advice on drafting.
Notes
1 Jacques Raymond, vicomte de Grenier, L’Art de Guerre sur Mer, ou Tactique navale, assujettie à de nouveaux principes et à un nouvel ordre de bataille (Paris: Fermin Didot, 1787).
2 Amiral Raoul Castex, Théories stratégiques, 2nd edn, Vol. 1 (Paris: SEGMC, Citation1937), 31; see also 37–39.
3 Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Citation2010), 208.
4 Chapter XIX of his Epitoma Rei militaris deals with the naumachia or de navalis proelio.
5 Philippe Richardot, ‘Y a-t-il une pensée navale dans l’Occident médiéval?’, in Hervé Coutau-Bégarie (ed), Evolution de la Pensée navale Vol. VII (Paris: Economica, Citation1999), 13–23.
6 Hervé Coutau-Bégarie, ‘L’émergence d’une Pensée navale en Europe au XVIe Siècle et au Début du XVIIe Siècle’, in Hervé Coutau-Bégarie (ed.), Evolution de la Pensée navale, Vol. 4 (Paris: Economica, Citation1994), 13–35; see also Philip Williams, ‘The Strategy of Galley Warfare in the Mediterranean (1560–1630)’, in Enrique García Hernán and Davide Maffi (eds), Guerra y Sociedad en la Monarquía Hispánica: Política, Estrategia y Cultura en la Europa Moderna (1500–1700), Vol. 1, Política, estrategia, organization y guerre en el mar (Madrid: Ediciones del Laberinto, Citation2006), 891–920; Enrique García Hernan, ‘Tratadística militar’, in Luis Robot (ed.), Historia Militar de España III Edad Moderna Part II Escenario europeo (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa Citation2013), 401–19.
7 Heuser, Evolution, 27f.
8 This by no means excludes the possibility that similar treasures are yet to be unearthed in the archives of other countries.
9 See Francis Drake’s claim of land on America’s western coast for the English crown as ‘Nova Albion’, in what now is California.
10 Thucydides I.143,20.
11 Laurentius Valla’s translation into Latin was printed in 1483. Half a century later followed the oldest translation into French: L’histoire de Thucydide athenien, de la guerre qui fut entre les Peloponesiens et Atheniens, trans. by Claude de Seyssel, Bishop of Marseille and Archbishop of Turin (Paris: Josse Badius, 1527), which went through several corrected editions; for the earliest Italian edition, see Gli otto libri di Thucydide atheniese, delle guerre fatte tra popoli della Morea, et gli Atheniesi, trans. Francesco di Soldo Strozzi Fiorentino (Venice: Vincenzo Vaugris, 1545) in the Vatican Library.
12 The Hystory Writtone by Thucidides the Athenyan of the Warre, whiche Was betwene the Peloponesians and the Athenyans, trans. Thomas Nicolls (London: William Tylle, 1550).
13 See also Andrew Lambert, ‘Sea Power’, in George Kassimeris and John Buckley (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Warfare (Farnham: Ashgate, Citation2010), 73–88.
14 Ioannis Seldeni, Mare Clausum sev de Dominio Maris Libri dvo (London: William Stanesbeius for Richard Meighen, 1636), 337, published subsequently in English: John Selden, Of the Dominion, or Ownership of the Sea, Two Books (London: William Du-Gard, 1652). See also Thomas Wemyss Fulton, The Sovereignty of the Sea (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, Citation1911), 27.
15 Quoted in Fulton, Sovereignty, 51f.
16 Clifford J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327–1360 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, Citation2000).
17 Sir G. Warner (ed.), The Libelle of English Polycye (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Citation1926).
18 Sir John Boroughs, The Soveraignty of the British Seas, Proved by Records, History, and the Municipall Lawes of this Kingdome, Written in the Yeare 1633 (London: Humphrey Moseley, 1651), 65–67.
19 Ibid., 74–78.
20 Quoted in Fulton, Sovereignty, 40.
21 Ibid., 43, 207.
22 Ibid., 116f.
23 Ibid., 117.
24 Palle Lauring, A History of Denmark, trans. David Hohnen (Copenhagen: Høst, Citation1995), 110f.
25 Jhon Coke, The Debate betwene the Heraldes of Englande and Fraunce, Compyled by Jhon Coke, Clarke of the Kynges Rcognysaunce, or Vulgerly, Called Clarke of the Statutes of the Staple of Westmynster, and Fynyshed the Yere of Our Lorde MDL, 30ff, 62ff. The original French text dates from the fifteenth century.
26 Fulton, Sovereignty, 117, 277.
27 Boroughs, The Soveraignty, 83f.
28 Sebastian Sobiecki, The Sea and Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, Citation2008), 140, 141, 143.
29 Sir Travers Twiss (ed.), The Black Book of the Admiralty, Vol. 1 (London: Longman, Citation1871), 58.
30 Fulton, Sovereignty, 9–11, 16f, 28, 118.
31 Guido delle Colonne, ‘Discursos sacados de la Historia de la guerra del Peloponeso’, Biblioteca nacional de España MSS/10801 (2nd half of 14th century); Historia de Thucydides: que trata de las guerras entre los Peloponesos y Atheniēses: la qual allēde las grandes y notables hazañas por mar y por tierra, delos vnos y delos otros, y de sus aliados y cōfederados, esta llena de oraciones y razonamiētos prudentes y auisados a proposito de paz y de Guerra, trans. Diego Gracian (Salamanca: Iuan de Canoua, 1564).
32 ‘… porque pretiendo V.M. el señorío de la mar, y pretendiéndolo el turco, no es posible excusar que no se venga á conocer esta superioridad por batalla de mar …’ Letter of 31 May 1565, in Marquis of Pidal and Miguel Salvá (eds), Colección de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España (Madrid: Imprenta de la Viuda de Calero, Citation1856), Vol. 29, Part I, 167.
33 Don Bernardino de Mendoca/Mendoza, Teórica y práctica de la guerra (Madrid: 1595, Amberes: Emprenta Plantiniana 1596, Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa 1998), 128, Sir Edwarde Hoby, trs, Theorique and practise of warre (Middelburg: Richard Schilders 1597), 148.
34 Ibid. This idea Mendoza owed to the Italian strategist Giovanni Botero: Della Ragion di Stato Libri Dieci (Venice: Giolitti, 1589), 15.
35 David Armitage, ‘The Elizabethan Idea of Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 14 (Citation2004), 275f.
36 Carlos José Hernando Sánchez, ‘Non sufficit orbis? Las estrategias de la Monarquía de España’, in Luis Robot (ed.), Historia Militar de España III Edad Moderna Part II Escenario europeo (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa 2013), 30.
37 Quoted in David Loades, England’s Maritime Empire: Seapower, Commerce and Policy, 1490-–690 (Harlow: Longman Citation2000), 86.
38 Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven: Yale University Press, Citation1998).
39 Ibid.; see also Hernando Sánchez, ‘Non sufficit orbis?’, 29–77.
40 On the interpretation of the painting, see Hernando Sánchez, ‘Non sufficit orbis?’, 50f.
41 Augustín Jiménez Moreno, ‘Las Órdenes Militares y la defensa de la Monarquía hispánica. Un proyecto de organización naval atlántica: el memorial de Ramón Ezquerra (1596)’, in García Hernán and Maffi (eds), Guerra y Sociedad en la Monarquía Hispánica, Vol. 2, 700–05.
42 Other religious orders – such s the Knights of St John at Malta – owned navies, but their mission was to fend off the Turks and Barbary pirates.
43 John Strype, Annals of the Reformation, Vol. 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, Citation1824), 151; Reasons Pro and Con Being a Debate at the Council Table between the Treasurer and the General for Making Peace or Carrying on the War in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, wherein the Force of the General’s Argument Prevailed against the Sophistry of the Treasurer’s (London: S. Popping, 1712), 8.
44 Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish road, 1567–1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries’ Wars (London: Cambridge University Press, Citation1972).
45 N.M. Sutherland, ‘The Origins of the Thirty Years’ War and the Structure of European Politics’, English Historical Review 107/424 (Citation1992), 587–625.
46 Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II.
47 Boroughs, The Soveraignty, p.80.
48 Enrique García Hernan, Ireland and Spain in the Reign of Philip II (Dublin: Four Courts Press, Citation2009). These relations did not prevent the notorious massacres by the Irish of survivors of the 1588 Armada who were shipwrecked on Irish beaches on their way back to Spain.
49 I am very grateful to Benjamin Redding for this reference to and his transcription of BL Add MS 18035. See Benjamin Redding, ‘Divided by La Manche: Naval Enterprise and Maritime Revolution in England and France, 1545–1642’, PhD dissertation, University of Warwick, forthcoming.
50 For details, see N.A.M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 660–1649 (London: Penguin, Citation2004), 478–80.
51 David Childs, Pirate Nation: Elizabeth I and Her Royal Sea Rovers (Barnsley: Seaforth, Citation2014).
52 Harry Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate (New Haven: Yale University Press, Citation1998), 312–15.
53 Antonie Wingfield, ‘A True Discourse (as is thought) by Colonel Antonie Wingfield’, in Richard Hakluyt (ed.), The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques of Discoveries of the English Nation, Vol. VI (1589), repr. as Vol. IV (London: J.M.Dent and New York: E.P. Dutton, 1927), 306–54. gives 13,000; Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I: War and Politics, 1588–1603 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Citation1992), 88, gives the figure of 23,000.
54 Wingfield, ‘A True Discourse (as Is Thought) by Colonel Antonie Wingfield’, 308f.
55 Loades, England’s Maritime Empire, 131.
56 James A. Williamson, Sir John Hawkins, the Time and the Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press, Citation1927), 471–90.
57 Gustav Ungerer (ed.), A Spaniard in Elizabethan England: The Correspondez on Antonio Pérez’s Exile, Vol. 1 (London: Thamesis Books, Citation1974), 303–16.
58 Erklärung auß was Ursachen die Durchleuchigste Mayestat in Engeland … ihr Armada auff das Meer abgefertiget … (1596)
59 Essex later stated that it had been the Lord Admiral Howard’s plan initially; see Walter B. Devereux (ed.), Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex, in the Reigns of Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I, 1540–1646 (London: John Murray, Citation1853), vol. 1, 351; see also R.B. Wernham, The Return of the Armadas: The Last Years of the Elizabethan War against Spain, 1595–1603 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, Citation1994), 55.
60 Stephen Usherwood and Elizabeth Usherwood, The Counter-Armada 1596: The Journall of the Mary Rose (London: Bodley Head, Citation1983), 85, entry for 24 June 1596.
61 Julian S. Corbett, The Successors of Drake (London: Longman, Green, Citation1900), 89–133.
62 For many such examples, see Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, Citation1983); N.A.M. Rodger: The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815 (London: Penguin, Citation2005).
63 Rodger, The Command of the Ocean; Lambert, ‘Sea Power’.
64 Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, 176.
65 ‘A provision for the Indies fleet, drawn by Mr Hawkins, Admiralty’, 12 August 1579; see Williamson, Sir John Hawkins, 397.
66 Ibid., 396–98.
67 There were at least two eponymous cousins, however, one who died in 1605 and was the son and heir of a Sir Robert Wingfield. A second was a further eponymous cousin (dates of birth and death unknown), son of Sir Antony Wingfield (before 1488, d. 1552); see William Hervy, ‘The Visitation of Suffolk 1561’, in Joan Corder (ed.), The Publications of the Harleian Society, New Series, Vol. III (London: Harleian Society 1984), 213, 219f.
68 Edward A. Malone, ‘Wingfield, Anthony (b. c.1552, d.in or after 1611)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Citation2004), <http://www.oxforddnb.com.idpproxy.reading.ac.uk/view/article/29734>.
69 Wingfield, ‘A True Discourse (as Is Thought) by Colonel Antonie Wingfield’, 306–54.
70 Ibid., 517–26.
71 See Heuser, Evolution of Strategy, 212f, 231.
72 Wingfield, ‘A True Discourse’, 313f, 352.
73 Ibid., 471
74 Quoted in Corbett, The Successors of Drake, 1.
75 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Lawes and Ordinances [for the English forces in the Low Countries] (London: Christopher Barker, 1586).
76 See Beatrice Heuser, ‘A National Security Strategy for England: Matthew Sutcliffe, the Earl of Essex, and the Cadiz Expedition of 1596‘, in Óscar Recio Morales (ed.), Redes y espacios de poder de la comunidad irlandesa en España y la América española, 1600–1825 (Valencia: Albatros Ediciones, Citation2012), 117–35.
77 Matthew Sutcliffe, The Practice, Proceedings and Lawes of Armes (London: Deputies of C. Barker, 1593), 96f, 100.
78 Ibid., 273–75.
79 The ‘Hulton MS’, formerly BL Loan 23(1), now Add.MSS 74286, Microfilm 2275, Fol. 157v–158r.
80 Copy of a letter by Essex, written aboard the Dewrepulse [sic], 12 Aug [1596], BL Microfilm 2275, Fol. 149–52.
81 Hulton MS, Fol. 163v.
82 Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, An Apologie of the Earle of Essex (1600), B1v.
83 Hulton MS, fol. 167v.
84 Hulton MS, fol. 165r.
85 Or guerre de course, as it would be termed by later authors writing in English, with the sneering implication that it was an un-English, lily-livered French thing to do, when in fact it had been the preferred strategy in most sixteenth-century English naval operations.
86 R. Julian Roberts, ‘Dee, John (1527–1609)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Citation2004), <http://www.oxforddnb.com.idpproxy.reading.ac.uk/view/article/7418>.
87 Richard Hakluyt, Discourse of Western Planting (1584), <https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hakluyt/voyages/v13/planting/complete.html>.
88 Fulton, Sovereignty, 104.
89 Loades, England’s Maritime Empire, 111.
90 Rodgers, Command of the Ocean, 607.
91 Fulton, Sovereignty, 107f.
92 Ibid., 104.
93 Armitage, ‘The Elizabethan Idea of Empire’, 277.
94 N.A.M. Rodger, ‘Queen Elizabeth and the Myth of Sea-Power in English History’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 14 (Citation2004), 156.
95 As reflected in the titles of the two superb volumes on the subject by Rodger: Safeguard of the Sea and Command of the Ocean.
96 Quoted in David H. Olivier, German Naval Strategy 1856–1888: Forerunners of Tirpitz (London: Frank Cass, Citation2004), 38; see Coutau-Bégarie, ‘L’émergence d’une Pensée navale’, 34.
97 Francis [Bacon] Lord Verulam Viscount St Alban, Considerations tovching a Warre with Spaine (1629).
98 Sir Walter Raleigh, Historye of the World (London: Walter Bvrre, 1614), 314, 360, 696.
99 Quoted in Olivier, German Naval Strategy, 38; see Coutau-Bégarie, ‘L’émergence d’une Pensée navale’, 34.
100 Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 39.
101 Fulton. Sovereignty, 204f, 207f, 276.
102 Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, trans. Louise R. Loomis (Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, Citation1949), 80.
103 William Welvvod, An Abridgement of All Sea-Lawes; Gathered Forth of All VVritings and Monuments, whih Are to Be Found among Any People or Nation, vpon the Coasts of the Great Ocean and Mediterranean Sea (London: Humfrey Lownes for Thomas Man, 1613), Title XXVII, 61–72.
104 Boroughs, The Soveraignty of the British Seas, 1f.
105 Ibid., 3.
106 Ibid., 6, 65–67, 164f; see also Fulton, Sovereignty, 365.
107 Selden, Of the Dominion, 459.
108 Konrad Müller (ed.), ‘Instrumentum Pacis Caesareo-Suecicum Osnabrugense’, in Instrumenta Pacis Westphalicae: Die Westfälischen Friedensverträge 1648 (Bern: Herbert Lang & Cie 1949), Article X.
109 Jan Glete, ‘Naval Power and Control of the Sea in the Baltic’, in John Hattendorf and Richard Unger (eds.), War at Sea in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Woodbridge: Boydell Press Citation2003), 217.
110 Fulton, Sovereignty, 117, 263, 277
111 Roger Hainsworth and Christine Churches, The Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars 1652–1674 (Stroud: Sutton, Citation1998), 3
112 Fulton, Sovereignty, 508f.; H.S.K. Kent: ‘The Historical Origins of the Three-Mile Limit’, American Journal of International Law 48/4 (Citation1954), 537–53.
113 Fulton, Sovereignty, 21. See Cornelius Bynkershoek, De Dominio Maris Dissertatio (1703), ed. Ralph van Deman Magofin, James Brown Scott, and Herbert F. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, Citation1923).
114 Fulton, Sovereignty, 15.
115 Rodger, Command of the Ocean, 583.
117 Nathaniel Boteler, Six Dialogues about Sea-Services (London: William Fisher & Richard Mount, 1688); Paul Hoste, L’art des armées navales, ou Traité des Evolutions navales (Lyons: Anisson & Posuel, 1697); Paul Hoste, Théorie de la Construction des Vaissaux (Lyons: Anisson & Posuel, 1697); Bigot de Morogues (Sébastien-François, vicomte), Tactique navale, ou Traité des évolutions des signaux (Paris: H.-L. Guérin & L.-F. de la Tour, 1763); John Clerk of Eldin, the Elder, An Essay on Naval Tactics, Systematical and Historical (London: T. Cadell, 1790); Michel Depeyre, Tactique et Stratégies navales de la France et du Royaume-Uni de 1690 à 1815 (Paris: Economica, Citation1998), 115–124, 195–205, 230–43; Bruno Colson and Jean-Pierre Colson, ‘Les Penseurs navals hollandais’, in Hervé Coutau-Bégarie (ed.), L’Evolution de la Pensée navale, Vol. 4 (Paris: Economica, Citation1994), 173–80.
118 Audibert Ramatuelle, Cours élémentaire de Tactique navale (Paris: Baudouin, 1802), xii.
119 Philip Howard Colomb, Naval Warfare: Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated (London: W.H. Allen, Citation1891), 25–70, 107–202.
120 Henry Spencer Wilkinson, Command of the Sea and Brain of the Navy (London: Archibald Constable, Citation1894); Charles Edward Callwell, Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance: Their Relations and Interdepenence (Edinburgh: Wm Blackwood, 1905; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, Citation1996), 1ff, 170; Sir Cyprian Arthur George Bridge, Art of Naval Warfare (London: Smith, Elder, Citation1907), 123 ff; Sir Julian Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1988), 91–106;
121 See particularly Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1890); idem, Sea Power in Its Relations to the War of 1812, 2 vols (Boston: Little, Brown, 1905).
122 Julian S. Corbett, For God and Gold (London: Macmillan, Citation1887); idem, Sir Francis Drake (London: Macmillan, 1890); idem, Papers Relating to the Navy during the Spanish War 1585–1587 (London: Macmillan, Citation1898); idem, Drake and the Tudor Navy (London: Longman, 1898); idem, The Successors of Drake.
123 Sir Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press 1988), 91–106.
124 Ibid., 94.
125 Jan Martin Lemnitzer, Power, Law and the End of Privateering (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, Citation2014), 8 and passim.
126 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 97f.
127 Ibid., 183–85.
128 Ibid., 174.
129 Ibid., 165f.
130 Ibid., 220f
131 I am grateful to Professor Andrew Lambert for drawing my attention to this possibility.
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Notes on contributors
Beatrice Heuser
Beatrice Heuser occupies the chair of International Relations at the University of Reading. She studied History at the University of London (Bedford College, London School of Economics) and International Relations at Oxford University (St Antony’s and St John’s Colleges). She obtained her Habilitation in Modern History from the Philips University of Marburg. She has taught at King’s College London (Department of War Studies, 1991–2003), and for shorter periods at the Universities of Reims, Potsdam, Paris IV and Paris VIII, at the Ecole de Journalisme at Lille and the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich. She was Director of Research at the Military History Research Office of the Bundeswehr (2003–2007).