Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind - Peter Padfield, James Cameron Stewart, 2021]

Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind

Year: 2021
Language: english
Author: Peter Padfield
Performer: James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Type: audiobook
Audio codec: MP3
Audio bitrate: 64 kbps
Description: In the great wars of modern history, maritime powers have always prevailed over land-based empires, whether Habsburg, Napoleonic, Nazi or Soviet.
In contrast to the rigid hierarchies and centralization of land-based empires, those nations attaining mastery at sea have been distinguished by liberty, flexibility, and enterprise. The seventeenth-century Dutch were the first to achieve naval and trading dominance and, exploring the effects on daily life, industry, art and thought, finance and power politics, Peter Padfield reveals the Dutch in their golden age as the heralds of modern Western society.
The British took over the Dutch system of naval, trading, and world supremacy in the eighteenth century and were, in their turn, displaced by the United States in the twentieth. This book carries the story from the defeat of the Armada in 1588 to the American Revolutionary War and Rodney's victory.
Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind charts the growth of linked strengths—sea-fighting, trading, financial and constitutional—which made empires so formidable, and reveals how supremacy at sea freed thought and society itself.