This work developed from a one-day conference at the University of Utrecht, on 16 January 2015, focused on pre-modern maritime empires. Maritime Empires are defined as ‘systems of political and/or economic control that employ naval (trade) routes as their main arteries of connectivity and communication’ (Strootman, p. 3). Fourteen essays of about twenty pages each are organised into three sections: ‘The Middle Sea’, ‘The Northern Seas’ and ‘The Oceans’. The book is well presented with eleven illustrations including maps in two-colour print, extensive bibliographies at the end of each contribution and footnotes at the bottom of each page that make it a pleasure to read.
The brief was to focus on networks, especially power networks with control over ports, coastal regions and islands, not trade routes or commodities or environmental factors. In the various case studies the brief is not uniformly followed, often a result of the evidence used. Trade routes and trade in commodities is the focus of several articles. All chapters are from periods of sail-powered vessels. Network theory is currently a very common approach used by those dealing with trade, intellectual exchange and connectivity generally: C. Broodbank (‘Ships, a-sail from over the rim of the sea’, in A. Anderson et al. [edd.], The Global Origins and Development of Seafaring [2010], The Making of the Middle Sea [2013]); C. Knappett (Network Analysis in Archaeology [2013]); and I. Malkin (A Small Greek World, Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean [2011]) come to mind. The application of network theory to political/military power is somewhat new to ancient historians. M.H. Wiener's 2013 article (‘Realities of Power: the Minoan Thalassocracy in Historical Perspective’, AMILIA, pp. 149–73) would seem to be ripe for a network approach but never used the word network.
The ‘Oceans’ section is the strongest with four contributions that complement one another in time period and area. This allows the reader new to the period to develop a picture of what happened overall in SE Asia between 1400–1800 ce. A. Singh, in ‘Early Modern European Mercantilism and Indian Ocean Trade’, discusses colonial empires broadly in the Indian Ocean and focuses on European trade activities that ‘unleashed five hundred years of tyranny’ (p. 252). More specifically focused are P. Borschberg's ‘The Melaka Empire, c. 1400–1528’, C. Antunes's ‘The Portuguese Maritime Empire: Global Nodes and Transnational Networks’ and R. Raben's ‘The Asian Foundations of the Dutch Thalassocracy: Creative Absorption and the Company Empire in Asia’. These four complementary pieces sketch a common narrative of trade routes building on previously existing networks, the utilisation of local societies in the creation of networks and the later transition from maritime trading as the source of wealth to the acquisition of land, not always peacefully, where tax revenues became the dominant source of wealth. The use of internal records from the Dutch East India Company provides great depth to the discussion.
The ‘Northern Seas’ section focuses on the Baltic. Pieces by T.K. Heebøll-Holm, ‘Medieval Denmark as a Maritime Empire’, and O. Mörke, ‘Seventeenth-Century Sweden and the Dominium Maris Baltici – a Maritime Empire?’, give a comprehensive picture of the maritime networks of the Baltic region in the late medieval and early modern period. The idea of the importance of ports comes through in that both the Danes and the Swedes focused on establishing a series of ports to trade south into Germany and the east into Novgorod, Russia. The Swedes extended their power in the 1600s, at the expense of the Danes, through the building of a navy to project power. The value of a comparative approach between the Oceans and Northern Seas sections is apparent. The Danes and the rulers of Melaka controlled constricted straits to their respective advantages. Scholars engaged in one area may find the comparative material of use.
The first section, ‘The Middle Sea’, suffers in comparison as the time period from J.M. Kelder's ‘A Thousand Black Ships: Maritime Trade, Diplomatic Relations, and the Rise of Mycenae’ to T. Kirk's ‘The Republic of Genoa and its Maritime Empire’ spans over 2,500 years, making a tight narrative impossible. Kirk's piece supports the editors’ brief well with the focus on Genoa's development of harbour facilities and then protecting the approaches to their ports rather than the conquest of territory, but, clearly, Kirk argues that the Genoese were commercially focused, not on power for the sake of power. The discussion on how to define an Empire is very good. The analysis of Genoa cries out for support from an examination of Venetian, Byzantine and Ottoman networks as contemporary competitors. A separate section on this later Aegean period of 1300–1600 seems warranted and would have made an interesting analysis of just what a maritime empire was, given the strong families and weak states of the period.
Van den Eijnde's piece on ‘The “First Athenian Empire”?’, van Wijk's on the Aegean in the 360s bce and Strootman's on ‘The Ptolemaic Sea Empire’ are all close in area and period, but fail to build links as the discussions on the Baltic and SE Asia do. The evidence cited suggests that it was trade and access to resources that was the interest behind these Aegean maritime ventures; Kelder argues that the Mycenaeans wanted silver from Laurion, van den Eijnde suggests the elites of early classical Athens wanted personal control of resources in the northern Aegean, and Strootman demonstrates how the Ptolemies needed to access ship building materials. These resource specific examples are presented as focused motivations rather than displaying a larger systems approach of economic or political control. In fairness though, the available evidence dictates where the discussion can go. Kelder is limited mostly to evidence from burials, from which determining economic and political control systems seems difficult.
The division of the presentation into three separate environmental zones could have set up a discussion regarding how a long-distance open-ocean network might follow a different design than that of smaller enclosed areas such as the Baltic or perhaps the Mediterranean, but such an analysis is not attempted. M. Mostert's ‘Linguistics of Contact in the Northern Seas’, though, does point out an interesting dichotomy between the many diverse languages of those living near the Northern seas and the Mediterranean, where Latin or Greek provided a trade-facilitating lingua franca.
Lastly, K. Lane's discussion on ‘Pirate Networks in the Caribbean’ provides a good conclusion on the network aspects of maritime empires. Without ports where goods (loot) could be exchanged and ships refitted, there was little to support pirating practices. It was only after European states had established Caribbean ports, with corruptible governors, that pirate trade accelerated in the seventeenth century.
Of principle interest to CR readers will be the first section, ‘The Middle Sea’. The Mycenaean, early Athenian and Theban pieces do not really succeed in providing evidence concerning power networks fostered by controlling ports. They are worth considering if one has a specific interest in that area but not regarding networks more generally. Pericles’ Megarian Decree restricting Megarian access to Athens’ network of ports would have been a good model to contrast against. The Ptolemaic approach, as Strootman describes it, would seem to follow the Periclean model controlling a network of eastern Mediterranean ports.
Publication of conference proceedings is, by definition, a record of the papers presented at the conference rather than a comprehensive examination of a topic. This conference was missing a discussion on the Phoenicians of the first millennium bce. Not only did the Phoenicians establish a far-flung Mediterranean trading network, they also adapted to a shift of the primary hub of the network from the Levant to Carthage in North Africa. The Phoenician trade and interaction with the Romans would have helped to close the large temporal gap in the Mediterranean section.
The volume does not by itself offer a comprehensive discussion on maritime networks or the creation of maritime power networks. Nor was that its intention. The book, however, is an addition to the discussion. Strootman's introduction and Section 3, ‘The Oceans’, are its strongest parts, but all the contributions are insightful and engage well with the nature of the evidence, even when they do not follow the brief.
