In ‘The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy,” Jacob Burckhardt described the state as a “work of art”—that is, something made along certain designs and guided by certain ideas. Andrew Lambert, a distinguished British naval historian, adopts Buckhardt's framing to explore how medium-size states, from ancient times to the modern period, consciously developed an identity centered on the sea. Thus “Seapower States” presents, along with a fascinating geopolitical chronicle, “the history of an idea, and its transmission across time.”
Terrestrial identity, Mr. Lambert writes, “has always been the ‘normal' setting.” But to make the sea a guiding feature of statecraft involves a deliberate choice, and it can have large effects: naval forces will outrank armies, for instance, and political structures will include a sharing of power with commercial elites, whose support is needed to raise the revenue that large fleets require. There may be an imaginative and symbolic aspect as well, with the rituals of public ceremony, and the iconography of art and architecture, celebrating maritime prowess to consolidate a sea-borne identity. Mr. Lambert focuses on five seapower states—Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic and Britain—revealing their particular character and outlining the tensions and rivalries they faced.
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