Sea Lines of Communications: Control of the Highways of the Sea

Unit 1 Chapter 1 Notes

Vocabulary:

Sea Power: The ability to use the sea to meet a nation’s needs, including defending its sea lanes and shielding them in time of war

Sea Lines of Communications: Control of the highways of the sea

Grapple: A hook by which one ship fastens onto another for boarding and combat

Invasion: Entering another country by force

Plunder: To rob goods or valuables by open force

Galley: A seagoing ship with oars and sometimes sails, crewed b trained fighting men

Mare Nostrum: Latin for “Our Seas.” All Mediterranean coasts, posts and naval bases controlled by Rome

Rebellion: Open, organized and armed resistance to one’s government or ruler

Piracy: Robbery or illegal violence at sea

Privateering: Using privately owned ships commissioned by a government to fight or harass enemy ships

Convoy: Warships protecting merchant shipping from hostile action

Ammunition: Objects that are shot from weapons

Maneuverability: The ability for planned regulated movement of troops or warships

Flank: Extreme right or left side of the fleet or army

Mercantile Theory: A system of economic organization based on a theory that total wealth is a fixed quantity. To become richer and more powerful, a nation must make another nation poorer through capture of its trade and colonies

Armada: A large fleet of warships

Early Seafarers:

• Crete (2500 – 1200 B.C.)

• First country to use sea power because it was too rugged for farming

• Dominated its neighbors

• Controlled major sea routes

• Phoenicians (2000 – 300 B.C.)

• Next to master the sea in region

• Carried

• Tin from Britain

• Amber from Baltic Sea

• Slaves and ivory from Africa

• Established ports in modern Lebanon

• Carried wealth of the Orient to coastal trading cities around the Mediterranean and northern Europe

• Created Phoenician’s Alphabet

• Written language of traders

• Basis for our alphabet

• Most important contribution of the Phoenicians

• Greece (1200 – 330 B.C.)

• The followed the Phoenicians

• By 500 B.C. the Greek city-states had achieved a high level of civilization, and their trading ships and naval vessels sailed the entire Mediterranean.

• By 492 B.C. Greek expansion had run into the forces of Persia (now Iran) moving westward into the Mediterranean

• The Greeks were able to hold off two Persian invasions in the next 12 years and withdrew from Thrace and Macedonia

• King Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.C.

• 1,300 galley navy

• 180,000-man army

• Fleet guards the army’s flank

• Greek Commander Themistocles...

• Built naval forces of 380 triremes

• Sailed to waters around the island of Salamis, using hit-and-run attacks.

• Used the narrow straits to reduce the number advantages of the Persian fleet

• Golden Age of Athens

• Concept of democracy and foundations of Western civilization were born

• Under Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Greeks conquered much of the eastern Mediterranean, spreading Greek culture

• He established the great port of Alexandria

• Persia was driven from the seas

• Greeks controlled the eastern Mediterranean for the next two centuries

• Rome

• Rome in Italy soon became a power, and absorbed Greek culture

• Carthage in North Africa, was a rising sea power in the western Mediterranean

• Rome vs. Carthage – the Punic Wars

• First Punic War: Rome got Sicily as a province

• Second Punic War: Gave Spain to Rome

• Third Punic War: Carthage burned and destroyed forever

• PAX ROMANA –

• Mare Nostrum – Latin for “Our Sea”, meaning all the Mediterranean was controlled by the Romans

• Roman Peace prevailed for over five centuries, the longest period of peace in world history

• Rome’s greatness began to decline due to social, political and economic issues.

• Barbarians from northern and central Europe conquered Rome and deposed the last emperor in 476 A.D.

• The Dark Ages – 476 – 1050 A.D.

• Period of Western European history with little written records

• Numerous invasions by barbaric tribes

• Incursions by North African Moors

• Religious bigotry

• General lack of education among the masses of people

• The Battle of Lepanto – 1571 A.D.

• Battle between the Western Europeans and the Ottoman Turks in the Mediterranean Sea

• The Christians of Europe defeated the Turks by use of technology, specifically, the arquebus

• By this point, the Mediterranean had begun to decline as the center of world maritime activity

• Turkish hold on the Middle East had caused seafaring nations to seek new routes to Asia

• The Age of Discovery had dawned

• The Age of Discovery

• Led by Portugal with early explorations around Africa. Portugal’s leadership was short-lived because neighboring Spain soon overwhelmed it.

• The Mercantile theory drove European countries to seek wealth by taking from other countries

• Spain and England engaged in a war for control of the seas

• Spain sent an Armada to attack and defeat the British fleet

• Spain:

• 124 galleons

• 8,000 sailors

• 1,100 guns

• 19,000 soldiers

• England:

• 34 men-of-war

• 163 armed merchantmen

• 2,000 guns

• 16,000 men

• Spain had more soldiers, but less guns, the English had guns that shot further and used that to defeat the Spanish Armada

• England now becomes the world superpower and establishes their empire

• The first successful British colony in North America was in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607

• Georgia was created by English citizens that wanted to get out of debtor’s prison.