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.