302 International Journal of Maritime History

they provide the most complete documentation of the fleet lists of the
seven firms. This book is surely a useful and indispensable contribu-
tion to the study of modern Chinese maritime history.

Pin-tsun Chang Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

Clark G. Reynolds. History and the Sea: Essays on Maritime Strategies.

Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989. viii + 232 pp.,
notes, index. $24.95. ISBN 0-87249-614-7.

All but one of the ten essays in this volume have appeared elsewhere.
They are not arranged in the order in which they were written,
however, and instead begin with a chapter first published in 1974 on
"Strategic Uses of the Sea--Patterns and Options." The next three
chapters discuss various aspects of what Professor Reynolds calls the
"thalassocracies," that is, the maritime states of Minoa from 1600-1400
B.c., Athens in the fifth century B.C., Venice and Florence from 1200
to 1500, Great Britain from 1650-1900, and the United States. Four
chapters are devoted to the national, or maritime, strategies used by
these countries (particularly the United States) against their continen-
tal enemies. In two separate essays the author also examines the
strategies used by Japan ("The Continental State upon the Sea:
Imperial Japan") and the Soviet Union ("Eight Centuries of Continen-
tal Strategy: Imperial and Soviet Russia.") The latter was written
expressly for this book, although it was finished before Mikhail
Gorbachev came to power and does not discuss any of the startling
changes which have subsequently taken place in the world.
All of these articles reflect Reynolds's aspirations to write a
universal history that will "build upon the crude beginnings of [Alfred
Thayer] Mahan's essay" The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1680-
1783 (p. 74). Reynolds alludes to some of the shortcomings of Mahan's
work as a historian in a 1971 essay on "Captain Mahan, Thalassocratic
Determinist." These faults notwithstanding, the author boldly proclaims
Mahan to have been "a major historical philosopher" who should be
classed with the likes of Burkhardt, Dilthey, Neitzsche, Freud,
Spengler, and "his fellow countrymen Turner and Beard, whose...sub-
ject matter, American history, was much narrower than Mahan's" (p.
67).

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 Book Reviews 303

Reynolds, too, casts a wide net as he seeks to identify some of

the common ways in which the sea has influenced the six maritime
states he calls "thalassocracies." He argues that the economic and
military power of these states depended on manufacturing, industry,
"overseas trade, possessions, and dependencies and not on any
continental landmass." All had "a strong middle class of capitalists" and
combined a "free enterprise ethic" with "free social institutions'[ and a
democratic or republican form of government. The navy was the
dominant armed service in each of these states, whose warships had
to control the remotest seas plied by the merchant marine as well as
nearby coastal waters. The unusually demanding nature of life aboard
ship made the navy "a bedrock of individualism," "a vital component
of the democratic spirit," and "a pillar in the support of free institu-
tions" (pp. 7, 138).
These and other fascinating observations abound throughout the
book, although in his enthusiasm to discover what maritime powers
have in common the author sometimes blurs the very real differences
separating the six states he regards as the only "genuine thalas-
socracies" (p. 21). He barely mentions the mercantilistic system
practised in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Great Britain, for
example. He also neglects to point out that Parliament did not fully
embrace free trade until the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 even
then the Navigation Laws remained. More important, he ignores the
vital contribution that land husbandry made to the maritime power of
at least three of the thalassocracies: ancient Athens, Great Britain, and
the United States. The economic and maritime power of the latter in
particular long depended on the sale of agricultural surpluses to other
countries.
Reynolds again lets his enthusiasm for the sea get the better of
him when he asserts that sailors and maritime powers are somehow
more individualistic, more creative, and more supportive of democratic
values than soldiers and continental powers (p. 7). Reynolds is not the
first person to make such a claim. Indeed, the belief that navies pose
less of a threat to liberty than do armies predates Mahan by many
years. I agree with the author that the two services differ in a number
of important ways that deserve more careful analysis than they have
received from historians and other scholars. Nevertheless, I question
whether either of these authoritarian institutions stimulates the degree
of individualism he attributes to the navy. I am equally dubious of the

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304 International Journal of Maritime History

argument that the citizens of maritime states are on the whole freer,
more creative, and more individualistic than people who live inland.
The fullest expression of Reynolds's views regarding "thalas-
socracies" can be found in his sweeping Command of the Sea: The
History and Strategy of Maritime Empires (New York, 1974). Indeed,
the first chapter of History and the Sea originally appeared there. The
author has since modified some of his ideas, particularly the belief that
during much of the nineteenth century the United States was a
continental power which closely resembled France. He does not
dispute the subordinate status of the U.S. Navy in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. In chapter five, "Reconsidering American
Strategic History and Doctrines," however, he argues that "the
overriding strategic fact throughout American history down to World
War II ...is that the first line of national defense lay not in America's
Army or Navy but rather in the British Navy" (p. 112). To me this
chapter is in many ways the most rewarding in the book. Reynolds
exaggerates the role played by the Royal Navy in the nineteenth
century, but he makes two important points in this essay that anyone
who studies the armed forces would do well to consider. Military
historians often focus on a country's dominant service to the virtual
exclusion of its other armed forces. As the author clearly demonstrates
in this essay, such an approach can give a misleading picture of
national strategy and policy. Reynolds also shows in this and other
chapters that scholars who wish to understand a country's strategic
history must broaden their horizons and pay more careful attention to
enemy as well as allied plans and actions. In short, military historians
must become practitioners of comparative history, much as Reynolds
did two decades ago.

William..R. Roberts United States Naval Academy

Peter Murray. The Vagabound Fleet: A Chronicle of the North Pacific

Sealing Schooner Trade. Sono Nis Press: Victoria, B.c., 1988.260 pp.,
notes, photographs, colour plates (by Cmdr. Maurice Chadwick),
bibliography, index. $29.95 (Canadian). ISBN 1-55039-000-7.

This chronicle of fur sealing in the North Pacific, concentrating

particularly on the Canadian effort, contains an enormous amount of

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