Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World (review)

During the period that is the focus of this work, roughly 1520-1580, there was little doubt among inhabitants of Europe and the Near East versed in affairs of the world that the struggle for control of the Mediterranean between the Ottoman Empire and Habsburg Spain, with Venice as an occasional participant, was a central conflict, if not the central conflict of their time. Whether as dream or nightmare, the notion that the Mediterranean might become an Ottoman lake seemed credible. From this perspective, the defeat of the Ottoman fleet by the forces of the Holy Alliance of Spain, Venice, and the Papacy in 1571 was an epochal event and the Ottoman check before Malta in 1565 an important harbinger. For later generations, the sense of immediacy and importance would fade in light of Lepanto's seemingly inconclusive results and the displacement of the Mediterranean as Center of the World by the maritime nations of the North Atlantic. Finally, the recent fashion of denying the importance of warfare has pushed the sixteenth century struggle for the Mediterranean into the shadows.

Roger Crowley swims against the tide, regarding the events of which he writes as important—with ample reason in this reviewer's opinion—portraying them as seen through contemporary eyes as well as any author with whose work I am familiar. Based on an exhaustive reading of published primary accounts and the secondary literature, including works in modern Turkish, Empires of the Sea is well-crafted narrative history in the best sense of the word, lucid, colorful, and beautifully written. Nor is it all top-down. The events Crowley chronicles were thought to be so important that a surprising number of ordinary combatants recorded their experiences. The Great Siege of Malta is particularly well served in this regard. The reconstruction of events over five centuries after the fact is an uncertain business, let alone opinions and emotions, but Crowley draws on a wealth of sources reflecting a multiplicity of viewpoints and the results are convincing.

This is not the book for those interested in reconstructing the ebb and flow of battle, though Crowley does a remarkably good job with the siege of Malta. But in giving a subjective feel for the bloody chaos of a major galley fight at deck level, this is as good as it gets. The accounts of diplomatic negotiations and of disputes among the commanders on both sides are equally good and Crowley's use of Turkish sources has enabled him to make significant contributions to our understanding in this regard.

The book is not without problems. The method of source attribution, end notes linking passages in the text to the sources from which they came, is awkward. Just what is attributed is not always clear. Worse, while contemporary sources are well attributed the same is not true for interpretations and analysis. For example we are told that "something in excess of seventy percent" of all war galleys in the Mediterranean met at Lepanto (p. 256), a staggering total that begs for explanation but goes unattributed. The figure derives from Fernand Braudel's estimate that between 500 and 600 war galleys were operating in the Mediterranean at the time of Lepanto.¹ The percentage comes from the reviewer's work, listed in the bibliography, and is expressed as a range of seventy to ninety percent.² Running the numbers yields seventy-five to ninety percent, but Crowley has reproduced my fudge, made to accommodate uncertainty concerning the number of galleys at Lepanto. While this sort of carelessness limits the book's value to the specialist, it is recommended for the general reader and as a college-level text.