Geography, technology, and war: studies in the maritime history of the Mediterranean, 649-1571 (review)

172 Reviews bibliography (46 pages) is only too revealing. The sheer task of assimilating the material from the several hundred municipal fueros, many of which are very long, must have been daunting. Then there are the several dozen chronicles, many royd law codes and some Arabic materids. Necessarily the analysis of the frontier in conflict is Christiano-centric but Powers does make a significant attempt to let us see the impact of Christian activities on their Muslim antagonists when possible. The author's wider interests in the generd themes of frontier history underlie the development of the book. In this respect it will come to command a centrd place amongst the works of the schools of American (and other) frontier historians. There is much food for thought here for historians of all aspects of the expanding European frontiers of the central Middle Ages, particularly for Crusade historians. Powers' analysis of the aptitude of the military organisation of the Iberian towns for defence of the frontier places in stark relief the failure of their co-religionists in the Crusader states to do the same. It is the development of the book within a framework of themes of frontier history which turns what might easily have become a barren discussion of institutions into a lively analysis of the military aspects of a frontier society on a permanent war footing. John H. Pryor Department of History University of Sydney Pryor, J. H., Geography, technology, and war: studies in the maritime history of the Mediterranean, 649-1571 (Past and Present Publications), Cambridge, C.U.P., 1988; pp. xviii, 238; 3 tables; 29 figures; R.R.P. A U S $81.00. In his Introduction, Pryor declares boldly that his study 'provides insights which have been underemphasized even by those historians who have been most conscious of the influence of geography and technology on the course of Mediterranean maritime history' (p. 11). In other words, he believes that the nexus between geography and maritime technology had an even greater impact than assumed by so prominent an exponent of the importance of geographical factors as Fernand Braudel, or historians of sedaring such as Archibald Lewis and Ekkehard Eickhoff. O n the other hand, Pryor underlines time and again that geographical and technological factors should not be considered the sole determinants of maritime developments in the medievd Mediterranean. O n the whole, Pryor navigates with impressive skill between his selfimposed Scylla of underestimating and Charybdis of overemphasizing the role of physical factors. His lucid exposition of the counterclockwise current circulation throughout the Mediterranean, the northerly winds which prevail in it, and the marked differences between its northern and southern coasts should become Reviews 173 compulsory reading for medievalists interested in Mediterranean affairs. In fact, even so great an historian of the medieval Mediterranean as the late S. D. Goitein could have profited from it Pryor's main thesis is that current circulation, winds and coastal configuration, in conjunction with the technologicd limitations of contemporary ships, led mariners from antiquity down to the sixteenth century to prefer the sea-lanes along the northern coasts and the nearby large islands. It is a persuasive thesis, and the same is true of the corollary that the islands close to the northern coasts had a crucial strategic importance throughout the period in question. Thesis and corollary go a long way to explain a considerable number of apparendy unrelated phenomena: the inherent instability of the Muslim navd predominance in the ninth and tenth centuries; the Fatimid inability to cut the maritime lifeline of the Crusader states; the superiority of the Catholic West in trans-Mediterranean traffic between the late-eleventh and mid-fifteenth centuries; the recapture of much of that traffic by Ottoman subjects by the sixteenth century; and the limited operation capabilities of the Barbary corsairs. In addition, Pryor argues that the widespread notion that Muslim and Byzantine shipping was eliminated in the high Middle Ages largely reflects the imbalance between Occidental and Oriental documentation, and proffers evidence for the continued existence of non-Catholic shipping. Throughout his exposition Pryor is constrained to rely on scanty evidence, the interpretation of which may on occasion change quite substantially with the introduction ofjust...