Amphibious Warfare, 1000-1700: Commerce, State Formation, and European Expansion (review)

As a generic combat term, amphibious warfare possesses popular resonance: it is typically viewed as a combined army-navy deployment embodying military action upon the land and sea. Popular comprehension, however, is often superficial and based upon an appreciation of only the most recent historical events; this contention and a desire to demonstrate the historical nuance of amphibious warfare, including its wider contribution to European state development and commerce during the medieval and early modern periods underlies this important collection of twelve essays.

The editors' introductory essay is a model of clarity on the historiography, definition, and form of amphibious warfare. Rightly, it notes that this type of warfare, particularly within Britain and America, has attracted the attention of historians and contemporary commentators but that chronologically their published work has been focused on the nineteenth century forwards. Save for examinations of celebrated earlier events such as the capture of Quebec in 1759, the historiography of amphibious combat in medieval and early modern Europe is limited; this is a "black of hole" (p. 10) of concern to the editors given the previously recognized—(vide the "Military Revolution" debate)—significance of warfare during these periods for European state and economic development. Before addressing those relationships, however, the editors grapple with defining amphibious warfare. Although one person's definition often entails another's omission, the editors' designation that amphibious warfare comprises a "double conjuncture" (p. 27) of organizations systemically oriented to the land or water co-operating together on these elements is suitably broad. Moreover, as the editors further explain, this definition can be applied within a variety of strategic, tactical, and operational echelons, thus distinguishing between, for example, the nontactical, but operationally, amphibious invasion by William the Conqueror in 1066 and the grand amphibious, rather than maritime, strategy pursued by Britain during the Seven Years' War, 1756–63. The following essays effectively contextualize and explore aspects of this definition from 1000 through to 1700.

Matthew Bennett's contribution on tactical and operational amphibious warfare (principally in the Mediterranean) from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries convincingly demonstrates the myopic focus of current historiography upon the modern age. Essays by Louis Sicking and the late R. B. Wernham detail strategic and operational amphibious warfare undertaken by the Hanseatic League and the Habsburgs in the Baltic and by Elizabethan England in the Spanish Atlantic world during the fourteen to sixteenth centuries; both emphasize the centrality of commercial economies of scale in sustaining the strategic vision and practice of this type of warfare. The Baltic also provides the theatre of operations for Jan Glete's essay on Scandinavian amphibious combat over a 150-year period from the mid-sixteenth century; while in contrast, John Guilmartin, Jr.'s, essay on the Turkish siege of Malta in 1565 provides a microcosm of operational and tactical amphibious conflict. The commercial foundation of such warfare is similarly addressed in Malyn Newitt's essay on Portuguese amphibious actions in the Indian Ocean. Portugal's overseas empire is viewed as a function of the successful practice of amphibious warfare, but with the recognition that the cost necessarily involved the private speculator thereby diluting grand amphibious strategy. Mark Fissel's examination of English operational and tactical amphibious warfare from the late sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries highlights its variety and inherent flexibility. These qualities are implicit, and further developed, in the volume's penultimate essay by D. J. B. Trim on inshore, estuarine, riverine, and lacustrine warfare. Aside from the light shed on amphibious combat in these contexts, this essay insightfully advances a multidisciplinary agenda by demonstrating why historians, and particularly those interested in warfare, should be competent physical geographers. The other two essays in the volume—Guy Rowland's assessment of French amphibious capability during the reign of Louis XIV and John Stapleton, Jr.'s, examination of William III's pursuit...