Medieval Ships and Warfare (review)

Military historians must be quite familiar with The International Library of Essays on Military History as the volume being reviewed here is the 34th title in the series edited by Jeremy Black. Reprints of articles in the English language previously published in "key journals" concerning a certain field of military history are brought together in a single volume, adding an introduction by the editor of the volume, a name index, and a second, continuous page indication, next to the original one belonging to the journals in which the articles were originally published.

One of the aims of this volume is to show the variety, interest and quality of a selection of essays on the rather neglected area of medieval naval warfare. The history of war at sea has always had more attention from early modernists than from medievalists but this has been changing over the past few years as is witnessed, for instance, in B. Hattendorf and R.W. Unger, eds., War at Sea in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance(Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003).

Susan Rose selected 27 articles on medieval ships and warfare, published between 1930 and 2003, from such well known international journals as Speculumand Viator, national maritime journals such as The Mariner's Mirrorand American Neptune, and less well known regional journals and proceedings like Catalan Reviewor the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Proceedings. The book is divided into two parts: part I covers North-Western Europe and part II deals with the Mediterranean. Part I consists of three thematic sections: the technology of ships and boats, piracy and pirates, and fleets and warfare. Part II is equally divided into three sections, each focusing on different powers around the Mediterranean: the Islamic powers, Iberia, and finally Genoa and Venice.

North-Western Europe clearly appears to be limited to England, and, to a much lesser extent to Flanders. The latter is the case partly thanks to contributions on the Battles of Damme (1213) and Sluis (1340) which are within the borders of that county. Kelly DeVries's article (1995) on the perceptions of victory and defeat at Sluis has a broader scope as it discusses contemporary English, French and Flemish perceptions. The same is true for Ian Friel's contribution (1983) on documentary sources on medieval ships and that of C.J. Ford (1979) on maritime violence in the Channel at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

The Mediterranean is best represented with 15 contributions, which makes perfect sense for the maritime history of medieval Europe. Six articles on Iberia include three contributions from archaeological journals and proceedings: L.V. Mott on ships of the thirteenth century Catalan navy (1990), F. Foerster Laures on the warships of the kings of Aragon and their tactics in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (1987), and Susan Rose on the representation of tactics of medieval galley warfare in chronicles and contemporary illustrations (2003). The fleets and wars of the Fatimids ( W. Hamblin [1986]), Saladin (A.S. Ehrenkreutz [1955]), and the Mamluks (D. Ayalon [1965] and A. Fuess [2001]) represent Islamic naval power. J.E. Dotson monopolizes the section on Genoa and Venice with three articles: one on naval strategy in the First Genoese-Venetian War (1257-1270), one on feet operations (1264-1266) during that war, and one on Venetian naval strategy between 1000 and 1500. Frederic Lane's work was not included as it is well known and collected in edited volumes.

The absence of contributions on the naval history of the Vikings and later medieval Scandinavia, the Hanseatic League and the Low Countries outside Flanders—the naval importance of Holland's and Zealand's merchant fleets was widely recognized in late medieval Western Europe-is notable. The more so as a whole Anglophone historiography is available on the Vikings whereas more and more publications on medieval Scandinavia, the Hansa and the Low Countries appear in English. Why the Baltic and northern European naval warfare of the...