Everything about Thalassocracy totally explained
The term
thalassocracy (from the
Greek Θαλασσα, meaning sea, and κρατία, meaning rule) refers to a
state with primarily
maritime realms—an
empire at
sea, such as the
Phoenician network of
merchant cities. Traditional thalassocracies seldom dominate interiors, even in their home territories (for example:
Tyre,
Sidon, or
Carthage). Distinguish this traditional sense of
thalassocracy from an "empire," where the state's territories, though possibly linked principally or solely by the
sea lanes, generally extend into mainland interiors. Therefore, empires such as the
British Empire were not thalassocracies.
The term can also simply refer to
naval supremacy, in either military or commercial senses of the word "supremacy."
The word
thalassocracy itself, deriving from the Greek
thalassokratiā—
thalassa meaning "sea," and
kratiā meaning "rule" or "government"—first occurred amongst the
ancient Greeks describing the government of the
Minoan civilization, whose power depended on its
navy.
Herodotus spoke of the need to counter the Phoenician thalassocracy by developing a Greek "empire of the sea."
Examples
There are many ancient examples besides those mentioned above, such as the
Sea Peoples and the
Delian League. Aside from these, which were empires based primarily on naval power and control of waterways and not on any land possessions, the
Middle Ages saw its fair share of thalassocracies, often land-based empires which controlled the sea. Among the most famous is the
Republic of Venice, conventionally divided in the fifteenth century into the
Dogado of Venice and the Lagoon, the
Stato di Terraferma of Venetian holdings in northern Italy, and the
Stato da Mar of the Venetian outlands bound by the sea. Near-contemporaneously, the
Dubrovnik Republic can be seen as a "thalassocracy," a
protégé of Venice.
The
Dark Ages (c.
500–c.
1000) saw much of the coastal cities of the
Mezzogiorno develop into minor thalassocracies whose chief powers lay in their ports and their ability to sail navies to defend friendly coasts and ravage enemy ones. These include the variously Greek,
Lombard,
Angevin, and
Saracen duchies of
Gaeta,
Sicily,
Naples,
Pisa,
Salerno,
Amalfi,
Bari, and
Sorrento. Later, northern Italy developed its own trade empires based on
Pisa and especially the powerful
Republic of Genoa, that rivaled with
Venice (these three, along with Amalfi, were to be called the
Repubbliche marinare, for example Sea Republics).
It was with the modern age, the
Age of Exploration, that some of the most remarkable thalassocracies emerged. Anchored in their European territories, several nations establish colonial empires held together by naval supremacy. First among them was the
Portuguese Empire, followed soon by the
Spanish Empire, which was challenged by the
Dutch Empire, itself replaced on the high seas by the
British Empire, whose landed possessions were immense and held together by the greatest navy of its time. With naval arms races (especially between
Germany and
Britain) and the end of colonialism and the granting of independence to these colonies, European thalassocracies, which had controlled the world's oceans for centuries, ceased to be.
List of other examples
Further Information
Get more info on 'Thalassocracy'.
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