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perpetuating anti-democratic valuations. Isocrates (Peace 8.102–3) in 355 BC argued that sea power caused injustice, lawlessness, laziness, greed, covetousness and tyranny. Sea power, he observed, was fostered by the crafts associated with the building of ships and by men able to row them – men who, in his opinion, having lost their own possessions, were used to living off the possessions of others (Isoc. Panath. 12.115–16). Despite its social effects, the advantages of thalassocracy were well understood by Greeks in the classical period. Contemporary discourse in Athens on
The sea and International Relations is a path-breaking collection which opens up the conversation about the sea in International Relations (IR), and probes the value of analysing the sea in IR terms. While the world’s oceans cover more than 70 percent of its surface, the sea has largely vanished as an object of enquiry in IR, being treated either as a corollary of land or as time. Yet, the sea is the quintessential international space, and its importance to global politics has become all the more obvious in recent years. Drawing on interdisciplinary insights from IR, historical sociology, blue humanities and critical ocean studies, The sea and International Relations breaks with this trend of oceanic amnesia, and kickstarts a theoretical, conceptual and empirical discussion about the sea and IR, offering novel takes on the spatiality of world politics by highlighting theoretical puzzles, analysing broad historical perspectives and addressing contemporary challenges. In bringing the sea back into IR, The sea and International Relations reconceptualises the canvas of IR to include the oceans not only as travel time, but as a social, political, economic and military space which affects the workings of world politics. As such, The sea and International Relations is as ambitious as it is timely. Together, the contributions to the volume emphasise the pressing need to think of the world with the sea rather than ignoring it in order to address not only the ecological fate of the globe, but changing forms of international order.
the transforming dynamics within this geography. Maritime security equally does not provide detail on changing connectivities at sea. In order to build up a language that considers how power is rendered through the sea, the chapter turns to the power over the sea that the Greeks held during antiquity, also known as the Greek thalassocracy. While many periods of time, and many world views other than European
outside destinations in Oman and Gujarat. Omani agents injected a range of raw resources into international trade such as copra, rare timbers, animal hides, horns and shells. The Omani Empire even helped in the creation of Swahili civilisation through their subjection of the Swahili to the powers of the Indian Ocean trade (Nicolini, 2004: 57–66). The engagement of other civilisational forces in East Africa was part of this civilisational process also. Older traditions of intra-African trade and trade between the interior and thalassocracies on East Africa’s coasts all
, invested two billion guilders and sold shipments of spices, precious woods, porcelain and textiles for an even greater return. The VOC had sovereignty rights in its territories granted by the States-General, but it quickly freed itself from any control of the Dutch Republic. 2 It established itself as a thalassocracy, controlling a large expanse
. Hell. 4.4.18). Athenian ideology, therefore, is revealed in the construction and maintenance of these defences, for they were the physical symbol of Athens’ reliance on her harbour, fleet and thalassocracy. Athens’ long walls gave her the potential, conceptually, to become an island (Thuc. 1.143), or almost. There were those who had their doubts: the Acharnians for instance, who 3033 The ancient Greeks 136 12/7/07 13:36 Page 136 The ancient Greeks at war demanded Pericles march the army out to save their deme (Thuc. 2.21), or the Old Oligarch (2.14) who noted
to localised and autonomous coastal markets rather than a quasi-imperial thalassocracy of controlled trade like the Phoenicians. The Romans more fully subsumed colonisation under the logic of warrior conquest. In turn, the long warrior and maritime empire of the Romans suffered invasions from Huns, Vandals and Goths. The Han Empire also bore incursions into northern China. Invasions weakened the dynasty, which, in turn, became vulnerable to internal rebellion. Dynastic decline resulted and the greater empire disintegrated into rival regions. On the other hand, the