De Re Militari | Book Reviews

D.J.B. Trim and Mark Charles Fissel (eds.)

Amphibious Warfare 1000-1700.
Commerce, State formation and European Expansion

Brill, Leiden, 2005.History of warfare, 34. xxxvi, 500 pp., 31 illus. ISBN 978 90 04 13244 3.

INDEX

The title of the present book, if not untrue, is at least misleading as only two chapters out of eleven have something to do with the Middle Ages. In fact, only 30 out of 500 pages deal with medieval campaigns, apart from some scattered references in the interesting but very general and methodological overview on “Inshore, estuarine, riverine and lacustrian warfare” by D.J.B. Trim. By the way, this last chapter does lack references to the situation in China and Japan where riverine (Yellow river) and lacustrian (Lake Biwa) warfare is quite well documented in medieval and early modern times. Besides, those possible references to the Far East would not be out of place in that article, for although focused on early modern Europe, non-European examples from America and India are to be found.

When I first saw the list of contributors, I was a bit shocked as I only recognized two well known specialists in naval warfare: M. Bennet and John F. Guilmartin Jr; together with some newcomers in that field such as Louis Sicking[1] and Jan Glete[2] (the latter two also participated in War at Sea in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance [Boydell, 2003]). However, all the authors are familiar and know the ropes in their respective geographical areas of interest: the Portuguese empire, Elizabethan England, English warfare, and so on.  Nonetheless, this book has seen a long gestation since these contribitors gave their papers at different conferences in 1997, 2001 and 2005.

The core of this book is the European naval warfare in expansion in the 16th and 17th centuries, and more specifically those campaigns regarded as “amphibious”, which took place originally in a Mediterranean framework but then expanded to the Atlantic, Baltic, Caribbean and Pacific. The discussion about the use of the term amphibious in such a period, as well as the related concepts of "inshore" and "riverine" warfare and their methods, is the first and main point to be noticed. In this sense the articles by the two editors are very clear, defending the importance of geography and to the fact that they were combined or joint operations (ground and waterborne forces) with an increasing frequency and sophistication. The editors thus draw our attention to cooperation on land and in water, and actual practice of amphibious warfare.

I will focus on the two articles that deal with the Middle Ages.

The chapter by T. Bennett, “Amphibious operation from the Norman Conquest to the crusades of Saint Louis” is a kind of introduction or base for the following chapters. in 18 pages, Bennett surveys two hundred years of medieval naval warfare pinpointing different episodes such as the Norman conquest of England and Sicily (1060s), Richard I´s crusade (1187), the 1204 crusade that took Byzantium[3], and the two crusades to Egypt in 1217 and 1248. His conclusion is that successful naval and amphibious expeditions could be achieved in the Middle Ages provided sufficient expertise, engineers, and seamen, and where operations took place near a coastline from which they could obtain support. It is worth noting that another book will appear shortly dealing with this topic: The Military Orders vol. 4 On Land and Sea (ed. J. Upton-Ward, Ashgate, 2008)

L. Sicking´s “Amphibious warfare in the Baltic, 1550-1700” tries to compare two quite different naval enterprises: the Hansa campaigns of King Valdemar of Denmak (1362 and 1368) and the Habsburg involvement in the Danish wars of succession (that included a planned amphibious operation in 1536). His conclusion: “whereas in 1360s troops were needed for any naval warfare, with the introduction of heavy artillery on board after the start of the sixteenth century, naval operations could be carried out without troops” (p. 94). He argues that medieval naval warfare was almost always amphibious warfare, as the main role of the fleet was the transportation of troops. Thus, naval battles were mainly infantry battles, even beyond the gunpowder revolution.

Other articles deal in Amphibious Warfare deal with the 16th and 17th centuries. Some of them deal with the Spanish Empire, but there are very few books and sources in Spanish cited in those articles. For example, Guilmartin´s article, “The Siege of Malta, 1565”, where the Spanish troops and fleet played an important role, only quotes one book in Spanish (from 1968) and one archive (Archivo del Museo naval de Madrid), missing some important contributions and sources to the subject that can be found in the Royal Archives of Simancas and Barcelona. It is understandable that Mira Caballos´s Las armadas imperiales: la guerra en el mar en los tiempos de Carlos V y Felipe II (La Esfera de los libros, Madrid, 2005) appeared too late to be considered, but he should have noticed the works in the first symposium of the Order of San Juan de Jerusalén (1990), republished in Revista de Archivos Hispalense, 86-86 (2003).

The present book offers a very refreshing methodological approach to the subject of amphibious warfare, and has a good index and representative illustrations. Overall this is a very interesting book for researchers in early modern sea warfare (with a small introduction about the Middle Ages).

Notes

Jose Manuel Rodriguez Garcia

UNED, Spain <[email protected]>

Page Added: April 2008