To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.98 (820 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0060534249 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 672 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-02-15 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
. Arthur Herman is the author of How the Scots Invented the Modern World as well as The Idea of Decline in Western History and Joseph McCarthy. He has been a professor of history at Georgetown University, Catholic University, George Mason University, and the University of the South
And it was the Royal Navy, led by men like Horatio Nelson, that stopped him in his tracks and preserved the liberty of Europe and the rest of the world. From its beginnings under Henry VIII and adventurers like John Hawkins and Francis Drake, the Royal Navy toppled one world eco-nomic system, built by Spain and Portugal after Christopher Columbus, and ushered in another -- the one in which we still live today.In the sixteenth century, such men as Hawkins, Drake, and Martin Frobisher were all seekers after their own fortunes as well as servants of their nation. That global order would survive the convulsions of the twentieth century and the downfall of the British Empire itself, as Britain passed its essential elements on to its successors, the United States and its navy.Illuminating and en
He also writes extremely well, whether dealing with the role of the Royal Navy in founding the British iron and steel industries (it was a major customer) or grand battles, such as Quiberon Bay (1759) or Trafalgar (1805). All rights reserved. Although definitely Anglocentric and navalist, the author has done his research on a scale that such a large topic (to say nothing of a large book) requires. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. Probably to no one's surprise, his thesis is that the British Empire was the foundation of the modern world and the Royal Navy the foundation of that empire. By and large, he sustains that thesis in a fluent narrative that stretches from the Elizabethan Age to the
Unfulfilled Promise Grover Hartt, III Arthur Herman's To Rule the Waves is a gallant attempt at a one-volume history of the Royal Navy and its impact on world history. Much of the narrative of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is extremely well done. He also offers such insightful observations as "It is only when we look backward that history assumes a predictable pattern. Viewed the other way around, as it is lived, it abounds in inexplicable turns and strange surprises."It is, therefore, disappointing that such a fine book should be handicapped by numerous factual errors. Cartagena is not the capit. "History With Swashbuckling Included" according to John D. Cofield. To Rule The Waves is an excellent history of the Royal Navy and its effect on the world. It begins with the first English efforts to sail beyond their small island's home waters and traces the story through the Navy's most glorious years in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into its decline in the twentieth, finishing up with a brief survey of the Navy's activities during the 1982 Falklands War.This is not your average military history or a patriotic review of a nation's pride. There is plenty of detail about events and details which ordinarily wouldn't be conside. "An Excellent Compendium" according to Thomas M. Sullivan. Having read a great many works on the British Navy generally, and on the "Age of Nelson" specifically, I highly recommend this book to the general reader who desires a comprehensive overview of the subject. Other reviewers are correct that the book tends to be somewhat simplistic and hyperbolic in places, and I was amazed at the number of editorial gaffes, double and omitted words, etc. Having said that, Herman does an excellent job of providing a context for the major turning points in the British Navy's history, and particulalrly its precipitous decline between the Fi