Thalassocracy


A thalassocracy or thalattocracy is a state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea, or a seaborne empire. Traditional thalassocracies seldom dominate interiors, even in their home territories. Examples of this are the Phoenician states of Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage of the Mediterranean; and the Austronesian states of Srivijaya and Majapahit of Maritime Southeast Asia. Thalassocracies can thus be distinguished from traditional empires, where a state's territories, though possibly linked principally or solely by the sea lanes, generally extend into mainland interiors in a tellurocracy.
The term thalassocracy can also simply refer to naval supremacy, in either military or commercial senses. The Ancient Greeks first used the word thalassocracy to describe the government of the Minoan civilization, whose power depended on its navy. Herodotus distinguishes sea-power from land-power and spoke of the need to counter the Phoenician thalassocracy by developing a Greek "empire of the sea".

History and examples of thalassocracies

Indo-Pacific

The Austronesian peoples of Maritime Southeast Asia, who built the first ocean-going ships, developed the Indian Ocean's first true maritime trade network. They established trade routes with Southern India and Sri Lanka as early as 1500 BC, ushering in an exchange of material culture and cultigens ; as well as connecting the material cultures of India and China. Indonesians in particular traded in spices with East Africa, using catamaran and outrigger boats and sailing with the help of the Westerlies in the Indian Ocean. This trade network expanded to reach as far as Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, resulting in the Austronesian colonization of Madagascar by the first half of the first millennium AD. It continued into historic times, later becoming the Maritime Silk Road.
The first thalassocracies in the Indo-Pacific began to emerge around the 2nd century AD, through the rise of emporia exploiting the prosperous trade routes between Funan and India through the Malacca Strait using advanced Austronesian sailing technologies. Numerous coastal city-states emerged, centered on trading ports built near or around river mouths which allowed easy access to goods from inland for maritime trade. These city-states established commercial networks with other trading centers within Southeast Asia and beyond. Their rulers also gradually Indianized by adopting the social structures and religions of India to consolidate their power internally and externally.
The thalassocratic empire of Srivijaya emerged by the 7th century through conquest and subjugation of neighboring thalassocracies. These included Melayu, Kedah, Tarumanagara, and Medang, among others. These polities controlled the sea lanes in Southeast Asia and exploited the spice trade of the Spice Islands, as well as maritime trade-routes between India and China. Srivijaya was in turn subjugated by Singhasari around 1275, before finally being absorbed by the successor thalassocracy of Majapahit.

Europe and the Mediterranean

The Ancient World provided other examples besides those mentioned above, such as the Delian League.
The Middle Ages saw multiple thalassocracies, often land-based empires which controlled areas of the sea. Among the most famous was 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 Màr of the Venetian outlands bound by the sea:
The Early Middle Ages saw many of the coastal cities of the Mezzogiorno develop into minor thalassocracies whose chief powers lay in their ports and in their ability to sail navies to defend friendly coasts and to ravage enemy ones. These include the variously Greek and Lombard duchies of Gaeta, Naples, Salerno and Amalfi.
After 1000, northern and central Italy developed their own trade empires based on Pisa and especially the powerful Republic of Genoa, that rivaled Venice. These three, along with Amalfi, Gaeta, Ancona and the dalmatian Ragusa are called maritime republics.
With the modern age, the Age of Exploration saw some of the most formidable thalassocracies emerge. Anchored in their European territories, several nations established colonial empires held together by naval supremacy. First among them chronologically 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 and the end of colonialism and the granting of independence to many colonies, European thalassocracies, which had controlled the world's oceans for centuries, diminished - though Britain's power-projection in the Falklands War of 1982 demonstrated continuing thalassocratic clout.

Transcontinental

The Ottoman Empire expanded from a land-based region to dominate the eastern Mediterranean and to expand into the Indian Ocean as a thalassocracy from the 15th century AD.

List of examples