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Dunno how to answer. Your question is very vast.
Medieval and Early Modern commercial expansion - especially maritime - has been one of my deep interests for years. I have never found a single good comprehensive treatment of it, but rather collected slices from here and there - from old ship logs, merchant letters & travelogues, rutters, chronicles, mercantilist treatises, and modern historical, economic & scientific treatments of certain aspects of it. But nothing really that collects it all in one place for an overall picture. Such a book is needed and I often contemplated writing it myself, but it is a very vast topic.
There is the added difficulty that scholarship tends to be nationalistic - Italians write about Italian maritime republics, Portuguese authors about Portuguese discoveries, Spaniards about Spanish colonialism, Dutchmen about Dutch companies, etc. - and they don't necessarily cross-consult and their studies often remain untranslated. It is a rare bird that makes an effort to read across them all and no one has really weaved them together. The few that try either stick to a narrow feature or tend to get lost in thickets.
Also, a warning: the secondary literature is also often lacking on the economic and technical side. It is mostly written by historians who have only the most tenuous grasp of other fields. So when they stick their noses into commercial or navigational material, they don't always recognize what they're looking at, or what importance to give it, or how to embed it properly in a larger story.
So I don't know how to answer your question. I like reading the originals more than the summary attempts. But I am not sure unloading a bunch of works in archaic languages is what you are looking for. There are some areas that are done better, but these are narrower and more specialized slices than the general treatment you are asking.
I agree that the Mongols as a people were politically and militarily relevant for a very long time, I just object to using 'the Mongol Empire' as an example of a long-lived and globally powerful polity and an argument for heartland-theory geopolitics. The steppe was desolate, and the way steppe people adapted to that desolation made them tactically and logistically superior in warfare. But for a steppe people to become genuinely powerful and relevant they needed to take control of land that was more productive and more densely-populated.
I thought I had.
You are certainly correct. And it made the naval powers even more damn irritating to land powers.
Pick up any 17th C. economic treatise written by Englishman or Frenchman, and you'll find them spewing curses at the Dutch over cash. The King of France has six times the territory, population and resources than the UP. But somehow the Dutch manage to raise just as many troops. At a moment's notice. And without breaking a sweat. The King of France has to tax his people to bone, crush his peasants underfoot to extract every last penny, and bankrupt the crown in order to raise the cash to mobilize an army and measly fleet. Meanwhile, the Dutch somehow match him man for man, ship for ship (or more), with hardly any difficulty or dent to their standard of living.
I love the wake-up call of 1598-1601 - when a dozen competing Dutch companies poured all that money into a gigantic slew of multiple fleets to rush to India, while England and France managed to cobble only one small one apiece and failed utterly.
How did these people - little more than fishing villages just yesterday, half their land freaking underwater - get all that cash?
The answer was obvious to the English & French pamphleteers. The Dutch "stole" it from us. By their wicked trading ways. We need to steal it back the same way. Thus began the stupidity of Mercantilism. Delenda est Hollandia, as Shaftesbury announced in parliament, and every English and French pamphleteer would write and urge, and the entire economic and foreign policy of these countries was twisted to this idiotic goal.
Uselessly, so uselessly. Farce and tragedy. Colbert & Co. blow the king's treasury on big beautiful ships, but don't have the cash to crew them so they rotted in harbor. Medway raid was remarkable not for Dutch cleverness but for English powerlessness - they couldn't equip them to sail!
Two centuries of this insidious distorted doctrine, with its consequential stupid wars and grievous death tolls, and the Dutch were still on top. At least the English had the sense to say "can't lick 'em, join 'em" back in 1688, but they were still a day late and a pound short for a long while. And France? France was more bankrupt than ever and committing national suicide.
naval powers >>>>>>>> land powers.
While the Dutch Republic was certainly a polity disproportionately wealthy and powerful in relation to its population and geographical extension, saying that it was as powerful as France and Britain united during Louis XIV's reign is in my opinion quite an overstatement.
In 1672, the Dutch Republic was almost obliterated by Louis XIV's land offensive, and they had to resort to the desperate last resource of opening the dams, inundating large swathes of their own territory to stop the Sun King's army. What really saved the Dutch in that war was not their armies, but rather that diplomatically they were able to turn the tables against the French; first they detached the British from the alliance (by spreading in England the terms of the secret agreements between Louis XIV and Charles II, which caused an outrage among the English public) and above all else, by convincing the (moribund) Spanish Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire to join the war against Luis XIV. This forced the French army to retreat from the Netherlands in order to avoid becoming isolated, and later the need to fight in the southern Netherlands, the Rhine, Italy and the Pyrenées ensured that the French were no longer able to concentrate all their forces against the Dutch.
In the two following wars that pitted the Dutch Republic against the Sun King (the war of the Great Alliance and the war of the Spanish Succession), the Dutch were just a part of a major coalition, and never had to fight the French on their own, and even then they suffered several resounding defeats at the hands of French armies, like at Steinkirk in 1693 or at Denain in 1712. The last time that they joined (half-heartedly) a coalition war against France during the war of the Austrian Succession, a succession of French victories in the Austrian Netherlands (Fontenoy, Laffeldt, Roucoux) and the Maréchal de Saxe laying siege to the fortress of Maastricht was enough for the Dutch States to panic and start separate peace talks with Louis XV, leaving their British and Austrian allies high and dry.
The financial resources of the Dutch Republic were due mainly to borrowing massive amounts of money at favourable interest rates, which was of course a direct consequence of the strong economy of the Netherlands and the steady tax revenues it provided. But still, the Dutch Republic, just as the Spanish, French or British Crowns, had to fight on borrowed money. And when considered globally, the Dutch were never really a match on their own (in the military sphere) against any of these powers on their prime. In 1625 (at enourmous effort and cost, that's true) Philip IV of Spain maintained 400,000 men on arms across the entire globe, on land and sea, and during the 1580s the Army of Flanders amounted to more than 80,000 men, amounts of troops that were totally out of the realm of what the Dutch Republic could have hoped to put on the field even in the direst straits. And if we make the comparison with Louis XIV's France, it's even more glaring: from 1688 to 1713, the Sun King was almost on a permanent state of war with half of Europe, and between land and sea forces, both regulars and militias, he kept around 500,000 men on a war stand (something unseen in Europe since the times of the Roman Empire, and not seen again until the onset of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France) for twenty years on a row.
In 1672, the Dutch Republic was almost obliterated by Louis XIV's land offensive, and they had to resort to the desperate last resource of opening the dams, inundating large swathes of their own territory to stop the Sun King's army. What really saved the Dutch in that war was not their armies, but rather that diplomatically they were able to turn the tables against the French; first they detached the British from the alliance (by spreading in England the terms of the secret agreements between Louis XIV and Charles II, which caused an outrage among the English public) and above all else, by convincing the (moribund) Spanish Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire to join the war against Luis XIV. This forced the French army to retreat from the Netherlands in order to avoid becoming isolated, and later the need to fight in the southern Netherlands, the Rhine, Italy and the Pyrenées ensured that the French were no longer able to concentrate all their forces against the Dutch.
In the two following wars that pitted the Dutch Republic against the Sun King (the war of the Great Alliance and the war of the Spanish Succession), the Dutch were just a part of a major coalition, and never had to fight the French on their own, and even then they suffered several resounding defeats at the hands of French armies, like at Steinkirk in 1693 or at Denain in 1712. The last time that they joined (half-heartedly) a coalition war against France during the war of the Austrian Succession, a succession of French victories in the Austrian Netherlands (Fontenoy, Laffeldt, Roucoux) and the Maréchal de Saxe laying siege to the fortress of Maastricht was enough for the Dutch States to panic and start separate peace talks with Louis XV, leaving their British and Austrian allies high and dry.
The financial resources of the Dutch Republic were due mainly to borrowing massive amounts of money at favourable interest rates, which was of course a direct consequence of the strong economy of the Netherlands and the steady tax revenues it provided. But still, the Dutch Republic, just as the Spanish, French or British Crowns, had to fight on borrowed money. And when considered globally, the Dutch were never really a match on their own (in the military sphere) against any of these powers on their prime. In 1625 (at enourmous effort and cost, that's true) Philip IV of Spain maintained 400,000 men on arms across the entire globe, on land and sea, and during the 1580s the Army of Flanders amounted to more than 80,000 men, amounts of troops that were totally out of the realm of what the Dutch Republic could have hoped to put on the field even in the direst straits. And if we make the comparison with Louis XIV's France, it's even more glaring: from 1688 to 1713, the Sun King was almost on a permanent state of war with half of Europe, and between land and sea forces, both regulars and militias, he kept around 500,000 men on a war stand (something unseen in Europe since the times of the Roman Empire, and not seen again until the onset of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France) for twenty years on a row.
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Thought of Kickstarting such book project? Maybe starting with smaller essays...
More OT, what do you think of "Power and Plenty" by Findlay and O'Rourke. It's very high level, yet came to my mind.
Not even remotely. And when they tried to play in the major league, they got trashed first by the Ottomans (1499-1500 war) and then by a coalition of France, Spain, Maximilian of Habsburg and the Pope in 1508-9. After that, they kept a low profile.
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Eh... possibly, but there were empires like the Gokturks were immensely wealthy and powerful through their control of the Eurasian trade routes, without having control over productive sedentary lands. The trouble is that we tend to see the Eurasian nomads through the lens of our sedentary societies, who ultimately won a sort of culture-war with them; we have very few native sources or archaeology pertaining to the nomads, as nomadism doesn't lend itself well to writing or large masses of material in a single place. We just don't know enough about them.
What bizarre reinterpretation of history is this?
The war of 1508 pitted Venice on one side versus France, Spain, Germany, England, Austria, Switzerland the Papacy and Ferrara on the other (France later swapped sides).
Venice won. (They were hardly 'trashed'; they forced the Empire to confirm their sovereignty over most of Lombardy.)
I agree with Abdul for once. In what way was 16th century Venice not hegemonic, if that's the sort of war they were capable of fighting?
Which part of the war? From what I read on Wikipedia (I don't know a huge amount about this war), they got the status quo at the end of it but only after they had allied with several major land powers).
In any case, that's not what hegemonic means. You need to do more than get status quo while allied with 4 or 5 superpowers to be considered a hegemon, at least in most interpretations I've seen of the word.
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_league_cambrai.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agnadello
and at the end of the whole war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_League_of_Cambrai#Aftermath
then, from what I can gather, they lost the next war, even while allied to France
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_War_of_1521–26
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Well, you need to bear in mind that the "status quo of 1508" was the result of massive expansion by Venice in the preceding decade or so. The Holy League's objective had been the destruction of Venice and the complete carving-up of their territory. Not only did they fail to achieve that goal, but the Emperor was forced to recognise Venetian control over all the lands they'd conquered off him up to that point.
A comparison would be the United States and Soviet Union going to war with Nazi Germany in 1941, and a few years later signing a peace treaty which left Hitler in control of his January 1941 borders.
As for the Battle of Agnadello - yes, Venice was defeated there. But within a year they'd raised a new army of mercenaries and reconquered almost all the territory they'd lost.
I'd call that punching above your weight - impressively so - but not remotely hegemonic.
England was a second rate landpower during most of Louis XIV's reign. The republic fielded the largest army in all the coalitions against France up to the Austrian Succesion war, which they where goaded into by Britain and then abandoned by the same. The English where on par with the dutch when one looks at seapower during the reign of the sun king, but steadily declining after 1702.
Sort of agree, we where in a tight spot but almost obliterated is streching it. It's true we had the greatest diplomat of the 17th century in William III.
The army of the states was the core of the coalition army and it's greatest component part. Steinkirk was a defeat, but denain was a mere skirmish when the war had al but ended. What about Oudenaarde, the passage of the lines of Brabant and Ramilies. The army the states fielded was over 100.000 strong around 1710.
As I said about the Austrian war, the states wanted to stay neutral but got goaded into it by the pragmatic alliance, with George II giving us his useless son to command and finally abandoning us and leaving us in the lurch. As in 1713 the same perfidious albion.
Agreed, but we never had to fight on their own. The seapowers (the republic and England) bankrolled the german princelings and the declining habsburg powers thereby creating a coalition to fight against France. No European country alone was able to withstand France in the 17th century and early 18th century.
As a matter of fact, England (and after 1707 the United Kingdom) was never a first rate land power during this period, and had to rely always on allies to conduct the land wars against France (with the exception of the 7 years war). Britain could allow itself the luxury of concentrating almost all of its military spending on its fleet, something that for obvious reasons the Dutch Republic could not do. The Dutch Republic was able to confront on equal terms the combined fleets of France and England in 1672-73, but saying that the Dutch were as strong (just like that, without any nuances) as Britain and France combined is taking things too far in my opinion.
Well, I'd say that resorting to flooding vast swathes of your own (densely populated) territory is not a measure that any government would undertake lightly during war unless the situation was really tough. And the Dutchmen of that time also saw things quite desperate if they went as far as to overthrow the government (it was not a pretty affair) and recall the Orange family to lead the war against France.
The biggest contribution to the land forces of the succesive coalitions against France during the reign of Louis XIV was done by the Holy Roman Empire and by the Austrian Habsburgs in particular, although during the war of the Great Alliance they had to fight a two front war (as they were fighting the Ottomans in Hungary as well) and so they could not concentrate all their forces against France. What's true though is that the Dutch States provided much of the funding needed to keep the armies of the several German principalities (and partly that of the Austrian Habsburgs too) going in the wars against Louis XIV (although during the war of the Spanish Succession much of said financial effort was undertaken by England/Great Britain). Much of the States' army was formed in fact by German regiments that were lent by German princely states to the Dutch Republic (with officers and all) on condition that the States paid for their upkeep and paid a juicy fee to their "owner". It was an efefctive army, but at Ramillies, Oudenaarde (or Denain) the army was never 100% "Dutch" (as in being in the States' payroll), but also included substantial Habsburg and British forces (not to speak of a certain Duke of Marlborough or a certain Prince Eugene
).Yes, that's what I said before. Per capita income was much greater in the Dutch Republic than in any European state of that time, and the living standards were also the highest in Europe, but that does not automatically mean that the Dutch Republic was "the strongest" state in Europe in absolute terms. It was a very rich merchant republic and together with England the biggest sea power of the XVII century, but the real European heavyweights were the Hispanic Monarchy (only until 1640), France, the Austrian Habsburgs and the Ottomans, with Great Britain and Russia joining the club later on.
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I'd not say that Venice "won" that war, what they did was manage to survive thanks to Maximilian's total military ineptitude and mostly because of the very nature of Renaissance Italian politics, as the members of the League of Cambrai were united only in a purely temporary goal, and as time went on each one of them took separate ways, and Venice used its traditional diplomatic skills to disentangle itself from the trap.
When the members of the League acted together against Venice, the Republic lost all of its Italian possesions, and the French army was only stopped at the shores of the Venetian lagoon by the Venetian fleet. The real factotum of the war was Julius II, who orchestrated the League against Venice due to her seizing several Romagnan cities (especially Ravenna) and then broke it in 1510 on his own initiative, leaving the alliance with France for that of Venice (after the Republic had accepted an humiliating peace settlement with the Pope). And then he proceeded to form a new "Holy League" including Ferdinand of Aragon, Maximilian of Habsburg and Henry of England against France. When the Venetians in turn broke their alliance with the Pope and went into the French camp, the Italian territories of the Republic were invaded again, with another enemy army (this time a Spanish one) getting to the shore of the Venetian laggon before retiring due to their naval inferiority (and the Venetian army suffering a "second Agnadello" at the battle of La Motta, this time against the Spaniards).
In the end, the war was settled by superior French resources, as Francis I's victory at Marignano led to the 1516 Treaty of Noyon between the young kings Francis I of France and Charles I of Spain (a peace that would turn out to be just a temporary truce). If the Republic of Venice emerged relatively unscathed in terms of territorial losses (although she had to cede Ravenna and the Romagnan cities to the Holy See) it was thanks to the French victory. Those territories were thoroughly devasted, and the Republic impoverished and deeply in debt, with many of its leading nobiliary families decimated. After the war of the League of Cambrai, the Republic of Venice stayed firmly out of Italian conflicts for all its remaining history as an independent polity.
Do you have anything to contribute to this discussion besides trite insults? I've given you countries that retained their core territory for the time period you specified, in one shape or another.
Maybe it is you who should improve his grasp of "English, history or mathematics"? Don't worry, I'm not going to expect you are going to improve your grasp of etiquette.
Powers with significant continental hinterland away from the Mediterranean cost. France, Castille/Aragon, the Ottomans, Egypt... You know, actual major powers.
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Considering he thinks Venice was the European hegemon for 200 years, I think he may be working off his own definition of major powers, one not usually used in this or any other context. Surprisingly enough, I have read a lot of history books but the (presumably) myriad references to the Venetian hegemony have somehow not appeared in a single one.