European Naval Research Articles

The gunpowder age: China, military innovation, and the rise of the West in world history

Introduction - The Military Pattern of the Chinese Past 1 PART I: CHINESE BEGINNINGS Chapter 1 The Crucible: The Song Warring States Period 15 Chapter 2 Early Gunpowder Warfare 29 Chapter 3 The Mongol Wars and the Evolution of the Gun 44 Chapter 4 Great Martiality: The Gunpowder Emperor 55 PART II: EUROPE GETS THE GUN Chapter 5 The Medieval Gun 75 Chapter 6 Big Guns: Why Western Europe and Not China Developed Gunpowder Artillery 88 Chapter 7 The Development of the Classic Gun in Europe 103 Chapter 8 The Gunpowder Age in Europe 115 Chapter 9 Cannibals with Cannons: The Sino-Portuguese Clashes of 1521-1522 124 PART III: AN AGE OF PARITY Chapter 10 The Frankish Cannon 135 Chapter 11 Drill, Discipline, and the Rise of the West 144 Chapter 12 The Musket in East Asia 166 Chapter 13 The Seventeenth Century: An Age of Parity? 188 Chapter 14 A European Naval Advantage 196 Chapter 15 The Renaissance Fortress: An Agent of European Expansion? 211 PART IV: THE GREAT MILITARY DIVERGENCE Chapter 16 The Opium War and the Great Divergence 237 Chapter 17 A Modernizing Moment: Opium War Reforms 257 Chapter 18 China's Modernization and the End of the Gunpowder Age 273 Conclusions - A New Warring States Period? 297 Acknowledgments 307 Appendix 1: Timeline 311 Appendix 2: Datasets 312 Abbreviations 317 Notes 319 Bibliography 379 Index 421

Naval resistance to Britain's growing power in India, 1660-1800: the saffron banner and the Tiger of Mysore

Most books on the colonisation of India view the subject in Eurocentric imperial terms, focusing on the ways in which European powers competed with each other on land and at sea and defeated Indian states on land, and viewing Indian states as having little interest in naval matters. This book, in contrast, reveals that there was substantial naval activity on the part of some Indian states and that this activity represented a serious threat to Britain's naval power. Considering the subject from an Indian point of view, the book discusses the naval activities of the Mahratta Confederacy and later those of Mysore under its energetic rulers Haidar Ali and his successor Tipu Sultan. It shows how these states chose deliberately to develop a naval strategy, seeing this as the most effective way of expelling the British from India; how their strategies learned from European maritime technology, successfully blending this with Indian technology; how their opposition to British naval power was at its most effective when they allied themselves with the other European naval powers in the region - France, Portugal and the Netherlands, whose maritime activities in the region are fully outlined and assessed; and how ultimately the Indian states' naval strategies failed. Philip MacDougall, a former lecturer in economic history at the University of Kent, is a founder member of the Navy Dockyards Society, editor of the Society's Transactions, and the author or editor of seven books in maritime history, including The Naval Mutinies of 1797 (The Boydell Press, 2011).

Evropská vojenská námořní strategie - analýza vybraných problémů členských států EU

Europe is a maritime continent whose economic concerns and security could be backed only by the power of navy forces. The Czech Republic is not a maritime state, but it is a member country of both NATO and the EU, it participates in the formation of common security policy. Czech soldiers could take part in combined joint military operations, where one of forces is also a Navy. Dozens of Czech citizens are employed in common international institutes and staffs; they all need a broader view, including the knowledge of Integrated European Naval Strategy. Their activities promote the status of the Czech Republic at international level. This contribution contextually explores European space and its naval power. It introduces naval forces projection of European national navies, the bulk of which best respond to current security issues, along with decisions of the national governments of the EU and NATO member states. The article also dedicates extensive attention to the Russian naval strategy.

Evropská vojenská námořní strategie - analýza vybraných problémů členských států EU

Europe is a maritime continent whose economic concerns and security could be backed only by the power of navy forces. The Czech Republic is not a maritime state, but it is a member country of both NATO and the EU, it participates in the formation of common security policy. Czech soldiers could take part in combined joint military operations, where one of forces is also a Navy. Dozens of Czech citizens are employed in common international institutes and staffs; they all need a broader view, including the knowledge of Integrated European Naval Strategy. Their activities promote the status of the Czech Republic at international level. This contribution contextually explores European space and its naval power. It introduces naval forces projection of European national navies, the bulk of which best respond to current security issues, along with decisions of the national governments of the EU and NATO member states. The article also dedicates extensive attention to the Russian naval strategy.

A Very Long Early Modern? Asia and Its Oceans, 1000–1850

This article summarizes background changes that shaped interactions in the Pacific and Indian oceans before and during the age of steam; early modern China as an importer of exotic goods and exporter of skillful entrepreneurs; and early European naval competition, exploration, and settlement.

Due esperienze nella cantieristica navale anconetana. Lo stabilimento Fincantieri e la Cooperativa Tommasi (1974-1997)

The evolution of Shipbuilding in Ancona in the 70s and 80s is seen from inside trough the Author's personal experience in two very different Shipyards located in Ancona. The wide Shipyard was first owned by CRN and then by Fincantieri, belonging to a large stock company comparable to most important companies in the European Naval Industry. The small Shipyard, Cooperativa Ing. Tommasi, was one of the minor Shipyards in Ancona, which also played an important role in the local economy and had national and international recognition for quality of products and professionalism of employed people. Similar evolutions, from artisan to industrial production, but in different times and in different ways took place in both Shipyards. Both realities at that time were characterized by the same professional capacity of men who have taken part on all levels and by the same entrepreneurial will and perseverance, that have allowed them to obtain results and recognition in a market sector, already then, exposed to strong international competition.

Piracy in Asian Waters

Abstract Seafaring, and especially the use of seaborne violence, in the early modern period is strongly associated with European naval activity. In this issue and the next, this perspective is challenged through a sustained interrogation of indigenous piracy in Asian waters. A series of studies highlight the persistence, sophistication, and breathtaking scale of Asian piracy. They show how piracy was deeply ingrained in the social worlds, commercial exchanges, and political contestations across the Asian littoral. Based on these insights, it is argued that the study of piracy reveals the significance of an often-overlooked dimension of Asian maritime enterprise in the early modern period.

Spectacle and Witnessing: Constructing Readings of Charles Parsons’s Marine Turbine

In 1897 the British Admiralty transformed Spithead and the river Solent, which runs alongside the maritime town of Portsmouth, into a theater where popular naval culture and technology met. The 1897 naval review celebrated Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee, but also had significance as the occasion of the first public display of Charles Parsons’s Turbinia, an experimental vessel thirty-two meters long and approximately the size of a torpedo-boat destroyer, fitted with his marine steam turbine.1 Historians of technology have referred to this moment as part of the “turbine revolution” that changed how societies produced power and propelled themselves across oceans and through skies.2 A considerable amount of revolutionary rhetoric has certainly surrounded the turbine’s early history. Emile Weyl, a retired French naval officer who wrote for Thomas Brassey’s influential Naval Annual, remarked that “the Turbinia is perhaps destined to revolutionize naval construction.”3 Weyl was joined by Brassey, a politician and publisher interested in naval matters and civil engineering, and numerous naval officers, engineers, and enthusiasts who subscribed to the possibility that a turbine revolution would strongly tip the balance of the European naval arms race in Britain’s favor. Turbinia, which broke the then-maximum speed record for a vessel of its size, demonstrated the potential role of the turbine in the large technological systems upon which naval supremacy rested. Indeed, Admiral Sir John Fisher, who between 1890 and 1915 held a number of high-profile posts in the Admiralty, made the turbine a central feature of the design for HMS Dreadnought (1906).4 A reassessment of the initial response to Turbinia and marine turbine, however, provides a far more complicated account than is usually presented.5

Inhuman Conditions: On Human Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (review)

Reviewed by: Inhuman Conditions: On Human Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights Claudia Sadowski-Smith (bio) Inhuman Conditions: On Human Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights. By Pheng Cheah. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. 321 pp. $26.50. Inhuman Conditions makes an invaluable contribution to the growing literature on globalization and human rights. The book stands out for its cogent arguments about the relevance of hitherto marginalized humanities approaches to conceptualizations of the contemporary moment as one dominated by globalization. Cheah characterizes globalization as a process that has deepened inequities on an international scale, particularly between what the author calls the North Atlantic Space and the Postcolonial South. In Inhuman Conditions, Cheah argues for the centrality of humanities approaches to ongoing attempts to re-figure the global as human, such as those manifested in the increasingly popular discourses of cosmopolitanism and human rights. Cosmopolitanism celebrates the emergence of multilateral institutions, international law, and the surge of solidarities fueled by crossborder migration from the South to the North. Human rights discourses, which endorse self-interested actions as long as they do not deprive others of the same freedoms, also aim to become global. Both narratives highlight the obsolescence of the nation-state and of nationalism as a mode of collective consciousness, while also relying on the linkage of humanity to yet-to-be completed projects of dignity and freedom. Cheah's central [End Page 203] argument in Inhuman Conditions is that conditions of globalization may force us to rethink what it means to be human by severing the naturalized connections between concepts of humanity and these idealized notions. The book's opening chapters examine various theories of cosmopolitanism and human rights, while later portions engage expressions of globalization in Asia. The first three chapters highlight antecedents of today's cosmopolitanism that emerged in opposition to regional particularisms, examine Jürgen Habermas's extensive work on a cosmopolitanism grounded in the moral universalism of human rights, and explore cultural studies' celebration of a hybrid cosmopolitanism that results from crossborder migration and diasporic mobility. Cheah criticizes the contemporary discourses of new cosmopolitanism and hybridity for neglecting to explore the structural inequities of globalization. Discourses of hybridity tend to reduce the complexity of contemporary globalization to crossborder labor migration, while glossing over the exploitation of those who do not or cannot migrate. The result is a conceptualization of a world that has "no postcolonials left in decolonized space" (92). And Habermas's new cosmopolitanism over-idealizes the political virtues of the First World state, which depends on a high degree of economic development that is non-existent in Third World nations. These two narratives also overlook the potential role of the nation-state as an autonomous agent of economic accumulation and forget that the uneven character of globalization hampers the potential formation of mass-based global solidarities. With chapter four Cheah moves from cultural criticism to case studies of globalization in Asia. The chapter criticizes the identification of a diasporic "Chineseness" with an alternative, specifically Confucian model of modernity that may explain the Asian economic miracle. Cheah shows that the very emergence of a diasporic Chinese consciousness dates back to the arrival of European naval powers in Southeast Asia. As Chinese merchants traveling in Southeast Asia were given more permanent roles as traders and artisans, they no longer assimilated but instead formed mestizo Chinese communities that were continually replenished with new immigrants. The survival of "Chinese" identities in Southeast Asia was also facilitated by state disciplinary techniques that created segregated groups held together only by market forces. Chapter five aims to separate discourses of human rights from their supposed absolute moral force. Through engagement with Kantian theories, Cheah argues that human rights discourses express a political rather than an absolute morality, and are today contaminated by the realities of global inequity. Just as in free trade negotiations commercial interests can often override human [End Page 204] rights discourses, for example, NGOs and their discourses on human rights are susceptible to co-optation by states on both sides of the North–South divide. Chapter six examines a specific instance of human rights violations today—the situation of Filipina domestic workers in Singaporean middle-class homes. In contrast to...

Multinational Military Cooperation and its Challenges: The Case of European Naval Operations in the Wider Mediterranean Area

In order to cope with current security challenges, such as regional conflicts, humanitarian disasters or terrorist threats, European states in the post-Cold War era make important use of naval forces within a complex multilateral framework. However, the issues relating to European navies have rarely been tackled in the literature on multilateral military cooperation. Therefore this article aims to fill the gap by studying the nature of the European post-Cold War multilateral naval framework, and taking it as a case study to illustrate the current issues facing multinational military cooperation. To do so, the article focuses on the wider Mediterranean region, since most of the security challenges identified by the Europeans are now localized in this area.

The travels and travails of Sir Charles Lewis Giesecke

Abstract Sir Charles Lewis Giesecke (1761–1833) was the Professor of Mineralogy at the Royal Dublin Society between the years 1814 and 1833. He was born in Augsburg, Germany, and over his lifetime pursued two careers. The first career was in the German theatre of the late eighteenth century, where, as well as acting and singing, his stage activities entailed travelling through Germany, Austria, and other parts of central Europe, together with the writing of original plays and operas for the theatre. Additionally, during his theatrical career he was engaged not only in stage management but also in the adaptation and translation of many varied works for the theatre especially in the genres of comedy, parody and travesty. At intervals he also worked as a journalist or critic, covering theatrical performances in various cities. Most importantly, for twelve years or so he was a senior member of, and official playwright to, the famous Freihaus Theatre company in Vienna, a company run by the impresario Emanuel Schikaneder, who together with the composer Mozart, conceived and staged the celebrated and seminal opera ‘ The Magic Flute ’ in 1791. Giesecke played the role of the First Slave in this opera and was stage manager for many of its performances. Later in his life, while visiting Vienna in 1818, and during his professorial appointment to the Dublin Society, Giesecke was reported to have claimed authorship of important parts of the opera's famous libretto. In 1794, Giesecke began to revive an earlier interest in mineralogy that he had first developed while at university in Göttingen. In 1800, he obtained a mineral dealer's licence in Vienna and undertook a remarkable series of journeys which covered much of German-speaking Europe and Scandinavia. After visiting Berlin in 1801 and acquiring the title of Bergrat or Mining Advisor to the Prussian Court, he travelled to Freiberg to meet the famous German mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner. Immediately after this visit Giesecke travelled to the Erzgebirge region probably specifically to examine the well-known columnar basalt locality of Scheibenberg which Werner had recently reclassified in his ‘ Kurze Klassification ’ and which became increasingly important in the emerging discipline of stratigraphical geology. After his northern European travels, Giesecke then went to the Faeroe Islands and eventually to Greenland where he spent seven years, marooned, mainly as a result of the Napoleonic wars. Despite great hardship, Giesecke traversed and studied much of the west coast of Greenland, observing and recording the mineralogy and geology. Unluckily, his specimens together with the rest of his belongings were destroyed in the British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807. However, some of his mineral collections were taken as booty and eventually offered for sale in Edinburgh, where they came to the notice of Thomas Allan who bought the material. On his return to Europe in 1813, Giesecke called in on Allan and their meeting soon resulted in Giesecke applying for, and being appointed to, the recently-advertised professorship in Dublin. Giesecke's geological work in Greenland launched an extremely successful scientific career and provided European geologists with essential information on the geology and mineral resources of this formerly barely-known territory. In addition to contributing significantly to scientific research, some of it with considerable economic potential, his first hand knowledge of Greenland proved to be of great practical use in the search for the elusive North West Passage, which European naval authorities were keen to explore.

Biocorrosion of carbon steel alloys by an hydrogenotrophic sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio capillatus isolated from a Mexican oil field separator

The hydrogenotrophic sulfate-reducing bacterium (SRB) Desulfovibrio capillatus (DSM14982 T) was isolated from an oil field separator with serious corrosion problems; this is the study of its role in the corrosion of carbon steels under anaerobic conditions. Immersion tests with two steel alloys, St-35.8 (typical carbon steel employed in European naval industry), and API-5XL52 (weathering alloy steel employed in Mexican oil industries) were performed. Total exposure was 45 days and different concentrations of thiosulfate as electron acceptor for bacterial growth were employed. The samples immersed in media with SRB undergo fast activation and numerous active sites form on the surface. Microscopic observations were made by environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM). Weight loss and electrochemical testing included open circuit potential ( E corr), polarization resistance ( R p), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and electrochemical noise (EN) were measured with and without bacteria in the culture medium in order to determine corrosion rates and mechanisms. All electrochemical techniques have shown that after the end of the exponential phase the corrosion activity notably increased due to the high concentration of bacterial metabolites. Finally, the corrosion behavior of API-5XL52 was worse than St-35.8.

The Empire of Early American Studies

scholars are currently questioning older histories of cartography that highlighted the development of more objective and complete understandings of the physical world in the early modern and modern periods and are emphasizing instead the socially constructed character of European maps and of European geographic ideas. Lastly, a topic: when early Americanists consider the scientific exploration of North America, many will think first of the eighteenth-century European naval expeditions led by figures such as Cook, Alejandro Malaspina, and Jean FranCois La Perouse that reached the Northwest Coast in the decades before Mackenzie and Lewis and Clark's expeditions.3 Such figures are absent from Surveying the Record, which, with all its insights into nineteenth-century scientific exploration, nonetheless offers little on its beginnings in the eighteenth century. Scholars interested in some of the particular topics covered in Surveying the Record will find good treatments of them. For a more general appreciation of pertinent recent scholarship on exploration, however, early Americanists will need to read more widely.

The Winning Edge: Naval Technology in Action, 1939-1945

Reviewed by: The Winning Edge: Naval Technology in Action, 1939–1945* Russell I. Fries (bio) The Winning Edge: Naval Technology in Action, 1939–1945. By Kenneth Poolman. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1997. Pp. xii+235; illustrations, maps, figures, notes, bibliography, index. $32.95. This book is an interesting one, drawing together as it does the course of technological change and its interplay with weapons and tactics. It provides a long overdue look at specific naval technology, though many other books have covered the same general area with an emphasis on strategy and tactics. Written by a British historian and former naval officer (1943–46) on escort service, The Winning Edge is interesting for its emphasis on European naval technology and evolution, normally less emphasized than the American technology that won the war. In Europe the Germans mastered the art of building the new advanced submarines as a way of interdicting the flow of life-giving commerce to Great Britain from her colonies and the United States, though similarly advanced surface craft such as the Bismarck and the Graf von Spee had less impact because they could not become invisible like the submarine. Kenneth Poolman ties the war in the Pacific to the initial air power struggles in the European theater as well. The advanced Kate torpedo [End Page 692] bomber was ironically the product of lessons learned by Japan from Britain’s Blackburn 2 bomber of the 1920s and the torpedo tactics shown them by the British in 1922 (pp. 147–48). Similarly, the British aerial torpedo attack on the Italian naval base at Taranto in September 1940 was carefully reported to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto by none other than aviator Minoru Genda, leader of the Pearl Harbor raid, then assistant air attaché in London (p. 102). Poolman’s discussion of similar events, such as Britain’s lack of carrier success in Europe and the British overconfidence about ASDIC submarine detection, enhanced my appreciation of the European operations. He also attributes many of the American carrier losses in the Pacific to design flaws that were avoided in the British carriers. However, he is certainly not alone in pointing to other early weaknesses of the American naval operations in the Pacific—flawed torpedoes and igniters, slow, underpowered, if rugged aircraft, and vulnerable torpedo and dive bombers. Poolman misses or slights at least some American technologies—notably the proximity fuse, which helped to blunt the Japanese assault by kamikazes as American naval forces approached the home islands. Nor does he mention the intelligence gained from the capture of an almost-intact Japanese Zero fighter, found upside down after a crash landing in the Aleutians. Similarly, I missed any emphasis on the development of operations research or the scientific use of technology, such as the advanced theoretical analyses of search tactics by American patrol and attack aircraft during the Battle of the Atlantic. The Winning Edge contains too little discussion of the interaction between the scientists and engineers who designed weapons and the sailors or aviators who used them. Weapons or technologies seem to emerge in this narrative without much real interaction with engineers or scientists. Yet in actuality it was the report of what sailors lacked that led to significant weapon upgrades. Poolman also mentions many individual users of the weapons, but these names contribute little to our understanding of their use, though they do help to give personal and human dimensions to the enormous conflict. I also felt that the organization of the book could have been better; technologies were picked up, then dropped, then picked up again in the narrative, making it difficult to follow even the heavily covered Battle of the Atlantic from start to finish, for example. A more unified focus on either describing all the weapons used in a particular campaign or all the campaigns depending on a single weapon would have worked better than the composite approach used. But the insights gained on use of technology more than outweighed any organization problems, and I would add this book to my library unreservedly. Russell I. Fries Dr. Fries, of the Institute for Defense Analyses, is a former private pilot and Vietnam-era officer at the Springfield Armory...

Austro-Hungarian Naval Policy, 1904-14.

This unique and comprehensive account describes the interplay of internal and external factors in the emergence of the Austro-Hungarian Navy from a coastal defence force in 1904 to a respectable battle force capable of the joint operations with other Triple Alliance fleets in the Mediterranean by the eve of World War I. By 1914 the Austro-Hungarian Navy was the sixth largest navy in the world and the quality of its officers and men was widely recognised by most European naval observers at the time. The book describes the relationships between naval leaders, the heir to the throne Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and the Parliament in shaping the dual Monarchy's naval policy. It also shows how the changes in foreign policy in Italy and underlying animosities between Rome and Vienna led to a naval race in the Adriatic that eventually bolstered Germany's naval position in respect to Great Britain in the North Sea.

The Middle Ages: a concise encyclopedia (review)

Short Notices lfig Lewis, Archibald R. and Timothy J. Runyan, European naval and maritime history 300-1500, rpt, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1990; paper; pp. xvi, 192; 53 illustrations, 9 maps; R R P US$9.95. The reissue of this general survey of the history of the sea in the Middle Ages suggests that there is considerable demand for a succinct and clearly iUustrated text on a critical period of ship design. The relationship between ship design, the utilisation of sea routes, and the growth of sea power is obviously highly significant both for the history of the time and subsequent world history. This attempt to marry the different parts is inevitably hampered by constraints of length which leave as bald assertionstopicswhich cry out for a more detailed analysis. In particular, the integration of underwater archaeological work on intermittentiy surviving and recoverable wrecks, whose interpretation can often be debatable, into a narrative account presents difficulties. The periodisation and the accounts of military developments are therefore mainly based on documentary evidence and are fairly conventional. The arguments presented are sometimes questionable. The chronological relationships suggested for the development of the Hansa trade empire may be doubted as it depends as much on the moment at which certain records appear as anything else. If this work stimulates historians to further investigation and to a fuller treatment however, it will have served a very useful purpose. Sybil M . Jack Department of History University of Sydney Loyn, H. R., ed., The Middle Ages: a concise encyclopedia, rpt, London, Thames and Hudson, 1991; paper; pp. 352; 250 illustrations; R.R.P. AUS$49.95. This volume is a reissue in paperback of the 1989 hardback edition. See the full critical review by J. O. Ward in Parergon 8.2, December 1990. The present volume is more reasonably priced, though the production quality remains at the very high standard of the hardback. The soft-binding is also strong enough to stand up to the frequent use which will be made of such a work. It remains to note again some of the good features of this encyclopaedia. The early medieval speciatist is moved to praise the extent of the coverage of early medieval topics. The choice of illustrations is also particularly excellent. While the specialist will find little that is new in this work, it is an admirable reference work and especially so for the undergraduate who is searching for concise definitions of 170 Short Notices subjects such as the various heresies, where a brief explanation is often needed, but rarely obtainable. Jonathan M . Wooding Department of History University of Sydney Tellenbach, Gerd, Church, state and Christian society at the time of the Investiture Contest (Medieval Academy reprints for teaching, 27), trans. R. F. Bennett, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1991; paper; pp. xxiv, 196; R.R.P. CAN$14.95. Much water has passed under the bridge since the original publication in German in 1936 of this early book by one of the century's foremost medieval historians. It would be possible to write a lengthy discussion of it drawing attention to changed general perspectives and possible misinterpretations of particular areas, but such an exercise would be beside the point. The present reviewer remembers the sense of excitement engendered by the book's powerful intellectual constructs and its sense of pulling up deep roots when he read it as an undergraduate. It retains its hold. Reading a major historian writing on a major topic can afford a mind-stretching pleasure even when the work has been superseded in various ways. It is therefore good to welcome its return to print in the series of reprints sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America. This collection has grown to the point where i t offers a most respectable introduction to the Middle Ages, providing primary sources and key monographs at very reasonable prices. The stature of the series is enhanced by the addition of this latest volume. John Moorhead Department of History University of Queensland ...

European naval and maritime history 300-1500 (review)

Short Notices lfig Lewis, Archibald R. and Timothy J. Runyan, European naval and maritime history 300-1500, rpt, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1990; paper; pp. xvi, 192; 53 illustrations, 9 maps; R R P US$9.95. The reissue of this general survey of the history of the sea in the Middle Ages suggests that there is considerable demand for a succinct and clearly iUustrated text on a critical period of ship design. The relationship between ship design, the utilisation of sea routes, and the growth of sea power is obviously highly significant both for the history of the time and subsequent world history. This attempt to marry the different parts is inevitably hampered by constraints of length which leave as bald assertionstopicswhich cry out for a more detailed analysis. In particular, the integration of underwater archaeological work on intermittentiy surviving and recoverable wrecks, whose interpretation can often be debatable, into a narrative account presents difficulties. The periodisation and the accounts of military developments are therefore mainly based on documentary evidence and are fairly conventional. The arguments presented are sometimes questionable. The chronological relationships suggested for the development of the Hansa trade empire may be doubted as it depends as much on the moment at which certain records appear as anything else. If this work stimulates historians to further investigation and to a fuller treatment however, it will have served a very useful purpose. Sybil M . Jack Department of History University of Sydney Loyn, H. R., ed., The Middle Ages: a concise encyclopedia, rpt, London, Thames and Hudson, 1991; paper; pp. 352; 250 illustrations; R.R.P. AUS$49.95. This volume is a reissue in paperback of the 1989 hardback edition. See the full critical review by J. O. Ward in Parergon 8.2, December 1990. The present volume is more reasonably priced, though the production quality remains at the very high standard of the hardback. The soft-binding is also strong enough to stand up to the frequent use which will be made of such a work. It remains to note again some of the good features of this encyclopaedia. The early medieval speciatist is moved to praise the extent of the coverage of early medieval topics. The choice of illustrations is also particularly excellent. While the specialist will find little that is new in this work, it is an admirable reference work and especially so for the undergraduate who is searching for concise definitions of ...

Reviews and Short Notices

Reviews and Short Notices

Germinated seeds as antiscorbutics: Western use of an ancient chinese botanical medicine

Vasco da Gama's trip around the Cape of Good Hope in 1497 marked the beginning of the great period of European naval exploration, which blossomed during the 18th Century. That voyage was also one of the first to be marked by what was to become the scourge of 18th-Century sea voyages, scurvy. More than half of da Gama's crew died of this "formidable and often fatal disease, arising from imperfect nutrition" (Rees, 1819). The horrible symptoms of the disease are vividly described in the epic poem about that voyage, the Lusiads of Camoens (Roddis, 1941):

AUSTRIAN TRADE TOWARDS THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND ASIA DURING THE 18th CENTURY

After geographical discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries the economic system based on trade began to develop in the real sense at the planetary level. During the 18th century, just before the start of the industrial revolution, the system experienced a peak. Naval powers played a key role in its global development, as their commercial and military fleets enabled the constant fluctuation of the goods on all oceans and continents. The trade of European naval forces with India and other parts of Asia was particularly significant regarding the commercial aspects and large profits were achieved especially in the triangle of slave trade between Europe, Africa and America. In this context Austria was mostly just an observer because its effect on the global commercial efforts was dominantly continental. However, with the development of the 18thcentury Austria invested also more efforts to increase its share in the global trade and the accumulation of trade capital. The Court Chamber was efficiently organized for the new conditions of economic activity in 1714 through a thorough set of reforms. The division of chambers into independent commissions was fully achieved. It was an adequate administrative basis for the start of the Austrian trade expansion to the east and southeast throughout the rest of the 18th century.