The term thalassocracy (from the Greek Θαλασσο-κρατία) refers to a state with primarily maritime realms—an empire at sea, such as the Phoenician network of merchant cities. Traditional thalassocracies seldom dominate interiors, even in their home territories (for example: Tyre, Sidon, or Carthage). Distinguish this traditional sense of thalassocracy from an "empire," where the state's territories, though possibly linked principally or solely by the sea lanes, generally extend into mainland interiors.

The term can also simply refer to naval supremacy, in either military or commercial senses of the word "supremacy."

The word thalassocracy itself, deriving from the Greek thalassokratiā—thalassa meaning "sea," and kratiā meaning "rule" or "government"—first occurred amongst the ancient Greeks describing the government of the Minoan civilization, whose power depended on its navy. Herodotus spoke of the need to counter the Phoenician thalassocracy by developing a Greek "empire of the sea."

Examples

There are many ancient examples besides those mentioned above, such as the Sea Peoples and the Delian League. Asides from these, which were empire based primarily on naval power and control of waterways and not on any land possessions, the Middle Ages saw its fair share of thalassocracies, often land-based empires which controlled the sea. Among the most famous is 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 Mar of the Venetian outlands bound by the sea. Near-contemporaneously, the Dubrovnik Republic can be seen as a "thalassocracy," a protégé of Venice.

The Dark Ages (c.500–c.1000) saw much of the coastal cities of the Mezzogiorno develop into minor thalassocracies whose chief powers lay in their ports and their ability to sail navies to defend friendly coasts and ravage enemy ones. These include the variously Greek, Lombard, Angevin, and Saracen duchies of Gaeta, Sicily, Naples, Pisa, Salerno, Amalfi, Bari, and Sorrento. Later, northern Italy developed its own trade empires based on Pisa and especially the powerful Republic of Genoa, that rivaled with Venice.

It was with the modern age, the Age of Exploration, that some of the most remarkable thalassocracies emerged. Anchored in their European territories, several nations establish colonial empires held together by naval supremacy. First among them 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 (especially between Germany and Britain) and the end of colonialism and the granting of independence to these colonies, European thalassocracies, which had controlled the world's oceans for centuries, ceased to be.

The four most important Repubbliche marinare (Sea Republics) of medieval Italy were Venice, Genoa, Amalfi and Pisa.

List of other examples

• Ainu Confederation
• Aleut Confederation
• Bugis Confederation
• Byzantine Empire
• Carib Confederation
• Carthage
• Chola Empire
• Denmark-Norway (as separate Viking kingdoms and later as a unified empire)
• Dorian Confederation
• French Empire
• Haida Nation
• Hanseatic League
• Japanese Empire
• Kingdom of Majorca and Crown of Aragón
• Kingdom of Navarre (controlled Normandy in the mid-14th century [1] and Greek lands in the late 14th century [2] and had outposts in Newfoundland in the late 15th and early 16th centuries) [3] [4]
• Latin Empire
• Lusignan Empire (NW France, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Kingdom of Cyprus)
• Majapahit Empire
• Mataram Kingdom and its successor, Kediri
• Mataram Sultanate
• Micronesian Empire
• Minoan Civilization
• Norman Empire (although based in Western Europe, it spread during the Crusades to the central and eastern Mediterranean) and its successor, the Angevin Empire
• Oman-Zanzibar
• Pergamon
• Phocaea
• Ryūkyū Kingdom
• Sailendra
• Srivijaya
• Sultanate of Malacca and its successor, Sultanate of Johor
• Sulu Sultanate
• Swedish Empire
• Taíno Confederation
• Tlingit Confederation
• Tu'i Tonga Empire

See also

• Colonialism
• Imperialism
• Transcontinental country

Wikipedia information about Thalassocracy This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Thalassocracy". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.