Title: Geography, technology, and war :
Authors: Pryor, John H.,
Date: 1992
Publisher: Cambridge University Press,
Physical description: xxii, 238 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm.
Language: English
LC classification: V
Abstract: When maritime transport and communication depended on muscle and wind-power, the Mediterranean Sea functioned as a symbiotic force between the civilisations which surrounded it, at once the major dividing barrier and the major connecting element. In this study, the technological limitations of maritime traffic are considered in conjunction with the peculiar geographical conditions within which it operated, and which led to the establishment of major sea lanes on trunk routes along which traffic could move safely, efficiently, and economically. These trunk routes remained virtually unchanged from antiquity to the sixteenth century, and eventually constituted economic and strategic maritime frontiers between civilisations. At the same time, the technological limitations of the oared galley meant that coasts and islands along the trunk routes had also to be held, a necessity which favoured geographically the Christian West over the world of Byzantium and Islam. --Publisher description.
Contents: The sea -- The ships : Commercial shipping; The early Middle Ages to the end of the thirteenth century; The fourteenth to sixteenth centuries; Warships -- Navigation : the routes and their implications -- The ninth and tenth centuries : Islam, Byzantium, and the West -- The twelfth and thirteenth centuries : the Crusader states -- Maritime traffic : the guerre de course -- The Turks -- Epilogue : the Barbary corsairs -- Conclusion.
Notes: Includes index.
Subject headings (LCSH): Mediterranean Region--History, Naval.; Navigation--Mediterranean Region--History.