The influence of sea power on history has been discussed by Admiral Mahan and many other writers, so that its decisive effect on numerous occasions has been pointed out, but the debt that civilization owes to seamen has not yet been fully recognized. One reason for this is the fact that outstanding, spectacular instances of the application of sea power receive most attention from historians. It is pointed out how free institutions were saved by such sea battles as those of Salamis and Lepanto, but rarely is it made clear how nautical enterprise and nautical skill, in the same silent, steady, and often imperceptible, manner that has been characteristic of Allied naval activity in the present war, have contributed to build up the very free institutions which they have so gloriously saved on these occasions.
Professional navies are regarded as modern developments. The merchant marine is looked upon as their predecessor, and the sailor for gain is supposed to be a far older figure than the sailor for glory. This is, however, not true, for the qualities of which the naval officer is supposed to be the embodiment have always been necessary to the progressive seamen of the world. Ships built exclusively for military purposes and manned by professional military officers may be comparatively modern, but, on the other hand, it is only within very recent times that any considerable voyage could be undertaken without the probability of fighting being necessary, and the farther back into history we go, the greater does the likelihood of seamen having to fight become. Up to the eighteenth century international law, even in times of peace, was practically non-existent, and ships of one nation were constantly attacked by those of another country; so that all went armed, and what might be considered a state of perpetual maritime warfare existed. Piracy, too, was not put down till the beginning of the nineteenth century, so voyages often involved the necessity of fighting to avoid walking the plank. In fact, it may be said that only during the nineteenth and that part of the twentieth century which preceded the present war did a merchant marine of non-fighting seamen exist. Fighting has thus been the seaman’s function quite as much as trading has, and the discipline and co-operation cultivated by military organization have been characteristic of sea life even before the development of professional navies.
The element of danger in sea going has thus always been considerable, so that only the most venturesome men were attracted to it, and only the most rugged were able to survive its perils and hardships. This has undoubtedly made seamen as a class more likely to be formidable fighters than men enured only to the far less constant dangers of shore existence, and so communities of sailors have usually been able to maintain their independence against anything like equal numbers, while in some cases, by the aid of the protection afforded by the sea surrounding their homes, they have offered a secure retreat for freedom when all the rest of the world was the victim of tyranny.
A striking instance of this kind took place in the island of Crete before the dawn of history. Up to the opening of the European war this island was one of the most important regions for archaeological investigations as to the early history of European society. Extensive remains of a high degree of civilization that flourished up to 1500 b. c., were unearthed. Vast structures were found, and the engineering skill displayed in them would have done credit to the present generation, while everywhere these prehistoric Cretans left traces of extraordinary knowledge and remarkable power.
Now all this civilization was the result of the sea power of the inhabitants of the islands. They were immune from attacks by foes without a navy capable of making the then considerable voyage from the mainland to their island home. They enjoyed the splendid isolation which Americans used to think was the perpetual heritage of the United States, and behind their wall of brine they were able to live in that security which is essential to the development of civilization. For centuries this security was theirs, and during those centuries civilization was advanced enormously by them. We don’t know the exact contributions they made, but it is evident that they did much to improve both the practical arts and the science of government. We only know of them through the fables invented about them by the Greeks, but these fables are figurative history. Dædalos, in the Greek fables, built the Labyrinth and also devised wings with which to fly; and other stories dealt with Minos and Rhadamanthus, two brothers! who ruled over Crete and were such extraordinarily just law givers that when they died they were made judges over the dead. The Dædalos story is merely a rather emphatic way of saying that the Cretans made wonderful advances in engineering and mechanics, while that of Minos and Rhadamanthus points to an equally striking development in legal procedure, so that the growth of the great material civilization of which we are so proud to-day, and the development of our legal system, both owe not a little to the protection afforded them in their early stages by Cretan sea power.
After the Cretans the next great nautical race was the Phoenicians. They traded all over the world, and while they don’t, perhaps, look very natural in the role of apostles of justice and liberty—they were very much given to piracy and slave dealing—they nevertheless did much to advance material civilization. They spread the latest discoveries over the world. When, for instance, some progressive tribe, or one fortunately situated near supplies of easily workable ore, learned the secret of making bronze or of working iron, the Phoenicians carried the news over the sea to the rest of the accessible world. They are also said to have invented glass making, and while the story of some of their sailors discovering the process by finding glass under a camp fire they had made on a beach in which soda existed in the sand may not be true, they certainly did spread the knowledge of the way to produce the substance, as they certainly did much else to advance civilization by the intercommunication their constant voyaging maintained.
Carthage was nothing but a continuation of the Phoenician power, which had its center in Tyre, and if Carthage does not exemplify sea power in a positive way, it certainly does so negatively. Carthage became great and aimed at subduing the world and establishing her tyranny over it, but Admiral Mahan has shown that this was prevented as much by Roman sea power as by anything else, so here civilization was protected from a serious set back by sea power.
One of the most striking cases of the beneficent influence of the sea on civilization is that of Venice. Early in the fifth century, about 420 A. D., to be exact, the Roman empire', and with it all that was most advanced in the way of material civilization, was almost extinguished by the inroads of Goths, Vandals, and other German barbarians of the north. These early exponents of Kultur carried disorganization and destruction everywhere that western civilization existed, and law and order were threatened with extinction. Then it was that certain exiles from Italian cities betook themselves to a group of islands in the Adriatic where the barbarians could not follow them. Here they lived in poverty but unmolested by the invader, for the sinuous passages between the islands were defended from the water against a foe who had few boats and no skill in their use. Here the old institutions were kept alive, and here hardship and poverty awoke again the old Roman ideal of liberty. Living in the very sea itself it was not strange that the Venetians became sailors, and the sea power they developed made them the most powerful and progressive state in Europe for centuries. They built up a commerce, and the wealth it brought enabled them to make their city, in spite of its situation in a morass, the most beautiful as well as the strongest in Europe. Not only this, but they developed economic organization that has done an incalculable amount to make the complex and elaborate relations of modern life possible. Their influence in creating the intricate system of banking and commercial credit we now enjoy was considerable, and there has been no greater civilizer than the delicate machinery that makes extensive commercial intercourse possible. They also acted as intermediary between the Orient and Western Europe. They took part in the crusades, and carried on a continuous commercial crusade both before and after the great military movements against the Saracen, in this way doing much to enrich and refine the life of Europe by introducing the arts and the products of the Levant. This was the work of their trading seamen, but their fighting sailors were no less active. They took part in many expeditions that secured and extended western civilization, and at such times as the battle of Lepanto they were an important, if not a decisive, factor in bringing about the fall of Turkish power at sea. Early in her history Venice devised a symbolical ceremony by which she was annually wedded to the sea as a recognition that her greatness was derived from that source. A ring was cast into the waters of the Adriatic, and in this picturesque way acknowledgment was made of the maritime basis of Venetian power, and as this power was used both to safeguard and advance western civilization for centuries, it follows that that civilization, with its democratic aspirations and great material triumphs, is to a large extent the creature of sea power.
Constantinople did a great deal to preserve the learning of the ancient world, and much of its ability to do this was due to sea power. For a long time the independence of this great city was only maintained by her sailors. At one time it was only .possible as a result of the superiority they possessed through knowing the secret of making the so called “ Greek fire,” an inflammable material that water did not extinguish (perhaps because of its containing quick lime) and therefore was a weapon the exclusive possession of which made their fleets able to withstand the vastly superior forces of the Mohammedans. This invention was the result of sea experience, and it was adapted primarily to use at sea; so that its benefits must be considered as the contribution of sea power to civilization.
Genoa is another maritime community that has contributed greatly to the advance of western civilization. Genoa, like Venice, was active in maintaining relations with the Orient, and shares with Venice the credit for developing much of our commercial system, even though the two cities often engaged in bitter wars with each other. Our main debt to Genoa, however, is for the discovery of America. Christopher Columbus was a Genoese, and even though Spain provided him with ships to make his voyage to the New World, he got, what is far more important, his seamanship, his initiative, and his ambition, from the training he received and the traditions he imbibed in the active and efficient ships of his native city. The discovery of America has had more influence on the development of democracy and on the advance of material civilization than any other event in the world’s history, and for it we are plainly indebted to the conditions and qualities developed by sea faring.
Portugal has also contributed much to human progress as a result of her marine activity. A nation with a large sea faring population, she has afforded a peculiar contrast to her immediate neighbor, Spain. Measured by Spanish social and political standards, Portugal has always been extremely liberal and progressive, and, apart from the discovery of America, the credit for which Genoa shares with Spain, her foreign influence has been vastly greater when we consider the disparity in size between the two countries. Portugal first gave the world a knowledge of the water routes to Africa and the Orient. Vasco da Gama’s voyage by which he opened up the vast eastern world to Europe, and Magellan’s voyage around the world, were only second to Columbus’s explorations in their effect on history, and they were plainly the result of the skill and enterprise developed by Portugal’s extensive sea activities nearer home in the centuries preceding them. (Magellan led a Spanish expedition, but he was a Portuguese, as were his chief associates and many of his crew.)
The sea power of Holland enabled that country to resist the tyranny of Spain, and it also enabled the Dutch to assist greatly m the commercial development of the modern world. The economic center of civilization to-day, New York City, owes its origin to Dutch maritime enterprise, and South Africa, which has lately become increasingly prominent in the economic and political world, must also be credited to the same thing as far as its foundation is concerned. What the Dutch have done to develop the East and the West Indies and establish the commercial relations that bind us to those regions is also considerable, so that, even though their achievements have been mostly economic, they have been vastly significant; for economic influences are fundamental at all times, and preeminently important in the civilization of to-day. Modern life would be very much less comfortable and less refined if it were without the contributions made to it by Dutch sea power, and modern government would undoubtedly be less enlightened and liberal if it were not for the principles of justice which the Hollanders have been able to establish as a result of their nautical skill.
The effect of English sea power has been much discussed, but its negative rather than its positive side has lately received most attention. The English conception of freedom has not only been developed and protected, but has spread throughout the world largely by the agency of the sea. Every civilized country now has a government made on the English model, and there is no doubt that this wide diffusion of Anglo-Saxon political methods is the result of the ubiquitness of British colonies and of British and American commerce. England’s sea power developed what the seamanship of Genoa discovered, North America, and what would the modern world be politically and economically if that region had not been developed or had been developed under despotic instead of liberal auspices? English sea power also suppressed piracy and the slave trade on the high seas, and it has on many occasions suppressed violence and offered an asylum to the persecuted in the remoter or less orderly regions of the world, thus establishing the navy as conspicuously and peculiarly the guardian of law, order, and justice.
The above instances are only some of the more obvious cases of the influence of sea power upon civilization that would appear at a cursory glance through history. Many others could be cited, while the indirect effects of maritime power are numberless, and are frequently so imperceptible as to pass unnoticed. It is plain though that the sea has been one of the greatest influences in making our modern civilization what it is, and that what is essentially naval power has been just as active in times of peace in building up our resources and our institutions as it has been in times of war in protecting them.