Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 English Expansion into Spanish America and the Development of a Pro-martime War Argument
- PART I PRO-MARITIME WAR ARGUMENTS DURING THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION
- Chapter 2 The Idea of Economic Advantages of Maritime War in Spanish America
- Chapter 3 Pro-maritime War Arguments and Party Politics
- PART II IMPACT ON REALITY
- PART III PRO-MARITIME WAR ARGUMENTS AFTER 1714
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - The Idea of Economic Advantages of Maritime War in Spanish America
from PART I - PRO-MARITIME WAR ARGUMENTS DURING THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 English Expansion into Spanish America and the Development of a Pro-martime War Argument
- PART I PRO-MARITIME WAR ARGUMENTS DURING THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION
- Chapter 2 The Idea of Economic Advantages of Maritime War in Spanish America
- Chapter 3 Pro-maritime War Arguments and Party Politics
- PART II IMPACT ON REALITY
- PART III PRO-MARITIME WAR ARGUMENTS AFTER 1714
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The emphasis on the alleged economic advantages of maritime war, especially that against Spanish America, in the pro-maritime war argument has been pointed out by historians who have examined relations between politics and war in the period of the Nine Years War and the War of the Spanish Succession. For example, Terence J. Denman has summed up the character of the argument supporting war at sea (which he calls the ‘Country strategic argument’), which had its origin in the Elizabethan war at sea and had developed by the late seventeenth century, as follows: ‘maritime attacks on an enemy's colonies and trading routes were the best method of bringing a power, such as Spain low, and that such attacks would make a war a profitable or self-financing enterprise’. Likewise, J.A. Johnston describes the convictions regarding naval power, which were often expressed in Parliament in the period between 1688 and 1714, as follows: ‘England was by tradition, if not by right, a great sea power’, and ‘Englishmen instinctively understood the management of a sea war, and that properly managed, a sea war should largely pay for itself out of the spoils of the enemy.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Britain and Colonial Maritime War in the Early Eighteenth CenturySilver, Seapower and the Atlantic, pp. 39 - 68Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013