Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gq7q9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T22:13:53.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sea Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Christopher Connery
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There is no More Sea Power. What Kind of Awe can a Fleet or an Aircraft Carrier inspire in the Nuclear Age, Whose Blasts have given a new character to military majesty and sublimity and whose marine vehicles are hidden beneath the waves? Nor do the ocean-girding voyages of global commerce offer a sense of majesty, the neat stacks of containers rising high above the decks being mere floating versions of the endless stacks at the prosaic, crane-filled ports of Busan, Long Beach, Elizabeth, or Singapore. The sea is full of transport, labor, and industry, but spectacle has moved elsewhere: what remains of the nautical in the visual media is the nostalgic sublimity of sinking ships or historical reenactments of blue-water glory. As if to underscore this vacuum of hegemonic maritime power in an age of shock and awe, the pirates of Puntland and Sulu still have their way in the Gulf of Aden and the Strait of Malacca, as they have for centuries. Latter-day posturing by the epigones of interstate maritime power contenders approaches farce, as in the struggle for the Arctic, joined by Russia, Canada, the United States, Denmark, and Norway, punctuated by Russian flags at the bottom of the sea and by the specter of Danish military incursion into what Canada claims as its sovereign territory (Craciun).

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 3 , May 2010 , pp. 685 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Blumenberg, Hans. Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence. Trans. Rendall, Steven. Cambridge: MIT P, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Çelebi, Evilya. Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in the Seventeenth Century, by Evliyá Efendí. Trans. Hammer, Joseph von. 1834-50. New York: Johnson Rpt., 1968. Print.Google Scholar
Coleman, K. M. “Launching into History: Aquatic Displays in the Early Empire.” Journal of Roman Studies 83 (1993): 48–74. JSTOR. Web. 21 Mar. 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connery, Christopher. “Ideologies of Land and Sea: Alfred Thayer Mahan, Carl Schmitt, and the Shaping of Global Myth Elements.” Boundary 2 28.2 (2001): 173–201. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connery, Christopher. “The Oceanic Feeling and the Regional Imaginary,” Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary. Ed. Wilson, Rob and Dissanayake, Wimal. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. 284–312. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connery, Christopher. “There Was No More Sea: The Supersession of the Ocean, from the Bible to Cyberspace.” Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006): 495–511. Print.Google Scholar
Corbin, Alain. The Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World, 1750-1840. Trans. Phelps, Jocelyn. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Craciun, Adriana. “The Scramble for the Arctic.” Interventions 11.1 (2009): 103–14. Print.Google Scholar
Crouzet-Pavan, Elisabeth. Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth. Trans. Cochrane, Lydia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Finkel, Caroline. Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. New York: Basic, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Gat, Azar. A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Gat, Azar. War in Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Hau'ofa, Epeli. “Our Sea of Islands.” We Are the Ocean: Selected Works. Honolulu: U of Hawai'i P, 2008. 27–40. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Trans. Nisbet, Hugh Barr. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981. Print.Google Scholar
Hewitt, Barnard, ed. The Renaissance Stage: Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini, and Furttenbach. Coral Gables: U of Miami P, 1958. Print.Google Scholar
Kapp, Ernst. Philosophische oder Vergleichende Allgemeine Erdkunde als Wissenschaftliche Darstellung der Erdverhältnisse und des Menschenlebens nach ihrem innern Zusammenhang. Braunschweig: George Westermann, 1845. Print.Google Scholar
Klein, Norman. The Vatican to Vegas: A History of Special Effects. New York: New, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Lane, Fredric Chapman. Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1934. Print.Google Scholar
Lane, Martin. Venice: A Maritime Republic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973. Print.Google Scholar
Mahan, Alfred Thayer. The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. Boston: Little, 1890. Print.Google Scholar
Mahan, Alfred Thayer. “The True Significance of the Pacific Cruise.” Scientific American 7 Dec. 1907: 407-13. American Periodicals Series Online. Web. 21 Mar. 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peacock, John. The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones: The European Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Pincus, Steven C. A. “From Butterboxes to Wooden Shoes: The Shift in English Popular Sentiment from Anti-Dutch to Anti-French in the 1670s.” Historical Journal 38.2 (1995): 333-61. JSTOR. Web. 21 Mar. 2010.Google Scholar
Ratzel, Friedrich. Das Meer als Quelle der Völkergrösse. Eine politisch-geographische Studie. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1900. Print.Google Scholar
Reckner, James. Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet. Annapolis: Naval Inst. P, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony. The Land beneath the Winds. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988. Print. Vol. 1 of Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680.Google Scholar
Rodger, N. A. M. The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815. New York: Alan Lane-Penguin, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Rossi, Paolo. Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts in the Early Modern Era. Trans. Attanasio, Salvator. New York: Harper, 1970. Print.Google Scholar
Rüger, Jan. The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Russell, Gillian. The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics, and Society, 1793-1815. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, Carl. Land und Meer: Eine Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung. 1942. Stuttgart: Klett, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Schottenhammer, Angela, ed. The East Asian Maritime World, 1400-1800: Its Fabrics of Power and Dynamics of Exchange. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Schottenhammer, Angela, and Ptak, Roderick, eds. The Perception of Maritime Space in Traditional Chinese Sources. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Sekula, Alain. Fish Story. Rotterdam: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art; Düsseldorf: Richter, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Spate, O. H. K. The Spanish Lake. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Print. Vol. 1 of The Pacific since Magellan.Google Scholar
Steinberg, Philip. The Social Construction of the Ocean. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Stevens, William Oliver, and Westcott, Allan. A History of Sea Power. Garden City: Doubleday, 1929. Print.Google Scholar
Taylor, Rabun. “Torrent or Trickle? The Aqua Alsietina, the Naumachia Augusti, and the Transtiberium.” American Journal of Archaeology 101.3 (1997): 465–92. Print.Google Scholar
Traversari, Gustavo. Gli spettacoli in acqua nel teatro tardoantico. Rome: “L'Erma” di Bretschneider, 1960. Print.Google Scholar
Visentini, Margharita Azzi. “Festivals of State: The Scenography of Power in Late Renaissance and Baroque Venice.” Festival Architecture. Ed. Bonnemaison, Sarah and Macy, Christine. New York: Routledge, 2008. 74–112. Print.Google Scholar
Werry, Margaret. “‘The Greatest Show on Earth’: Political Spectacle, Spectacular Politics, and the American Pacific.” Theatre Journal 57.3 (2005): 355–82. Project Muse. Web. 21 Mar. 2010.Google Scholar