History
Further information: Naval historyMankind has fought battles on the sea for more than 3,000 years. Land navigation, until the advent of extensive railroads was extremely dependent upon river systems and canals.
The latter were crucial in the development of the modern world in the United Kingdom, the Low Countries and northern Germany, for they enabled the bulk movement of goods and raw materials without which the Industrial Revolution would not have occurred. Prior to 1750, things moved by barge or sea, or not much at all. Thus armies, with their exorbitant needs for food, ammunition and fodder, were tied to the river valleys throughout the ages.
The oceanic influences throughout pre-recorded history (Homeric Legends, e.g. Troy), and classical works like the Odyssey underscore the past influences. The Persian Empire — united and strong — couldn't prevail against the might of the Athenian fleet combined with that of lesser city states in several attempts to conquer the Greek city states. Phoenicia's and Egypt's power, Carthage's and even Rome's depended in no mean way upon control of the seas.
So too did the Venetian Republic dominate Italy's city states, thwart the Ottoman Empire, and dominate commerce on the Silk Road and the Mediterranean in general for centuries. For three centuries, the Northmen commonly called the Vikings raided and pillaged and went where they willed, far into central Russia and the Ukraine, and even to far off Constantinople (both via the Black Sea tributaries and through the Strait of Gibraltar).
Many sea battles through history also provide a reliable source of shipwrecks for underwater archaeology. A major example, albeit not very commonly known, is the exploration of the wrecks of various warships in the Pacific Ocean.
Read more about this topic: Naval Warfare
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)