(2 Volume Set) Tide of Empires: Decisive Naval Campaigns in the Rise of the West, Volume 1, 1481-1654; Volume 2, 1654-1763 FIRST EDITIONS
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979-1982.
First Edition. Hardcover. Both volumes are stated first editions. 9 1/2" X 6 1/4". xiv, 252pp.; ix, 270pp. Rubbing, toning, creasing, and shelf wear to covers, corners, and edges of dust jackets. Jacket of Volume 1 is price-clipped at front flap. Gentle rubbing and bumps to corners and edges of blue paper over boards. Faint dust-spotting to edges of text blocks. Very faint toning to edges of unmarked pages. Bindings are firm and sound.
ABOUT VOLUME 1:
This volume deals with the period from Venetian sea supremacy and the Portuguese campaigns of discovery to the Dutch conquest of a world-wide maritime empire, and finally the emergence of England as a serious rival to the Dutch. Padfield discards the glamorous motives traditionally attributed to the naval commanders, explorers, navigators and pioneer adventurers, attributing their motivation instead to wealth and the envy of wealth. This original view produces a stark and challenging interpretation of the rise of the West as a remorseless economic battle for world markets, during which brief intervals of ‘peace’ are determined solely by exhaustion. Stripped of dogma, national bias and historical legend, this is a radically new view of naval history, written with all the gusto and attention to detail that has established Peter Padfield among the most readable and exciting of naval historians.(Publisher)
ABOUT VOLUME 2:
The second volume of Peter Padfield’s history of naval warfare, starts with England poised to take over from Holland as foremost world trading and naval power. It leads through the epic struggle of both maritime powers against Bourbon France and concludes with England’s triumphant assumption of the ‘Sovereignty of the Seas’. Underlying the narrative is Peter Padfield’s stark view of the rise of the West as a remorseless battle for the markets of the world, in which naval, financial and trading strength fuse into ‘Sea Power’, an irresistible force carrying all before it, and transforming every society it touches. In this challenging naval view of history, which embraces economics, finance and philosophy, political and individual freedoms are seen not so much as a cultural heritage, but as the necessary bedfellows of ‘Sea Power’, and incompatible with its antithesis, ‘Territorial Power’. In this volume, as in its companions, Peter Padfield succeeds in weaving the two strands of storytelling and vivid battle descriptions with the underlying study of the forces of naval, trading and financial power.(Publisher). Very good / good +. Item #15821
ISBN: 0710001509
Price: $25.00