The Balance of Sea Power in the Early Modern Era (1648–1713)
The balance of power was one of the founding ideas of the emerging inter-state system in the early modern era. This idea, however, has been analysed exclusively in relation to land powers on the European continent, while the historiography has failed to recognize its naval aspect so far. The omission seems strange, considering that the contemporaries conceptualized and measured absolute and relative sea power. This dissertation focuses on how the practice and theory of the balance-of-power idea were applied on the high seas and specifically among sea powers in the early modern era. Moreover, since state and sea powers were intertwined, it also shows how states reacted to other states’ decreasing or increasing sea power. The author argues that attaining and maintaining the balance of sea power in the seventeenth century was not just an abstract idea, but also an interactive process.
Examination committee:
Katalin Szende – Chair (Department of Medieval Studies, CEU)
Laszlo Kontler – supervisor (Department of History, CEU)
Jan Hennings – CEU internal member (Department of History, CEU)
Andrew Lambert – external member (King’s College London)
Samuel Zeitlin – external reader (University College London)
The doctoral dissertation is available for inspection.
For further information, and the Zoom link, please contact Margaretha Boockmann (BoockmannM@ceu.edu)
Picture: Abraham Storck, The Four Days' Battle, June 1666