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Maritime Supremacy & the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World

Book by Peter Padfield · 2 quotes · Might, Struggle, Supremacy

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Maritime Supremacy & the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World Quotes

“Our faith in democracy, personal freedoms and human 'rights', and the other comforting prescriptions of the humanist liberal credo stem from the supremacy of maritime over territorial power. Pragmatists may deplore this as crude determinism, as another vain attempt to construct a general theory of history. They should reflect on the sort of political philosophy and structures we might now adhere to had the Habsburgs, Bourbons, Bonaparte, Hitler, Stalin or his heirs prevailed in the titanic world struggles of the past four centuries.”

“It is clear that the flame of True Freedom had passed with naval supremacy and constitutional, consultative government from the United Provinces to Great Britain, where it was regarded with quite as much national pride.”