CONTEST FOR THE CENTER OF THE WORLD

There are times in history when great powers face off against each other and, in the process, provoke famous battles. During the second Persian invasion of Greece in the fifth century BCE, the massive Persian army was stymied at the pass of Thermopylae by 300 resolute Spartans. During the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage in the third century BCE, Hannibal and his war elephants crossed the Alps, defeated the Roman legions, and subsequently spent fifteen years rampaging through the Italian peninsula. During the first Crusade in the eleventh century CE, the crusaders sacked Jerusalem, wading knee-deep in the blood of the slaughtered. During the First Afghan War, the British forces commanded by Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone—4,500 soldiers and 12,000 civilians—were annihilated, with only one man, Assistant Surgeon William Brydon, surviving. ¹

These are all famous clashes of empires and famous battles. There are others, though, no less important in the grand scheme of history, but less well known. One of these clashes was the struggle between the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire for control of the Mediterranean basin in the sixteenth century.

This contesting of the Mediterranean by Western Christian and Eastern Muslin empires is of fundamental importance for the history of the Barbary corsairs. In the sixteenth century, it was the macro event against which the micro events of innumerable Barbary corsair ventures played out.

There is a wonderfully readable book that deals with this grand struggle: Empires of the Sea: the Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World, by Roger Crowley.

 

I can think of no better way to set the scene for what Crowley writes about than to quote from his Prologue:

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The Mediterranean was a sea of troubles. On this terrain was played out one of the fiercest and most chaotic contests in European history: the struggle between Islam and Christianity for the center of the world. It was a drawn-out affair. Battle rolled blindly across the water for well over a century; the opening skirmishes alone, in which the Ottomans eclipsed Venice, lasted fifty years. The struggle assumed many forms: little wars of economic attrition, pirate raids in the name of faith, attacks on coastal forts and harbors, sieges of the great island bastions, and, rarest of all, a handful of epic sea battles. The struggle sucked in all the nations and special interest groups that bordered Mediterranean waters: Turks, Greeks, North Africans, Spanish, Italians, and Frenchmen; the peoples of the Adriatic Sea and the Dalmatian coast; merchants, imperialists, pirates, and holy warriors. All fought in shifting alliances to protect religion, trade, or empire. None could fly a neutral flag for long.

The landlocked arena provided limitless possibilities for confrontation. North to south it is surprisingly narrow; in many places only a small strip of water separate alien peoples. Raiders could appear over the horizon at a moment’s notice, and vanish again at will. Not since the lightning strikes of the Mongols had Europe experienced so abruptly the sudden terror of enemies. The Mediterranean became a biosphere of chaotic violence where Islam and Christianity clashed with unmatched ferocity. The battlegrounds were water, islands, and shores…

There is an essential fact about the Mediterranean: it is really two seas, pinched in the middle by the narrow straits between Tunis and Sicily, with Malta sitting midstream, an awkward dot. The Ottomans would quickly dominate the eastern seas, the Hapsburgs of Spain the western. In time, both would converge on the dot.

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It is sometimes said that human beings are hardwired to process information via narrative. That is, not only do we like stories; we find it easy to remember the details in those stories—far easier than details presented in a straightforward factual lecture. Stories are… memorable.

The blurb on the cover of the trade paperback edition of Empires of the Sea contains the following observation:

“Crowley has an astonishing gift for narration; his account is as exciting as any thriller.”

I’m not sure that Empires of the Sea actually is as exciting as a thriller, but it genuinely is a hard-to-put-down book. Crowley has the knack—rare and delightful in a historian—of being a really good story teller. From the macro canvas of this sprawling contest of empires, he teases out the details that make for gripping stories.

The two largest and most significant battles between the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire were the siege of Malta (the Ottomans tried unsuccessfully to capture the island of Malta, the home base of the militant Knights Hospitaller) and the Battle of Lepanto (one of the largest confrontations of fleets of war galleys ever, pictured above), and so, naturally, these are the focus of Crowley’s book—hence the title. But he portrays these grand battles, and their background, on a human scale, introducing us to the individual characters involved—Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Sultan; Charles V, the Hapsburg Emperor, Andrea Doria, the Admiral of Charles’ galley fleet; Hayreddin Barbarossa, the famous corsair leader, among others—with a novelists’ eye for the telling detail.

Not only is this book a pleasure to read; it’s highly informative as well. Crowley knows his history. And because the narrative is so clear and compelling, the ideas are easy to absorb and the details stick with you.  By the time you’ve finished it, you have both a clear sense of the overall dynamic of the great struggle and an intuitive feel for what drove the various movers and shakers in the story—plus… you get to vicariously take part in the two great battles.

If, after reading Empires of the Sea, you should find yourself in conversation with somebody who asks you about the siege of Malta or the Battle of Lepanto, you can shrug casually and respond, “Oh yeah… I was there.”

What better recommendation can there be than that for a book dealing with historical events?

 

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1. Plus Flashy, of course, if you’re a fan of George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman Papers.