Mapping Naval Warfare: A visual history of conflict at sea

by Jeremy Black

Naval operations and warfare were, and remain, a key element for mapping. Maps were vital for commanders in drawing up plans of attack, and their detail and usefulness have increased over the centuries as the science of mapping has developed.This beautiful book examines stunning original maps from a series of key conflicts from the Spanish Armada, the American Wars of Independence, and the Napoleonic wars to twentieth century conflicts from the First World War to Vietnam, and explains how they were represented through mapping and how the maps produced helped naval commanders to plan their strategy.

288 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 22, 2018

About the author

Jeremy Black is an English historian, who was formerly a professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US.
Black is the author of over 180 books, principally but not exclusively on 18th-century British politics and international relations, and has been described by one commentator as "the most prolific historical scholar of our age". He has published on military and political history, including Warfare in the Western World, 1882–1975 (2001) and The World in the Twentieth Century (2002).

Reviews

[Cropredy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's really only one reason to buy or read this book --- the maps.

If you are a fan of cartography over the centuries as I am, this book collects maps covering naval conflict going all the way back to 1285. The book is large format and exquisitely printed so the maps are sharp and eye-catching.

I'm a particular fan of 17th and 18th century maps as they combined bird's-eye perspective with historical details and highly embellished borders and cartouches. This book has ~200 examples.

The book is told in chronological order and as it gets closer to modern times, the maps get more functional and hence less visually interesting.

Sadly, the book's prose suffers from Black's well-known tendency to describe sweeping military history trends covering vast time scales and geographies. The writing is closer to Wikipedia-style than to anything else I can think of. You can't fault Black for his encyclopedia knowledge and frankly, you can enjoy this book merely by looking at the pictures. Virtually every page is illustrated with a map, many full-size.

The book's prose is not about the mapmakers themselves so if you are interested in that area, you will need to look elsewhere, perhaps using this book as a springboard for particular engravers / mapmakers that catch your eye.