Thalassocracy

Rare card · No. 66514

A thalassocracy or thalattocracy, sometimes also maritime empire, is a state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea, or a seaborne empire. Traditional thalassocracies seldom dominate interiors, even in their home territories. Examples of this were the Phoenician states of Tyre, Sidon and Carthage; the Delian League of Athens; the Italian maritime republics of Venice and Genoa of the Mediterranean; the Omani Empire of Arabia; and the empires of Srivijaya and Majapahit in Maritime Southeast Asia and Chola Empire in South Asia. Thalassocracies can thus be distinguished from traditional empires, where a state's territories, though possibly linked principally or solely by the sea lanes, generally extend into mainland interiors in a tellurocracy ("land-based hegemony"). The term thalassocracy can also simply refer to naval supremacy, in either military or commercial senses. The ancient Greeks first used the word thalassocracy to describe the government of the Minoan civilization, whose...

Read on Wikipedia · Image File:NE 323bc.jpg: Talessman at English Wikipedia (Thomas A. Lessman) File:Blank map of South Europe and North Africa.svg: historicair 23:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC) derivative work: SelfieCity, CC BY-SA 3.0