Navies: military security and the oceans

This chapter is about how the military sees the sea. It provides a history of how Anglo-American naval thinking and practice has evolved since the 1500s, with particular attention to how naval strategists have conceptualised and spatialised the sea. The core argument is that while naval objectives have changed little, the environment in which navies operate, have changed significantly. Looking to the future, it considers how growing interest among geographers in volumes, materialism, geo-power, hybridity and assemblage could provide the basis for a distinctive form of ‘mar-politics’ based on ‘sea-power’ that would complement the social sciences’ traditional preoccupation with geopolitics.