ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the hitherto widely ignored yet very sophisticated articulations of naval strategy of the especially the late sixteenth century which believe the claims of Grenier and Castex. The Anglo-Spanish War of the late sixteenth century was the laboratory for experiments with the application of a series of naval strategies, several of them quite new, and for complex strategic reasoning, at any rate on the English side. The Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1604 was long in the making, as it was part of the larger religious strife that tore apart Christendom in the early modern period. A strategic option with a large land component was advocated two years after the Lisbon voyage by Antonio Perez, a Spanish exile from Zaragoza in the kingdom of Aragon. Writing on naval strategy took off with the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, who sought his early inspiration in the English maritime campaigns especially of the late seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
