ABSTRACT
Beginning in the sixteenth century, myriad interrelated changes in the art of war in the West, first described by Michael Roberts as a 'military revolution', enabled the European states to secure global hegemony. While military leaders ashore could look back on a fairly rich written western tradition and draw at least some lessons from history, naval commanders of the seventeenth century secured no insights from the study of a nearly barren naval past. Captain John Smith's A Sea Grammar, first published in 1627 but reissued in 1652 as the First Anglo-Dutch War began, proffered some general guidelines for war at sea. It was instead a deliberate step toward a new concept of naval organization based upon the extension of military values to warfare at sea.' The First and Second Anglo-Dutch Wars marked the beginning of a new tactical system.
