Port Cities of the British Empire: ‘A Global Thalassocracy'

Among empires, the most unusual is that of the sea. The Minoans, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, and the Vikings all dominated for a time the seas around them. But only once has there been a truly global thalassocracy, a nation whose fleet and merchant marine were dominant on almost all the seas of the world. This was Great Britain in the nineteenth century.