Empires of the Sea

Empires of the Sea brings together studies of maritime empires from the Bronze Age to the Eighteenth Century. The volume aims to establish maritime empires as a category for the (comparative) study of premodern empires, and from a partly ‘non-western’ perspective. The book includes contributions on Mycenaean sea power, Classical Athens, the ancient Thebans, Ptolemaic Egypt, The Genoese Empire, power networks of the Vikings, the medieval Danish Empire, the Baltic empire of Ancien Régime Sweden, the early modern Indian Ocean, the Melaka Empire, the (non-European aspects of the) Portuguese Empire and Dutch East India Company, and the Pirates of Caribbean.

Rolf Strootman is associate professor of History at Utrecht University. He studies imperialism and cultural encounters in the ancient Mediterranean. He is the author of Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires (2014) and co-editor of Persianism in Antiquity (2017). Floris van den Eijnde is assistant professor of History at Utrecht University. He studies Iron Age and Archaic Athenian society. He co-edited Feasting and Polis Institutions (2017) and is editor of the Brill series Cultural Interactions in the Mediterranean. Roy van Wijk studies at Utrecht University and is now researcher at the Université de Fribourg, Switzerland. He is currently working on a PhD on the interstate relations between Attica and Boeotia from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period. Contributors are: Catia Antunes, Peter Borschberg, Thomas Heebøll-Holm, Jorrit Kelder, Thomas Kirk, Kris Lane, Olaf Mörke, Marco Mostert, Remco Raben, Anjana Singh, Rolf Strootman, Floris van den Eijnde, Roy van Wijk.