The Ascent of Maritime Trade 1700-2025 : Enlightening the World

Third volume of the critically-acclaimed series stressing maritime trade as the driver of world history, wealth-creation, technologiical inventiveness, art and literature.This book tackles the Maritime Enlightenment, which spurred economic liberalism and humanitarianism, unlike its continental version, breaking free from historic attitudes to slavery and serfdom, contextualising current debates on imperial history.The immediate cause of America’s War of Independence is revealed to be about illegal maritime trade.Jefferson and Madison never understood the latent wealth-creating power of US trade, misdirecting energies for some years.US north-south divisions were exacerbated by trade tariffs more than than slavery.The failure of France’s Revolution and Germany’s 20th-century wars were also failures to appreciate its importance.The post 1945 rise of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China and UAE were directly because of their encouragement of maritime trade and shipping.Britain’s decline