Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation

[Monte Davis]

 Cf. in AtD, Werfner-Renfrew and Eurasia as the "world-island"..

"[Kit] glimpsed how Ostend really might not be simply another
pleasure-resort for people with too much money, but the western anchor of a
continental system that happened to include the Orient Express, the
Trans-Siberian, the Berlin-to-Baghdad, and so on in steel proliferation
across the World-Island." (567)

Also Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), American historian and naval
strategist of imperial "sea lanes" -- not namechecked, but surely present
aboard the Stupendica / Emperor Maximilian in AtD, and tabulating the shift
from (e.g.) St. Helena or Capetown as food/water stops in sailing days to
the coaling stations where Enzian was conceived in GR.   .

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 6:22 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:

>
> "At the rocket field they talked continents, encirclements --- seeing
> years before the General Staff the need for a weapon to break ententes, to
> leap like a chess knight over Panzers [sic!], infantry, even the Luftwaffe.
> Plutocratic nations to the west, communists to the east. Spaces, models,
> game-strategies. Not much passion or ideology. Practical men. While the
> military wallowed in victories not yet won, the rocket engineers had to
> think non-fanatically, about German reverses, German defeat --- the
> attrition of the Luftwaffe and its decline in power, the withdrawals of
> fronts, the need for weapons with longer ranges.... But others had the
> money, others gave the orders ---"
>
> Gravity's Rainbow, p. 401
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------------------
> Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation
>
> by Carl Schmitt
>
> Translated by Samuel Garrett Zeitlin
> Edited and with Introductions by Russell A. Berman and Samuel Garrett
> Zeitlin
>
> Also available in Kindle eBook format at Amazon.
>
> *Winner of the 2016 IPPY Bronze Award in Religion*
>
> *Winner of the 2015 London Book Festival Award in History*
>
> Originally published in 1942, at the height of the Second World War, *Land
> and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation* recounts Carl Schmitt's view of
> world history "as a history of the battle of sea powers against land powers
> and of land powers against sea powers." Schmitt here unfolds his view of
> world history from the Peloponnesian War to European colonial expansion to
> the birth pangs of capitalism, while polemically setting Nazi Germany as a
> continental land power against Britain and the United States as its
> maritime enemies. In *Land and Sea*, Schmitt offers his interpretations
> of the rise of Venice, piracy, "corsair capitalism," the spatial revolution
> of European colonial expansion, the rise of the British empire, and his
> readings of thinkers as diverse as Seneca, Shakespeare, Herman Melville,
> and Benjamin Disraeli.
>
> This new and authorized edition from Telos Press Publishing, translated by
> Samuel Garrett Zeitlin and edited by Russell A. Berman and Samuel Garrett
> Zeitlin, includes extensive textual annotations that compare critical
> variations between the original 1942 edition of *Land and Sea* and the
> subsequent editions published in 1954 and 1981.
>
> http://www.telospress.com/store/#!/Land-and-Sea-A-World-
> Historical-Meditation-paperback/p/55571962/category=4186633
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------------------------
>
> "Es ist begreiflich, dass gerade die Luftwaffe als 'Raumwaffe' bezeichnet
> wurde. Denn die raumrevolutionäre Wirkung, die von ihr ausgeht, ist
> besonders stark, unmittelbar und augenfällig. Stellt man sich außerdem noch
> vor, dass nicht nur Flugzeuge den Luftraum über Land und Meer durchfliegen,
> sondern auch ununterbrochen die Funkwellen von allen Ländern mit
> Sekundenschnelle durch den atmosphärischen Raum um den Erdball kreisen, so
> liegt es nahe, zu glauben, dass jetzt nicht nur eine neue, dritte Dimension
> erreicht, sondern sogar ein drittes Element hinzugetreten ist, die *Luft*
> als ein neuer Elementarbereich menschlicher Existenz. Zu den beiden
> mythischen Tieren Leviathan und Behemoth würde dann noch ein drittes, ein
> großer Vogel, hinzutreten. Aber wir dürfen mit solchen folgenreichen
> Behauptungen nicht vorschnell umgehen. Denkt man nämlich daran, mit welchen
> technisch-maschinellen Mitteln und Energien die menschliche Macht im
> Luftraum ausgeübt wird, und stellt man sich die Explosionsmotoren vor,
> durch die die Luftmaschinen bewegt werden, so erscheint einem eher das
> *Feuer* als das hinzutretende, eigentlich neue Element menschlicher
> Aktivität."
>
> Carl Schmitt: Land und Meer. Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung. (Chapter
> 20)
>
>
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