Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation

[Monte Davis]

One of the central insights of Schmitt and his predecessors (German and
other) was that for most of human history, transport by water had almost
always been much faster and cheaper than transport by land. All-weather
road networks like those of Rome, Persia, and the Incas were exceptional,
and were comparatively fast for couriers and mounted or light-armed forces,
not so much for heavy transport. The European overseas empires
(oversimplifying, but still) were built less on higher technology _per se_
than on the ability of Madrid, London or Paris to deliver firepower and
logistic support to a coast or navigable river 5,000-10,000 miles away
faster than a local ruler a few hundred miles away.

That changed during the later 19th and early 20th century with railroads,
then paved roads plus internal-combustion vehicles. The "Berlin to Baghdad"
and "iron horse" themes in AtD, and what excited the Schmitt school, was
that a land power like Germany could now "reach" to distances that only
naval power -- or short-lived cavalry empires like the Mongols -- had
previously commanded. AtD is full of that transformation, which we tend to
forget because aircraft and rockets would soon come along to reach even
farther and faster.

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 8:11 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  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-Hist
>> orical-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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