Description: This is a book about how a peasant society created a large navy which was used to conquer and defend a Baltic mpire. It emphasises organisational capabilities rather than maritime skills as essential for early modern navies.
Review Quotes: Swedish Naval Administration, 1521-1721 is the great scholarly work that crowns Jan Glete's series of immensely important books and articles on early modern European navies. Sadly, he did not live to see this volume in final form, as it is in many ways his most important major work. This study provides a completely new and convincing reinterpretation of Swedish naval history in the context of Swedish and Scandinavian history, providing the Swedish perspective and the international complement to Martin Bellamy's Christian IV and his Navy: A Political and Administrative History of the Danish Navy, 1596-1648 (2006). At the same time, Glete provides a new and stimulating model and case study in understanding the growth, development, sustainment, and operations of a national navy that is notably different from the model of the rival Atlantic powers and the development of global transoceanic empires. Thus, from a number of different perspectives, it is a work that every serious naval scholar should read and consider with care as a source of stimulating approaches. work that every serious naval scholar should read and consider with care as a source of stimulating approaches.
John B. Hattendorf in The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord, 21 (4), 2011, 421-422