Mare nostrum? Reform, recruitment and the business of crusade in the fleets of the seventeenth century Mediterranean

The seventeenth century Mediterranean was dominated by the business of crusade. Fleets proved disastrously expensive, and few states could sustain the cost of war. Galleys may have been much more effective than the old paradigm holds, and fortresses often proved disastrously ineffective. Fleets operated under the paradox that they were both a projection of the ruler’s pact with the Almighty and a business opportunity. The Mediterranean was not abandoned in the Seicento, although the fighting revealed the paradox that in order to campaign against the enemy it was necessary to trade with him.