Once upon a time, there was a small island nation who came very late to the party. Its neighbors had apparently divided the dinner amongst themselves, and there was little but table scraps left. And yet in rather short order that nation turned the tables upon its neighbors: its mastery of wind and wave gave it an unparalleled advantage in a world where international trade and shipping had become increasingly important. And ultimately, it reshaped the world in its image.

Sound fanciful? To a very large extent, it is not. In fact, it happened just a few hundred years ago. As Arthur Herman reveals in To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World the British Empire was largely the foundation of the modern world (including the capitalistic, trade-centric economic vision it represented), and the Royal Navy was the centerpiece of that empire. The economies of prior centuries crumbled before the new world order and an international economic system that lasts to this day.

Herman previously wrote How the Scots Invented the Modern World, and although one might wonder how he will manage to keep discovering new "influences" on the modern world, the thesis advanced in To Rule the Waves is a compelling one. Essentially, Herman noted that for much of history, "trade" was a relatively uncertain and insular activity. No nation had a particularly strong navy nor any vision for one. Spain, for example, lacked any consistent naval protection for the incredible stream of wealth that flowed from the New World (indeed, this failure would end up being exploited by English privateers such as John Hawkins and Francis Drake). It was only through the considerable presence of the Royal Navy that trade routes were formalized and the risk of economic disruption through piracy and the like diminished.

Herman charts the rise of the English Navy from its humble beginnings around the time of Columbus to the present. While one might have to admit that the book is rather "Anglocentric" it must also be admitted that the history of the past four hundred years has been largely Anglocentric as well. After all, while it was Spain and Portugal who discovered the New World, they did not exploit it well. Nor did they establish the level of sustained dominance that England did over the subsequent centuries. The reality of the British Empire and the stability it reflected (in an economic sense, if nothing else) largely justifies Herman's argument.