Sir Walter Ralegh and the Art of War by Sea: Military Humanism and the Uses of the Early Modern Soldier-Scholar

Abstract

This article establishes the intellectual origins and underpinnings of the early modern soldier-scholar in order to better understand the military humanist tradition within which Sir Walter Ralegh's writings on naval warfare and logistics were conceived and composed. By locating Ralegh within this tradition, the article provides a new critical framework for examining his dual identification with both the military and scholarly spheres. After discussing how the soldier-scholar figure is indebted to the early modern intellectualisation of the art of war as an object of humanist discourse, this article examines how Ralegh adopts this figure as a means to seek preferment at court, beginning in the mid-1590s following his fall from royal favour. Focusing on three distinct groups of naval writings, it argues that Ralegh positioned himself as an expert in the art of war by sea as a means of effacing differences in social status between himself and his contemporaries at court. It discusses his relationship with contemporary soldier-scholars—including Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, and Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland—and demonstrates how Ralegh's expertise in naval matters combined personal experience, first-hand information from well-travelled mariners and extensive reading in classical and early modern military science.