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A thalassocracy or thalattocracy,[1] sometimes also maritime empire, is a state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea, or a seaborne empire.[2] Traditional thalassocracies seldom dominate interiors, even in their home territories. Examples of this were the Phoenician states of Tyre, Sidon and Carthage; the Italian maritime republics of Venice and Genoa of the Mediterranean; the Chola Empire of Tamil Nadu in India; the Omani Empire of Arabia; and the empires of Srivijaya and Majapahit in Maritime Southeast Asia. Thalassocracies can thus be distinguished from traditional empires, where a state's territories, though possibly linked principally or solely by the sea lanes, generally extend into mainland interiors[3][4] in a tellurocracy ("land-based hegemony").[5]
The term thalassocracy can also simply refer to naval supremacy, in either military or commercial senses. The Ancient Greeks first used the word thalassocracy to describe the government of the Minoan civilization, whose power depended on its navy.[6] Herodotus distinguished sea-power from land-power and spoke of the need to counter the Phoenician thalassocracy by developing a Greek "empire of the sea".[7]
Its realization and ideological construct is sometimes called maritimism (cf. Pluricontinentalism or Atlanticism), contrasting continentalism (cf. Eurasianism).
Portugal's was in every sense a seaborne empire or thalassocracy.