WHEN trying to find the underlying and developing ideas of naval operations and strategy in the events of the naval conflicts between the Italian maritime states of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the fundamental questions are: (1) What do the actions of the hostile parties reveal about the war aims of the participants? (2) How did these change over time if, indeed, they did? (3) What strategies were developed to achieve those aims? In practical affairs, it is common for theory to lag well behind practice. Alfred Thayer Mahan's influential analysis of naval strategy was based on a study of sailing navies that were obsolete in the time that he was writing. This is not to suggest that the commanders of the sailing navies of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries did not grasp the concept of global strategy nor that naval commanders in the fourteenth century did not have clear goals. Rather, it suggests that the theoretical articulation of complex concepts often follows a thorough testing of ideas in the practical sphere. That, in turn, suggests that to understand the development of certain ideas in their contemporary context, one must look to the actions of the participants as indications of the thought processes that guided them.