The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb
Abstract
Records show that the Chinese invented gunpowder in the 800s. By the 1200s they had unleashed the first weapons of war upon their unsuspecting neighbours. This extraordinarily ambitious book traces the history of that invention and its impact on the surrounding Asian world - Korea, Japan, South East Asia and South Asia - from the ninth through the twentieth century. As the book makes clear, the spread of war and its technology had devastating consequences on the political and cultural fabric of those early societies although each reacted very differently. The book, which is packed with information about military strategy, interregional warfare and the development of armaments, also engages with the major debates and challenges traditional thinking on Europe’s contribution to military technology in Asia. Articulate and comprehensive, this book will be a welcome addition to the undergraduate classroom and to all those interested in Asian studies and military history.
... These latter may be of cosmological nature, and consequently, they may interfere with the universe of beliefs. The early developments of gunpowder and electricity, stimulated by cosmological considerations rather than by any practical perspective, are recent examples of such motivations ( [8], pp. 32-33; [9]). ...
The impact of mental shifts on societal transformations in antiquity is frequently minimized due to the difficulty of evaluating them. However, even in the absence of written sources, some of these changes are traceable in the material culture, through a special type of implements produced for revealing the technique bringing them forth. Defined as processual artifacts, they inform us about the ‘juvenile phase’ of complex techniques with strong cosmological dimension (technopoiesis), their evolution, and their societal influences. This paper exposes the heuristic power of this approach through the analysis of the early metallurgy in the Southern Levant. It shows how the evolution of this craft and its cosmological resonances contribute to clarify the singularity of the Ghassulian culture and its disappearance during the transition to the Early Bronze Age.
... Kajian-kajian terdahulu telah memperlihatkan bahawa meriam dan beberapa jenis artileri lain merupakan teknologi senjata api pertama yang diterima dan diadaptasi oleh orang Melayu daripada pelbagai sumber asing (lihat Andaya 1999;Gibson-Hill 1953;Harrisson 1969;Lorge 2008;Othman Yatim & Mohd Zamberi 1994;Reid 1969;Sun 2003). Sesuai dengan teknologi awal yang diterima itu, senjata api berat dijadikan senjata peperangan yang utama. ...
ABSTRAK Eksploitasi ubat bedil telah mencetuskan gelombang inovasi teknologi peralatan peperangan yang dinamakan sebagai senjata api. Secara beransur-ansur, senjata api menjadi teknologi baharu yang sentiasa dibangunkan serta dikehendaki dalam setiap peperangan, tidak terkecuali juga kepada orang Melayu sejak kurun ke-16 lagi. Antara jenis senjata api yang turut mendapat perhatian mereka ialah istinggar. Namun tidak seperti senjata api lain yang dikategorikan ke dalam kumpulan artileri seperti meriam dan lela; istinggar-sebagai sejenis senjata api ringan-tidak banyak dibincangkan tentang sifat-sifat, fungsi dan peranannya sebagai peralatan material yang penting dalam konteks kebudayaan orang Melayu. Artikel ini akan menjelaskan tentang apakah dia istinggar dengan meneliti ciri-ciri fizikalnya yang asas dalam proses untuk memahami aspek kepenggunaan serta kedudukannya dalam sistem persenjataan Melayu. Penelitian dibuat dengan berpandukan kepada sumber-sumber bertulis serta pemerhatian ke atas beberapa sampel senjata api ringan tersebut. Kata kunci: etnohistori, istinggar, kebudayaan material, senjata api, teknologi Melayu ABSTRACT The exploitation of gunpowder has triggered a wave of technological innovation in warfare, evident from the use of firearms. Gunpowder-dependent weaponry paved the way for new technology in firearms, which was constantly developed and very much in demand during war. The 16 th century Malay was no exception to this firearms acquisition. Istinggar was one of the types of firearms, which was a perennial favorite amongst the Malay. Unlike other forms of artillery such as cannons and handguns, the istinggar-a light form of firearm-has only a sprinkling of discussions held in its name; in terms of form, function and the role it plays as an important tool in the context of Malay material culture. This article sets out to define the istinggar, by means of its basic physical characteristics in an effort to understand its usage as a firearm, as well as its position in the Malay weaponry system. Research for this article is based on written sources as well as firsthand observations of istinggar sample. PENDAHULUAN Dalam usaha untuk memprojeksi dan mempamerkan kebudayaan material (material culture) yang berupa objek-objek mahupun alat-alat yang dipertimbangkan wujud dalam sesebuah kelompok kebudayaan, muzium selalunya akan menggunakan kaedah diorama. Menerusi diorama, akan dapat dilihat suatu gambaran menurut tema pamerannya-berdasarkan susunan set-set tertentu-yang membolehkan khalayak pengunjung menikmati persona citra yang dipercayai pernah wujud atau terjadi dalam kebudayaan itu, menurut seperti yang telah direpresentasi oleh susunan set-set tersebut. Oleh itu, setiap olahan set dan penggunaan artifak (atau replikanya) dalam diorama harus mengikut konteks kebudayaan sebenar masyarakat yang dimaksudkan, dengan ketepatan maknanya yang berhubungan lagi detil pula pengertian gambarannya dengan menetapkan kedudukan figura-figura, pakaian dan objek atau alatan yang dilengkapkan pada figura-figura, di mana hal ini akan membangkitkan pemahaman tentang bagaimana objek atau alat yang direpresentasi itu pernah digunakan oleh masyarakat terbabit pada masa lalu (lihat Nanda 2007:74-75). Walau bagaimanapun, olahan set bersama letak objek atau alat dalam konteks dan fitur sebenar jarang ditepati jika diperhatikan secara mendalam. Malah gambaran yang dicipta itu bertentangan dengan fakta-fakta yang menyokong diorama. Pertentangan dan ketidaktepatan diorama yang paling ketara didapati ialah dalam kes mempamerkan alat-alat berupa senjata api ringan kuno orang Melayu seperti istinggar dan terakul. Artifak senjata api itu sendiri jika diteliti, tidak disusun pada kedudukan yang betul dan sepatutnya, bahkan kadang-kadang dapat dilihat bahawa replikanya merupakan hasil duplikasi yang salah dan bersifat anakronisme. 1
... Thus, while not hostile, the Zunghars could secure little assistance in weapons or food in large quantities, from the Russian empire. 68 Thus while the Zunghars did develop a more complex bureaucracy, they lacked the skilled expertise needed to develop their industry sufficiently to compete with the Qing. It was not for lack of trying. ...
The chapter examine themes in early modern warfare in Inner Asia in relation to the Early Modern Military Revolution thesis.
... entre Francia y Gran Bretaña, de 49 Oficio de Pedro Sarrio al Marqués de la Sonora sobre la rebelión de los habitantes de la isla Hermosa, 1788, AMN, caja 192, manuscrito 320, doc. 15. 50 Noticia de la isla de Príncipe de Gales y de Malaca, 1803, AMN, caja 123, manuscrito 137 bis. 51 kATHIRITHMBy-WEllS, 1992, vol. 1: 572-612. RABEN, 2014. Roy, 2011. loRGE, 2008. Hispania, 2022, vol. lXXXII, n.º 270, enero-abril, págs. 39-75, ISSN: 0018-2141, e-ISSN: 1988-8368 https://doi.org/10.3989/hispania.2022 tal forma que permitieran emprender y adecuar las estrategias militares y las empresas comerciales 52 . ...
Durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII, Asia se consolidó como un escenario clave de la interdependencia global. Ante esta realidad, la monarquía española no descuidó sus intereses en esta región y desplegó una serie de medidas de amplio calado. Más allá de las reformas promovidas en las islas Filipinas, las relaciones entre España y Asia se transformaron cuantitativa y cualitativamente. En este marco, la Real Armada adquirió un papel de enorme importancia que trascendió su rol militar, pues se convirtió en un agente de información clave para estas nuevas relaciones hispano-asiáticas. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar cómo la institución naval recogió, creó y trasmitió multitud de datos de diversa naturaleza que fueron esenciales para la efectiva inserción de la monarquía española en los circuitos globales asiáticos.
... Para além de Jeremy Black, v.Lorge (2008Lorge ( , 2011; Lorge e Roy(2015);Roy (2014); Jacob e Visoni-Alonzo (2016). ...
Este artigo pretende relacionar a guerra naval luso-neerlandesa na Ásia no século XVII com o tema da revolução militar, designadamente na discussão que tem gerado sobre a existência ou não de uma excecionalidade militar ocidental no período moderno que teria superiorizado decisivamente ocidentais em relação a não-europeus. O tema é abordado considerando até que ponto a influência militar asiática sobre os portugueses no século XVI os inferiorizou depois em relação a oponentes europeus como os neerlandeses no século XVII. Alegar-se-á que o fez apenas limitadamente, não chegando por isso para corroborar por extensão as reivindicações de uma excecionalidade militar ocidental taxativa e decisiva.
Gunpowder and gun technology originated in China and their spread throughout Eurasia from the 13th to the 16th century was an example of the spread of Chinese culture. All of the basic forms of that military technology were fully developed in China before being transmitted outside of China, including the knowledge of how to acquire saltpeter, and that gunpowder only required sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal. The disassociation of gunpowder and gun technology from its Chinese origins and as a material part of Chinese culture is due to the centrality of Western military technological superiority in the Western narrative explaining Western cultural superiority. That narrative is fundamental to the Western justification of imperialism, colonialism and Western global exploitation.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Chinggis Khan and his progeny ruled over two-thirds of Eurasia. Connecting East, West, North and South, the Mongols integrated most of the Old World, promoting unprecedented cross-cultural contacts and triggering the reshuffle of religious, ethnic, and geopolitical identities. The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire studies the Empire holistically in its full Eurasian context, putting the Mongols and their nomadic culture at the center. Written by an international team of more than forty leading scholars, this two-volume set provides an authoritative and multifaceted history of 'the Mongol Moment' (1206–1368) in world history and includes an unprecedented survey of the various sources for its study, textual (written in sisteen languages), archaeological, and visual. This groundbreaking Cambridge History sets a new standard for future study of the Empire. It will serve as the fundamental reference work for those interested in Mongol, Eurasian, and world history.
Los historiadores “profesionales” han usado a la nación como el marco para estructurar sus análisis, lo que ha elevado la historia europea al nivel de metanarrativa. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas, un grupo de historiadores y académicos de otras disciplinas, interesados en el estudio de imperios, han replanteado de manera radical varios patrones historiográficos con el fin de descentralizar la historia y entender el desarrollo de las sociedades o poblaciones de forma global. Para ello, han propuesto el concepto de “imperio” como categoría transhistórica y transgeográfica. El presente artículo introduce las discusiones de estos académicos y propone una terminología para entender los imperios como acciones sociales realizadas dentro de condiciones materiales y construcciones conceptuales específicas. El objetivo es mostrar el alcance de esta nueva historia imperial como una metodología que no sólo plantea nuevas preguntas, sino que expande nuestra imaginación política fuera de los confines del Estado-nación.
Research objectives: To establish whether Hülegü brought gunpowder from China during his military operation in the Middle East in 1256–1260 and whether his army used gunpowder weapons against the Hashashi/Hashashin castles. Research materials: The article’s author examines Islamic and Chinese sources mentioning Hülegü’s military campaign from Mongolia to the Middle East and weapons used by the Mongolian army. Results and novelty of the research: Most researchers agree that the Mongols used gunpowder weapons adapted from the Chinese in their East Asian military expeditions, such as in China, Japan, Korea, and Java. However, it is still debated whether the Mongols used gunpowder and gunpowder weapons in their military campaigns in the West. Some researchers state that the Mongols did not use gunpowder in the European campaign and that naphtha was the main incendiary they used in the Middle East campaign. Few studies examine whether the Mongols carried gunpowder to the West. Islamic source writers described China’s novel weapons and chemicals in more familiar terms, such as naphtha. Especially when the information given by Hamdallah Mustawfi, Ata-Malik Juvayni, and Qutb al-din Shīrāzī about the Mongol Siege of Maymun-Diz in 1256 is compared with the Chinese military manual Wujing Zongyao, it is evident that the Mongols transported ballistas with three bows called “ox crossbow” from China. It turns out that these ballistas fired “rocket-assisted arrows”. These arrows carried paper tubes filled with gunpowder, which would increase their range to reach the mountain fortress of Maymun-Diz, and bombs covered with cartons, bamboo, ceramic, or metal which would set fire to the defenders of the fort. These ballistas are referred to as baban in Armenian sources and as “naphtha tools” in the Mongols’ siege of Baghdad. The most original aspect of the present article is the hypothesis that the information in Mustawfi’s work regarding the presence of “blue poison” in the arrows fired by the Mongols at the Maymun-Diz referred to black powder. “Blue poison, made up of particles”, was one of the ways by which Mustawfi expressed black powder.
In this highly readable and engaging work, Linda Walton presents a dynamic survey of China's history from the tenth through the mid-fourteenth centuries from the founding of the Song dynasty through the Mongol conquest when Song China became part of the Mongol Empire and Marco Polo made his famous journey to the court of the Great Khan. Adopting a thematic approach, she highlights the political, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural changes and continuities of the period often conceptualized as 'Middle Imperial China'. Particular emphasis is given to themes that inform scholarship on world history: religion, the state, the dynamics of empire, the transmission of knowledge, the formation of political elites, gender, and the family. Consistent coverage of peoples beyond the borders – Khitan, Tangut, Jurchen, and Mongol, among others – provides a broader East Asian context and introduces a more nuanced, integrated representation of China's past.
The Song dynasty established a standing naval force, which was ignored by some historians since Song lost its defensive wars to the Jin and Mongol forces. This article examines improvements and innovations of Chinese naval operations during Song and pays particular attention to how the state economic reforms and state-centered financial system supported naval development. Song’s population growth and demographic changes also provided manpower for the government to maintain a huge army while establishing a large navy. As the new age of naval and siege warfare emerged, gunpowder weapons and new naval technology became more widespread. The Chinese military adapted to naval warfare during the Southern Song because it was economically and technologically possible. The south’s mastery of riverine warfare created a substantial defensive advantage against the north. Thus, when the Mongols later mastered riverine warfare, they penetrated throughout the south.
The supposed Military Revolution of the early modern period is the most important instance of a key concept in military history, that of military revolutions. This collection takes a critical look at the example and thereby asks broader questions about the nature of military revolutions and indeed about the conceptualisation, methodologies and historiography of military history as a whole. The original thesis was Euro-only and its subsequent development was Westerncentric. This collection both reexamines the thesis in its European heartland, not least by drawing on important perspectives that were long underplayed, but als adds valuable African and Asian approaches. So also with chronological looks to the periods before and after.
Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan describes the ever-changing manifestations of sexes, genders, and sexualities in Japanese society from the 1860s to the present day. Analysing a wide range of texts, images and data, Sabine Frühstück considers the experiences of females, males and the evolving spectrum of boundary-crossing individuals and identities in Japan. These include the intersexed conscript in the 1880s, the first 'out' lesbian war reporter in the 1930s, and pregnancy-vest-wearing male governors in the present day. She interweaves macro views of history with stories about individual actors, highlighting how sexual and gender expression has been negotiated in both the private and the public spheres and continues to wield the power to critique and change society. This lively and accessible survey introduces Japanese ideas about modern manhood, modern womenhood, reproduction, violence and sex during war, the sex trade, LGBTQ identities and activism, women's liberation, feminisms and visual culture.
Many of the non-Chinese minorities inhabiting the south-western regions of the Ming empire (1368-1644) rebelled during the course of the dynasty’s existence, including the Miao, who at the end of the sixteenth century launched an uprising under the leadership of Yang Yinglong (1551-1600). The uprising and the resulting insurgency were eventually suppressed under the leadership of two civil officials, Guo Zizhang (1543-1618) and Li Hualong (1554-1611). During the early dynasty forceful suppression by the military together with the generous offering of amnesties and rewards to induce peaceful surrender had constituted the strategy for dealing with minority insurgencies. In contrast, civil officials, like Neo-Confucian thinker Wang Yangming (1472-1529), conceptualized mixed policies emphasizing moral exhortations and social engineering, in combination with military force using advanced technologies, as integrated solutions to the problem in the course of the sixteenth century. This paper will look at the extent to which these mixed policies were advocated and applied, and their relative measures of success.
What is the relationship between civil–military relations and the emergence as well as diffusion of military innovations? More precisely, how do civil–military relations affect a state's capacity for adopting military innovations? While both topics, military innovations and civil–military relations, have individually attracted considerable scholarly attention, very few studies deal with them in tandem. This study builds on the existing research on the relationship between “historical timing,” civil–military relations, and the diffusion of military reforms and advances an analytical framework that treats “time” as an explanatory dynamic, using the reception of the “military revolution” on Russia and Japan as exploratory cases. In both cases, historical timing played crucial roles in defining the “balance of [political] power” between the rulers and the existing military establishment, which then led to diverging paths in terms of adopting and internalizing the military reforms associated with the aforementioned revolution.
The dominant picture is that Gunpowder War became prevalent in Europe from fifteenth century onwards. This resulted in the replacement of knightly armoured cavalry with firearms-equipped infantry supported by mobile field artillery. The argument goes that since siege cannons were costly pieces of weapon technology which required large financial outlay and massive technical inputs, only the kings were able to manufacture and deploy them. Further, siege artillery enabled the royals to destroy the autonomous power bases of the feudal lords centred on castles. Strong centralised states started emerging in sixteenth-century Europe. These polities developed bureaucratic tentacles to extract increasing amount of resources from their host societies.
Between 1895 and 1950, the Tibetan government took several steps to improve the firearms and artillery of its troops, setting up local factories and negotiating with foreign powers to purchase arms manufactured abroad. These imports were directly related to the political relationship with these countries and required the introduction and diffusion of new knowledge and techniques among Tibetan troops. Based on Tibetan and English sources, this article discusses some of the challenges met by the Tibetan government in this process and gives an overview of the variety of modern firearms that the Tibetan army used in the early twentieth century.
How did upstart outsiders forge vast new empires in early modern Asia, laying the foundations for today's modern mega-states of India and China? In How the East Was Won, Andrew Phillips reveals the crucial parallels uniting the Mughal Empire, the Qing Dynasty and the British Raj. Vastly outnumbered and stigmatised as parvenus, the Mughals and Manchus pioneered similar strategies of cultural statecraft, first to build the multicultural coalitions necessary for conquest, and then to bind the indigenous collaborators needed to subsequently uphold imperial rule. The English East India Company later adapted the same 'define and conquer' and 'define and rule' strategies to carve out the West's biggest colonial empire in Asia. Refuting existing accounts of the 'rise of the West', this book foregrounds the profoundly imitative rather than innovative character of Western colonialism to advance a new explanation of how universal empires arise and endure.
A brief survey of the development of some techniques from antiquity to recent times reveals that their initial phase was stimulated not by perspectives of exploiting their outcome, as is usually expected for technology, but by the valorization of the process itself. This initial phase, defined here as technopoiesis, is conceptually and practically distinct from what subsequently becomes technology in respect of inventiveness, standardization, technical skill, level of ornamentation, practical use, integration into systems of exchange, and ritualized versus secular uses. It is shown that technopoiesis may profoundly modify the cultural environment by shaping the universe of beliefs, rituals, and values and that this influence may persist even after the transition to technology. It makes the distinction between technology and technopoiesis essential for evaluating the cultural influence of techniques, from the Paleolithic era to modern times.
This is the second of two volumes on the Sung Dynasty, which together provide a comprehensive history of China from the fall of the T'ang Dynasty in 907 to the Mongol conquest of the Southern Sung in 1279. With contributions from leading historians in the field, Volume 5, Part Two paints a complex portrait of a dynasty beset by problems and contradictions, but one which, despite its military and geopolitical weakness, was nevertheless economically powerful, culturally brilliant, socially fluid and the most populous of any empire in global history to that point. In this much anticipated addition to the series, the authors survey key themes across ten chapters, including government, economy, society, religion, and thought to provide an authoritative and topical treatment of a profound and significant period in Chinese history.
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