The Age Of Gunpowder Empires 1450 1800

This volume of essays makes available the essential background information and methods for effective teaching and writing on cross-cultural history. The contributors--some of the most distinguished writers of global and comparative history--chart the advances in understanding in their fields of concentration, revealing both specific findings and broad patterns that have emerged. The cover image, "The Arrival of the Dutch at Patane," from Theodore de Bry, India Orientals, Part VIII (Frankfurt: W. Richteri, 1607) depicts the two key phases of global history that are covered by the essays. Muslim inhabitants of the town of Patane on the Malayan peninsula warily confront a Dutch landing party whose bearing suggests that it is engaged in yet another episode in the saga of European overseas exploration and discovery. The presence of the Muslims in Malaya reflects an earlier process of expansion that saw Islamic civilization spread from Spain and Morocco in the west to the Philippines in the east in the millennium between the 7th and 17th centuries. The Dutch came by sea to an area on the coastal and island fringes of Asia, the one zone where their warships gave them a decisive edge in this era. The citizens of Patane had good reason to distrust the European intruders, since the Portuguese who had preceded the Dutch had used force whenever possible to control the formerly peaceful trade in the region and often to persecute Muslim Peoples. Author note: Michael Adas is Abraham Voorhees Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. He is currently editor of the American Historical Association's series on Global and Comparative History and co-editor of the Cambridge University Press series on "Studies in Comparative World History." He has published numerous articles and books, including most recently (with Peter Stearns and Stuart Schwartz) World Civilization: The Global Experience (1992) and Turbulent Passage: A Global History of the Twentieth Century (1993).

Islamic Gunpowder Empires provides readers with a history of Islamic civilization in the early modern world through a comparative examination of Islam's three greatest empires: the Ottomans (centered in what is now Turkey), the Safavids (in modern Iran), and the Mughals (ruling the Indian subcontinent). Author Douglas Streusand explains the origins of the three empires; compares the ideological, institutional, military, and economic contributors to their success; and analyzes the causes of their rise, expansion, and ultimate transformation and decline. Streusand depicts the three empires as a part of an integrated international system extending from the Atlantic to the Straits of Malacca, emphasizing both the connections and the conflicts within that system. He presents the empires as complex polities in which Islam is one political and cultural component among many. The treatment of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires incorporates contemporary scholarship, dispels common misconceptions, and provides an excellent platform for further study.

It is commonplace that warfare was integral to the European expansion, pitting the superiorities of the European against the inferiorities of the ’native’. The aim of this book is to look deeper, and to examine the technological, political and economic structures and capacities of the competing forces that shaped their ability to wage war, and the impact that colonial wars had on European and non-European states and societies alike. Questions of the extent to which one side could adapt its military institutions, tactics and technology to those of its opponents figure prominently. This was far from an inevitable one-way process, and environment and disease remained vital factors. The studies also situate these conflicts within the broader debate concerning the so-called military revolution, and show that our ideas of this need to be reconsidered in the light of what was happening outside Europe.

Essays analyze the connections between science and technology and military power in the late medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods. The integration of scientific knowledge and military power began long before the Manhattan Project. In the third century BC, Archimedes was renowned for his research in mechanics and mathematics as well as for his design and coordination of defensive siegecraft for Syracuse during the Second Punic War. This collection of essays examines the emergence during the early modern era of mathematicians, chemists, and natural philosophers who, along with military engineers, navigators, and artillery officers, followed in the footsteps of Archimedes and synthesized scientific theory and military practice. It is the first collaborative scholarly assessment of these early military-scientific relationships, which have been long neglected by scholars both in the history of science and technology and in military history. From a historical perspective, this volume investigates the deep connections between two central manifestations of Western power, examining the military context of the Scientific Revolution and the scientific context of the Military Revolution. Unlike the classic narratives of the Scientific Revolution that focus on the theories of, and conflicts between, Aristotelian and Platonic worldviews, this volume highlights the emergence of the Archimedean ideal--in which a symbiosis exists between the supply of mechanistic science and the demand for military capability. From a security-studies perspective, this work presents an in-depth study of the central components of military power as well as their dynamic interactions in the political, acquisitional, operational, and tactical domains. The essays in this volume reveal the intellectual and cultural struggles to enhance the capabilities of these components--an exercise in transforming military power that remains relevant for today's armed forces. The volume sets the stage by examining the innovation of gunpowder weaponry in both the Christian and the Islamic states of the late medieval and Renaissance eras. It then explores such topics as the cultural resistance to scientific techniques and the relationship between early modern science and naval power--particularly the intersecting developments in mathematics and oceanic navigation. Other essays address the efforts of early practitioners and theorists of chemistry to increase the power and consistency of gunpowder. The final essays analyze the application of advanced scientific knowledge and Enlightenment ideals to the military engineering and artillery organizations of the eighteenth century. The volume concludes by noting the global spread of the Archimedean ideal during the nineteenth century as an essential means for resisting Western imperialism.

A first look at gunpowder's revolutionary impact on China's role in global history The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind? Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, as Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s—much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China—like Europe—was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world's great military powers. By showing that China’s military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.

The first part of the long-awaited fourth volume of André Wink’s monumental Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World introduces a new perspective on the rise of the dynasty of the Great Mughals and the transition of the Indo-Islamic world from the medieval to the early modern centuries. Eschewing the conventional military and technological explanations, the book adopts an institutional explanation that emphasizes the Central and Inner Asian post-nomadic heritage of the dynasty and, in the context of persistent rivalry with the Indo-Afghans, its successful politics of incorporation and accommodation of Muslim and non-Muslim constituencies alike.

The authoritative account of Islam's schism that for centuries has shaped events in the Middle East and the Islamic world. In 632, soon after the Prophet Muhammad died, a struggle broke out among his followers as to who would succeed him. Most Muslims argued that the leader of Islam should be elected by the community's elite and rule as Caliph. They would later become the Sunnis. Otherswho would become known as the Shiabelieved that Muhammad had designated his cousin and son-in-law Ali as his successor, and that henceforth Ali's offspring should lead as Imams. This dispute over who should guide Muslims, the Caliph or the Imam, marks the origin of the Sunni-Shii split in Islam. Toby Matthiesen explores this hugely significant division from its origins to the present day. Moving chronologically, his book sheds light on the many ways that it has shaped the Islamic world, outlining how over the centuries Sunnism and Shiism became Islam's two main branches, and how Muslim Empires embraced specific sectarian identities. Focussing on connections between the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, it reveals how colonial rule and the modern state institutionalised sectarian divisions and at the same time led to pan-Islamic resistance and Sunni and Shii revivalism. It then focuses on the fall-out from the 1979 revolution in Iran and the US-led military intervention in Iraq. As Matthiesen shows, however, though Sunnism and Shiism have had a long and antagonistic history, most Muslims have led lives characterised by confessional ambiguity and peaceful co-existence. Tensions arise when sectarian identity becomes linked to politics. Based on a synthesis of decades of scholarship in numerous languages, The Caliph and the Imam will become the standard text for readers looking for a deeper understanding of contemporary sectarian conflict and its historical roots.