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This ground-breaking study represents a new twist in the already complicated debate on military change in the early modern period. Previous writers have for the most part defined a 'military revolution' focused on the seventeenth or even early eighteenth centuries. Eltis suggests that key developments in training, organization, tactics and siege warfare occurred in the sixteenth century and, taken together, these innovations constitute a military revolution, changing the face of war. In England, these changes came later than in the rest of Europe, and in Ireland later still. English writers, in their anxiety to spur their countrymen to adopt the new methods, produced some of the most useful manuals of sixteenth-century Europe. These, together with Italian, Spanish, French and German texts, form the main basis of David Eltis's study, allowing the ideas of contemporaries to be set alongside accounts of actual military conditions in explaining one of the turning points of world military development.
Abbreviations - vi -- Conventions - viii -- Acknowledgments - ix -- Introduction - 1 -- Chapter 1: Henrician Military Literature: Theory and Reality - 7 -- Chapter 2: Gunpowder Weapons - 25 -- Chapter 3: Training and Discipline - 55 -- Chapter 4: Infantry and Cavalry. A 'British Art of War'? - 80 -- Chapter 5: Levying the Army - 113 -- Chapter 6: A Permanent Establishment? - 136 -- Chapter 7: The Gunners - 163 -- Conclusion: The Military Revolution and Tudor England - 180 -- Notes - 197 -- Bibliography - 287 -- Index - 319.
Well before the Industrial Revolution, Europe developed the superior military potential and expertise that enabled her to dominate the world for the next two centuries. In this attractively illustrated and updated edition, Geoffrey Parker discusses the major changes in the military practice of the West during this time period--establishment of bigger armies, creation of superior warships, the role of firearms--and argues that these major changes amounted to a "military revolution" that gave Westerners a decided advantage over people of other continents. A new chapter addresses the controversies engendered by the previous edition.
In recent years military history has moved out of its specialized ghetto and has come to be regarded as central to the mainstream study of the past. The concepts of a "military revolution" (consisting of the emergence of large infantry-based armies in early-modern Europe, the use of potent gunpowder weapons, and the rapid escalation of war costs) are now seen to have had far-reaching political and social consequences for European society. Indeed, war itself is now seen as a major engine of state development during this period. The essays in this volume set out to demonstrate the integration of military history with the broader concerns of historians. They also suggest that the military history of the Middle Ages was more dynamic than is often recognized, and that the military revolution needs to be interpreted by placing it in the context of rapid socio-political transformation.
The early modern period saw gunpowder weapons reach maturity and become a central feature of European warfare, on land and at sea. This exciting collection of essays brings together a distinguished and varied selection of modern scholarship on the transformation of war”often described as a ’military revolution’”during the period between 1450 and 1660.
In terms of resource mobilization and devastation the wars between Russia, the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire were some of the largest of the 18th century, and had enormous consequences for the balance of power in Eastern Europe. Brian Davies examines how these conflicts characterized the course of Russian military development in response to Ottoman and Crimean Tatar threats and to determine under what circumstances and in what ways Russian military power experienced a "revolution" awarding it clear preponderance over the Ottoman-Crimean system. A central part of Davies' argument is that identifying and explaining a Military Revolution must involve examining the role of factors not purely military. One must look not only at new military technology, new force and command structure, new tactical thinking, and new recruitment and military finance practices but also consider the impact of larger demographic, economic, and sociopolitical changes.
This book brings together, for the first time, the classic articles that began and have shaped the debate about the Military Revolution in early modern Europe, adding important new essays by eminent historians of early modern Europe to further this important scholarly interchange.
Winner of the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize from the Canadian Historical Association Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe explores the history of gunpowder in Europe from the thirteenth century, when it was first imported from China, to the sixteenth century, as firearms became central to the conduct of war. Bridging the fields of military history and the history of technology—and challenging past assumptions about Europe's "gunpowder revolution"—Hall discovers a complex and fascinating story. Military inventors faced a host of challenges, he finds, from Europe's lack of naturally occurring saltpeter—one of gunpowder's major components—to the limitations of smooth-bore firearms. Manufacturing cheap, reliable gunpowder proved a difficult feat, as did making firearms that had reasonably predictable performance characteristics. Hall details the efforts of armorers across Europe as they experimented with a variety of gunpowder recipes and gunsmithing techniques, and he examines the integration of new weapons into the existing structure of European warfare.
This book studies the changes that have marked war in the Western World since the thirteenth century.
Historians have long ignored the military aspect of the wars of religion which raged in France during the late sixteenth century, dismissing the conflicts as aimless or hopelessly confused. In contrast, this meticulously researched analysis of the royal army and its operations during the early civil wars brings warfare back to the centre of the picture. James B. Wood explains the reasons for the initial failure of the monarchy to defeat the Huguenots, and examines how that failure prolonged the conflict. He argues that the nature and outcome of the civil wars can only be explained by the fusion of religious rebellion and incomplete military revolution. This study makes an important contribution to the history of military forces, warfare and society, and will be of great interest to those engaged in the debate over the 'Military Revolution' in early modern Europe.