Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Glossary
- Introduction
- 1 China through the Yuan
- 2 Japan and the wars of unification
- 3 The Chinese military revolution and war in Korea
- 4 Southeast Asia
- 5 South Asia to 1750
- 6 The military revolution in South Asia, 1750–1850
- 7 The arrival and departure of the West
- Conclusion
- Index
- References
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Glossary
- Introduction
- 1 China through the Yuan
- 2 Japan and the wars of unification
- 3 The Chinese military revolution and war in Korea
- 4 Southeast Asia
- 5 South Asia to 1750
- 6 The military revolution in South Asia, 1750–1850
- 7 The arrival and departure of the West
- Conclusion
- Index
- References
Summary
There seems little doubt that the composition of gunpowder has been known in the East from times of dimmest antiquity. The Chinese and Hindus contemporary with Moses are thought to have known of even the more recondite properties of the compound …
Gunpowder has been known in India and China far beyond all periods of investigation; and if this account be considered true, it is very possible that Alexander the Great did absolutely meet with fire-weapons in India …
Early modern warfare was invented in China during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was during those two centuries of brutal warfare between the Chinese Song dynasty, the Jurchen Jin dynasty, and the rising power of the Mongols that guns, grenades, rockets, and other incendiary weapons fueled by gunpowder became regular and widespread tools of war. These weapons were used extensively in siege and naval warfare by vast armies and navies, and gradually moved on to the open battlefield. Chinese soldiers were recruited, trained, and armed by the government, and organized into regularly ordered military units supplied by a bureaucratic logistics system, as indeed they had been for more than a thousand years. These troops were even housed in barracks and provided with regular medical care. The major sieges of the time revolved around cities with relatively low, thick walls, almost impenetrable to missiles, with circumferences measured in miles. True guns developed in this environment, and subsequently spread to the rest of Asia and the world.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Asian Military RevolutionFrom Gunpowder to the Bomb, pp. 1 - 23Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008