Firearms: A Global History to 1700

by Kenneth Chase

Kenneth Chase traces the history of firearms from their invention in China in the 1100s to the 1700s, when European firearms had become clearly superior. In Firearms, Chase asks why it was the Europeans who perfected firearms, not the Chinese, and answers this question by looking at how firearms were used throughout the world. Early firearms were restricted to infantry and siege warfare, limiting their use outside of Europe and Japan. Steppe and desert nomads imposed a different style of warfare on the Middle East, India, and China--a style incompatible with firearms. By the time that better firearms allowed these regions to turn the tables on the nomads, Japan's self-imposed isolation left Europe with no rival in firearms design, production, or use, with lasting consequences. After earning his doctorate from Harvard in the area of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and traveling extensively in Asia, Kenneth Chase pursued a career in the law. His interest in history endures unabated, however, and after nine years of research on firearms, he is now working on a history of international trade in the Indian Ocean region in the 1300s and 1400s.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Military History, War, Asia, World History, Military Fiction

310 pages, Hardcover

First published July 7, 2003

Reviews

[Jeroen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before opening this book I was expecting a dry, technical account of the evolution of firearms. I was grossly mistaken. Firearms: A Global History to 1700 is centered around the question why the Chinese got on the back burner concerning firearms technology despite inventing them. Hence the book focuses primarily on Eurasian cultures and how their methods of warfare influenced their technological advancements rather than the technology itself.

If this subject matter interests you, it is definitely a book worth reading. It's full of interesting tidbits, and the account of the very first cannons in history is probably the most entertaining part of the book because of how crazy those contraptions were.

[Jarvis Friesen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book functions very similarly to Jared diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel in that it adopts a geographic model in order to determine why or why not certain societies adopted firearms, and at what rates they did so.

Chase’s model is based primarily over the geography of a given area and the people living in it, wether or not they had a threat from nomadic steppe light cavalry, and the preexisting elements of a given society’s military technology.

For example, in Europe, feudal armies had to deal most directly with infantry and siege warfare. This greatly favored the development of cannon and small arms alike. Whereas in China (where firearms were invented) they had to deal primarily with threats of nomads from the north and Manchurians in the south. These fighting styles were not readily dealt with by firearms. Therefore, despite the invention of firearms taking place in China, the development of firearms progressed the fastest in places like Europe and Japan where siege and infantry warfare was common.
(This is a gross oversimplification. Just read the book it’s really quite interesting)

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Firearms: A Global History to 1700, Kenneth Chase explains the different levels of firearm development among major Eurasian societies. Why, for instance, did Western Europe and Japan develop firearms more thoroughly than China by the 1500s even though China invented gunpowder centuries earlier?
His parsimonious yet powerful thesis is that states rationally sought to produce the most effective weapons for dealing with their particular geopolitical foes and that firearms were most useful for societies like Western Europe and Japan that did not border the steppe than they were for societies like China that bordered the steppe. Europe (Chapter 3) and Japan (Chapter 7) were both sheltered from steppe warriors by geography, including crucial water barriers, and other polities, such Eastern Europe. Their particular geopolitical situations called for infantry heavy armies, siege capability, and, for Europe, advanced navies. For Japan, the musket was particularly crucial during its wars of unification for allowing warlords with more people and resources to create large infantry armies that required minimal training.
These imperatives spurred the development of firearms, leading to Japanese and European pre-eminence in this field by 1615. Once Japan was united under the Tokugawa, innovation slowed from 1600 to the mid-1800s as intra-Japanese conflict, the main incentive to develop firearms, declined. In contrast, Western Europe’s more enduring development of firearms helped put them on a trajectory towards global hegemony, but Chase notes that this advancement was largely a side effect of their particular geopolitical circumstances, not of any special cultural dynamism or openness.
In contrast, gunpowder weapons did not help other societies deal with the steppe threat, so they only developed firearms insofar as they were effective against other geopolitical threats. They consequently did not develop firearms to the same extent as the Europeans and Japanese. He groups these societies into two broad camps. First, societies like China (Chapters 2 and 6) and Eastern Islamic societies (Chapter 5) faced serious nomadic threats but few infantry threats and were consequently slow to develop. For example, Chase explains that from the invention of gunpowder to the 17th century the Chinese focused their attention and resources on the existential threat of the northern steppe peoples. Early firearms were not useful for fighting the steppe peoples because they were slow to reload, highly inaccurate, and could not be reloaded by cavalry. Massed infantry were best equipped to use early firearms, but infantry could not hope to catch elusive steppe cavalry. Consequently, the Chinese focused on fortifications and cavalry at the expense of firearms. Chase returns to China later in the book to show that even though China fell behind foreign firearms technology by the early 1500’s, they soon realized this gap and accelerated their firearms production, creating innovations like the wagon laager. Nevertheless, in the late Ming and Qing periods, firearms remained peripheral to Chinese strategic problems and consequently were less developed.
Chase’s second broad category of nations who fell behind Western Europe and Japan in firearms development includes the Ottomans (Chapter 4) and Eastern Europe (Chapter 3). Both of these societies faced significant threats from nomads and infantry, compelling them to develop firearms to an “intermediate” level. Unlike the Western Europeans and Japanese, they had to divide resources and create different specializations for different threats. Chase actually calls the Ottomans a “success story” in regards to firearms, claiming that they developed a balanced and effective force of cavalry, firearm-equipped infantry, artillery, and galleys to compete with European forces (95). He the firearm discrepancy between the Ottomans and Western Europe was small until the development of the flintlock and the bayonet and that firearms played only a small role in the relative decline of the Ottoman Empire.

For Chase, each of these societies that “fell behind” nevertheless dealt rationally with geopolitical challenges, which usually meant not diverting too many resources into firearm development. Chase compels us to ask whether a rational society would make itself vulnerable in the short term by pouring resources into a new technology that is useless against a major strategic threat just to keep pace with what would become a decisive global technology centuries later.
Chase is an attorney with a Ph.D in East Asian Languages and Civilizations who demonstrates a mastery of primary and secondary sources from multiple languages. Chase has composed a succinctly and convincingly argued book that successfully challenges much conventional knowledge in military and global history. For example, Chase refines the competition/political fragmentation explanation of Western ascendency expounded by historians like Paul Kennedy and William McNeill. He notes that non-European societies were also involved in “more or less constant warfare” and innovated consistently to deal with their challenges (3). Chase’s true insight is that we must consider the nature of that competition, especially in terms of the different threats societies face, in order to understand why they develop technologies to greater or less degrees and how those developments impact broader trends of global power.

[Ryan McCarthy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely well-researched and carefully laid out, but you could read the introduction and conclusion and get roughly 90% of the book right there.

[Bubba · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author's analysis is one of the best pieces of history I have seen in recent years. He asks a simple question--why was it the Europeans who perfected firearms when it was the Chinese who invented them?--and then proceeds to answer it through no-nonsense discussions of the geographic, cultural, technological, economic and security threat conditions experienced by the main civilizations during the developmental period of firearms. After the Chinese first invented these weapons (probably in the 1100s) and the Mongols, probably, helped diseminate them throughout Eurasia/Europe in the 1200s, it would seem like anybody's game to develop them. But, he argues, that Western European ascendancy in firearms development, which reached the point of no-return in the 1700s, was due to the TYPE of warfare prominent in that part of the world, i.e. infantry warfare. He describes, in great detail, the peculiarities involved when an agrarianate state--like empires/kingdoms in China, India, Russia, the Middle East, etc.--have to fight against nomadic horsemen, or a combination of nomadic horsemen and infantry.

In the beginning, firearms could not compete with bows in terms of rate-of-fire, accuracy, easy maintenance, ability to be used on back of a horse, hence, the author argues, states that had to fight highly-mobile cavalry couldn't rely on firearms for their primary weapons. But, in states where the main thrust of battles were infantry on infantry, usually massed and fairly static, it was natural that firearms became the primary weapon. After all, even if your musket was only accurate up to 50-75 yards, you could still probably hit someone, if he was standing in a group of infantry-men behind a wall of pikes used to fend off cavalry. In addition, Western Europe was densely populated, and had castles. Castles were great for using gunpowder artillery against, b/c even if your cannon was enormously innaccurate, it's pretty hard to miss a castle.

By contrast, though the Chinese themselves had magnificent fortifications, artillery didn't do them much good againts Mongol or Manchu cavalry who could appear, strike, and then melt away at will. Japan, like Western Europe, was densely populated, had castles and made extensive use of firearms, but from the 1600s onward civil war ceased in the country and it was too remote to be attacked from the outside. Hence, there was no real need for firearm development. The Savafids, the Mughals and especially the Ottomans all adopted and used firearms, but they each faced a combination of threats, including neighbors with infantry, and neighbors with cavalry. Hence, their firearms development only reached so far, and then they, as well as Japan, China and all others relied on Western European developments instead of devising the technoloy themselves. Western Europeans also took the idea of drilling/training groups of firearms users and turned it into in artform.

The author, Kenneth Chase, did his Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard...but he also got a J.D. from Stanford Law, and he works as a lawyer. He is either 1) a wicked genius, 2) independently wealthy and able to afford all this education, 3) very patient and willing to live in squalor while obtaining all these degrees, or 4) some combination of these three. I take my hat off to the dude. That said, his writing is a little stilted. This book is by no means a great work of literature. But, it is well-written, i.e. easy to follow and he bundles together and analyzes a pile of sources that staggers the mind--he conducted research in French, Persian, Japanese, Turkish and Chinese(?). Anyway, the guy has done a heck of job. Maybe he'll write more later..though he's probably too busy making money as a big shot lawyer to do more academic stuff.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic thesis is that China invented gunpowder not just for fireworks displays, but to shoot, um, guns too. Interesting if one subscribes to the notion that China was/is a more peace-loving civilization than The West.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book starts off with this simple question: how is it that Europeans and others outpaced the Chinese in firearm technology when the Chinese invented firearms in the first place? The author's thesis is that steppe warfare retarded early technological advancements since primitive firearms were at a disadvantage against nomadic hordes. Europeans, Turks, Japenese, etc., on the other hand, made marginal advancements in technology and tactics when fighting themselves and eachother over many years after obtaining the original technology. Many of these groups were also largely shielded from steppe nomads geographically and had no need to respond to their tactics.

Initially, I was intrigued by the author's thesis brought up in the introduction. However, I don't believe he sufficiently answers his own question. He doesn't answer how the technology marginally evolved, except how each military force employed firepower in the centuries since its inception. He mentions some groups having relatively better firepower than others, even though they were both adapted to similar forms of warfare, but never answers why. Who made what improvements on the muskets or mortars? What changed about the musket in 400 years? Why did Europeans have superior muskets, pistols and cannons compared with muslims rulers in the 16th century? These questions are unanswered because the author equates a tactical advantage with technological progress. Even cultural advantages are outright dismissed. The author claims that European culture didn't contribute to technology because he can quote a few Europeans comparing firearms to "Satan."

The book's theme is more consistent with its title than its thesis. It's more of a broad survey of world military history from the 12th century to the 18th century--who defeated who, when and with how many canons, muskets, etc. In this regard, it's well-researched but falls short of providing evidence and I'm not convinced.

[Masse Manet · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of firearms, or rather, the impact the development of firearms had on history. Not about firearm technology or tactics. Key subject is how and why firearms changed the dynamic between the steppe peoples, the Chinese, and Western Europe.