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Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order
How the rise of the West was a temporary exception to the predominant world order
What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war over other civilizations from 1500 onward. In contrast, Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans actually had no general military superiority in the early modern era. J. C. Sharman shows instead that European expansion from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default because local land-oriented polities were largely indifferent to war and trade at sea.
Europeans were overawed by the mighty Eastern empires of the day, which pioneered key military innovations and were the greatest early modern conquerors. Against the view that the Europeans won for all time, Sharman contends that the imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a relatively transient and anomalous development in world politics that concluded with Western losses in various insurgencies. If the twenty-first century is to be dominated by non-Western powers like China, this represents a return to the norm for the modern era.
Bringing a revisionist perspective to the idea that Europe ruled the world due to military dominance, Empires of the Weak demonstrates that the rise of the West was an exception in the prevailing world order.
What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war over other civilizations from 1500 onward. In contrast, Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans actually had no general military superiority in the early modern era. J. C. Sharman shows instead that European expansion from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default because local land-oriented polities were largely indifferent to war and trade at sea.
Europeans were overawed by the mighty Eastern empires of the day, which pioneered key military innovations and were the greatest early modern conquerors. Against the view that the Europeans won for all time, Sharman contends that the imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a relatively transient and anomalous development in world politics that concluded with Western losses in various insurgencies. If the twenty-first century is to be dominated by non-Western powers like China, this represents a return to the norm for the modern era.
Bringing a revisionist perspective to the idea that Europe ruled the world due to military dominance, Empires of the Weak demonstrates that the rise of the West was an exception in the prevailing world order.
216 pages, Hardcover
First published February 5, 2019
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About the author
J.C. Sharman
15 books14 followersJ. C. Sharman is the Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of King’s College. His books include The Despot’s Guide to Wealth Management and International Order in Diversity. He lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
June 3, 2019
This is a short, well written, and engaging book. The argument concerns differences among historians, political scientists, and other scholars regarding how to explain the course of European expansion and dominance from the beginnings of the modern period around 1500 up until the end of the 19th century and into the 20th and 21st centuries.
So what’s the point? In a nutshell, it is that major explanations of the dominance of the West over African, American, and Asian peoples have tended to focus on the military strength of the West as the principal source of Western dominance. This is based on the interactive role of modern warfare and the growth of the modern nation state. Professor Sharman takes exception to this in Empires of the Weak and argues that the initial expansion of Western empires was not due to military dominance and that such dominance did not begin to be present, if it ever was, until after 1750. Rather the initial expansions were hit or miss processes that depended on diplomacy, manipulation, disease, and enemy incompetence more than on stereotypes of military supremacy. The initial empires were per the title, Empires of the Weak. What Sherman is arguing is that the eventual establishment of Western dominance by 1900 has been allowed to shape the logic that historians apply in explaining events leading up to the dominance. Because the West “won”, it had to win and the events leading to it were strongly causally linked.
That’s a mouthful but it sums up why the book is interesting. It is fairly short, for a serious history/ social science book, and takes a stand against a main line of prior research work. This is the stuff that brings renown in the academy, at least among some circles.
There are limits to this, however. Is this a triumph of better explanations or a call out of oversimplified arguments? Seriously, the more you read history the more you recognize that much of any importance in multicausal and really complicated. Simple almost ideological theoretical short stories just do not ring true like they used to for me. Just consider all that has been written on the origins of the First World War or US Slavery and Reconstruction. Even with lots of available data, it is very hard for the experts to close on an explanation. ...and we are going to build rational actor arguments about such events? This leads to academic food fights that are not very fulfilling. Sherman knows that and it is part of what makes his account more readable and acceptable.
Part of the problem is how to convey all this. If one leaps into all the requisite historical detail, the resulting volume or volumes can be huge and one only has so much time on the planet. Professor Sherman has opted to focus on the core of the argument and reduce the details, leading to a much shorter book. The good news is that it is easier to get through. The bad is that I wonder if the account could have been more satisfying with more detail. That’s OK, I got through it and enjoyed the book in the process. The references that are provided are more than enough to work with if one has the interest.
So what’s the point? In a nutshell, it is that major explanations of the dominance of the West over African, American, and Asian peoples have tended to focus on the military strength of the West as the principal source of Western dominance. This is based on the interactive role of modern warfare and the growth of the modern nation state. Professor Sharman takes exception to this in Empires of the Weak and argues that the initial expansion of Western empires was not due to military dominance and that such dominance did not begin to be present, if it ever was, until after 1750. Rather the initial expansions were hit or miss processes that depended on diplomacy, manipulation, disease, and enemy incompetence more than on stereotypes of military supremacy. The initial empires were per the title, Empires of the Weak. What Sherman is arguing is that the eventual establishment of Western dominance by 1900 has been allowed to shape the logic that historians apply in explaining events leading up to the dominance. Because the West “won”, it had to win and the events leading to it were strongly causally linked.
That’s a mouthful but it sums up why the book is interesting. It is fairly short, for a serious history/ social science book, and takes a stand against a main line of prior research work. This is the stuff that brings renown in the academy, at least among some circles.
There are limits to this, however. Is this a triumph of better explanations or a call out of oversimplified arguments? Seriously, the more you read history the more you recognize that much of any importance in multicausal and really complicated. Simple almost ideological theoretical short stories just do not ring true like they used to for me. Just consider all that has been written on the origins of the First World War or US Slavery and Reconstruction. Even with lots of available data, it is very hard for the experts to close on an explanation. ...and we are going to build rational actor arguments about such events? This leads to academic food fights that are not very fulfilling. Sherman knows that and it is part of what makes his account more readable and acceptable.
Part of the problem is how to convey all this. If one leaps into all the requisite historical detail, the resulting volume or volumes can be huge and one only has so much time on the planet. Professor Sherman has opted to focus on the core of the argument and reduce the details, leading to a much shorter book. The good news is that it is easier to get through. The bad is that I wonder if the account could have been more satisfying with more detail. That’s OK, I got through it and enjoyed the book in the process. The references that are provided are more than enough to work with if one has the interest.
August 4, 2025
Sharman határozott céllal vág bele ebbe a pici könyvbe: meg akarja cáfolni a nyugati történetírásban szerinte egyeduralkodó "katonai forradalom" tézisét. Ez a finoman darwinista elmélet nagyjából azt állítja, hogy az európai katonai sikerek oka az a háborús versenyhelyzet, amibe az államok a XV-XVI. századtól belenavigálták magukat. A vesztesek ugyanis arra voltak kényszerítve, hogy átvegyék a győztesek innovációit, mert ha ezt nem tették, akkor eltűntek a süllyesztőben. Aminek következtében az európai katonai erő exponenciálisan növekedni kezdett, ennek folyományaként pedig az állami centralizáció, a bürokratizálódás mértéke is robbanásszerűen megugrott, mert csak a központosított állam volt képes biztosítani az uralkodók számára a hadseregek fenntartásához szükséges forrásokat. A szerző gyakorlatilag az összes ponton cáfolni igyekszik ezt az állítást, kezdve ott, hogy a XV. században még az európaiak korántsem voltak technikai fölényben a többi birodalommal szemben, meg amúgy is: a központosított államokat se ők találták fel, hanem a keleti birodalmak. Ráadásul szép dolog a katonai forradalom, de korántsem mindenható, hisz számos példát látunk arra, hogy a kulturális beidegződések felülírták annak állítólagos kényszerét. Állításaival nagyjából egyet is értenék, de.
De az van, hogy én nem vagyok történész. Ha történész lennék, meglehet, én is úgy látnám, hogy a szakmán belül a csapból is ez a "katonai forradalom" nevű maszlag folyik. Ám én csak egy mezei történelemolvasó vagyok, úgyhogy nem ezt tapasztalom. Következésképpen az a sajátos érzésem támadt olvasás közben, hogy Sharman most találja fel a spanyolviaszt. Úgy közli, hogy 1683-ban az oszmánok még Bécset ostromolták, mintha ezt ő vette volna észre először. Az se hatott rám újdonságként, hogy az európaiak Afrikában és Ázsiában is inkább csak az ottani birodalmak perifériáján húzták meg magukat, és a XVIII. század végéig egyáltalán nem volt kapacitásuk a szárazföldön emberkedni*. Igen, ez mind igaz, és ennek leszögezése nyilván szükséges. Csak épp Sharman mintha átesne a ló túlsó oldalára: könyvét olvasva az embernek néha az a benyomása, a britek egyáltalán nem is gyarmatosították Indiát.
Ha szerényebb könyv lenne, esküszöm, megadnám az erős négyest. Mert amúgy helyre kis összefoglalás az európai katonai potenciál valódi mértékéről úgy a XVIII. századig. Üdvös kritikával illeti az eurocentrikus történelemszemléletet, és korrigálja a nyugati dominancia kérdéskörét, többek között azzal, hogy kiteljesedését a szokásosnál sokkal későbbi időpontra datálja. A baj az, hogy nem pusztán árnyalni akar, hanem megcáfolni egy egész tézist. És ehhez bizony szükség lenne egy új paradigmára, amit Sharman be is lebegtet - de adós marad vele. Mert igenis a britek gyarmatosították Indiát, és arról, ez mégis miképp esett meg, ebből a kötetből nem sokat lehet megtudni. Oké, felsorol egy csomó vereséget, amit Nagy-Britannia elszenvedett, de az a helyzet, hogy egy terjeszkedés mértékét nem a vereségek számával mérjük, hanem a TERJESZKEDÉS MÉRTÉKÉVEL. És akárhonnan nézzük, ebben végtére is (bár nem véglegesen) az európaiak valamit fel tudtak mutatni. Elhiszem, hogy ezt a dominanciát nem pusztán a "katonai forradalom" elméletével lehet magyarázni, hanem a "katonai forradalom" legfeljebb csak egy eleme a sikernek, ami egy hosszú, visszaesésekkel tarkított és komplex folyamat eredménye. De arról Sharman nem igazán tudott meggyőzni, hogy semmiféle dominanciát nem harcoltak ki maguknak az európaiak a XIX. századra. Ha viszont van dominancia, akkor a "katonai forradalom" elméletét nem vethetjük el addig, amíg egy új paradigmát nem ajánlunk fel helyette. Vagy ha nem ajánlunk fel új paradigmát, akkor elégedjünk meg azzal, hogy a régit nem elvetjük, hanem csak módosítjuk. De Sharman túl nagyot akart markolni. Így lett nagyobb e könyv füstje, mint a lángja.
* A szerző hangsúlyozza, hogy az európaiak expedíciói Amerikában, Afrikában vagy Ázsiában nem állami, hanem magánvállalkozások voltak, kalandorok ügyeskedései, amelyekre alig profitáltak az európán belüli katonai forradalomból. Oké, igaz, viszont ez még önmagában nem cáfolja a katonai forradalom létét, legfeljebb árnyalja annak jelentőségét. Másfelől pedig az is igaz, hogy ezek az akciók sokkal kevésbé voltak sikeresek, mint azt gondolni szoktuk - ám Sharman rendre elfelejti megemlíteni, hogy az európai birodalmak egy egészségtelenül hosszúra nyúlt logisztikai köldökzsinóron keresztül kapták az utánpótlást anyaországaiktól, ami szerintem elégséges magyarázat lehet kudarcaikra.
De az van, hogy én nem vagyok történész. Ha történész lennék, meglehet, én is úgy látnám, hogy a szakmán belül a csapból is ez a "katonai forradalom" nevű maszlag folyik. Ám én csak egy mezei történelemolvasó vagyok, úgyhogy nem ezt tapasztalom. Következésképpen az a sajátos érzésem támadt olvasás közben, hogy Sharman most találja fel a spanyolviaszt. Úgy közli, hogy 1683-ban az oszmánok még Bécset ostromolták, mintha ezt ő vette volna észre először. Az se hatott rám újdonságként, hogy az európaiak Afrikában és Ázsiában is inkább csak az ottani birodalmak perifériáján húzták meg magukat, és a XVIII. század végéig egyáltalán nem volt kapacitásuk a szárazföldön emberkedni*. Igen, ez mind igaz, és ennek leszögezése nyilván szükséges. Csak épp Sharman mintha átesne a ló túlsó oldalára: könyvét olvasva az embernek néha az a benyomása, a britek egyáltalán nem is gyarmatosították Indiát.
Ha szerényebb könyv lenne, esküszöm, megadnám az erős négyest. Mert amúgy helyre kis összefoglalás az európai katonai potenciál valódi mértékéről úgy a XVIII. századig. Üdvös kritikával illeti az eurocentrikus történelemszemléletet, és korrigálja a nyugati dominancia kérdéskörét, többek között azzal, hogy kiteljesedését a szokásosnál sokkal későbbi időpontra datálja. A baj az, hogy nem pusztán árnyalni akar, hanem megcáfolni egy egész tézist. És ehhez bizony szükség lenne egy új paradigmára, amit Sharman be is lebegtet - de adós marad vele. Mert igenis a britek gyarmatosították Indiát, és arról, ez mégis miképp esett meg, ebből a kötetből nem sokat lehet megtudni. Oké, felsorol egy csomó vereséget, amit Nagy-Britannia elszenvedett, de az a helyzet, hogy egy terjeszkedés mértékét nem a vereségek számával mérjük, hanem a TERJESZKEDÉS MÉRTÉKÉVEL. És akárhonnan nézzük, ebben végtére is (bár nem véglegesen) az európaiak valamit fel tudtak mutatni. Elhiszem, hogy ezt a dominanciát nem pusztán a "katonai forradalom" elméletével lehet magyarázni, hanem a "katonai forradalom" legfeljebb csak egy eleme a sikernek, ami egy hosszú, visszaesésekkel tarkított és komplex folyamat eredménye. De arról Sharman nem igazán tudott meggyőzni, hogy semmiféle dominanciát nem harcoltak ki maguknak az európaiak a XIX. századra. Ha viszont van dominancia, akkor a "katonai forradalom" elméletét nem vethetjük el addig, amíg egy új paradigmát nem ajánlunk fel helyette. Vagy ha nem ajánlunk fel új paradigmát, akkor elégedjünk meg azzal, hogy a régit nem elvetjük, hanem csak módosítjuk. De Sharman túl nagyot akart markolni. Így lett nagyobb e könyv füstje, mint a lángja.
* A szerző hangsúlyozza, hogy az európaiak expedíciói Amerikában, Afrikában vagy Ázsiában nem állami, hanem magánvállalkozások voltak, kalandorok ügyeskedései, amelyekre alig profitáltak az európán belüli katonai forradalomból. Oké, igaz, viszont ez még önmagában nem cáfolja a katonai forradalom létét, legfeljebb árnyalja annak jelentőségét. Másfelől pedig az is igaz, hogy ezek az akciók sokkal kevésbé voltak sikeresek, mint azt gondolni szoktuk - ám Sharman rendre elfelejti megemlíteni, hogy az európai birodalmak egy egészségtelenül hosszúra nyúlt logisztikai köldökzsinóron keresztül kapták az utánpótlást anyaországaiktól, ami szerintem elégséges magyarázat lehet kudarcaikra.
July 15, 2019
This was a great and enlightening read!
Sharman argues that the conventional thinking about European history since 1500 (and per extension, global history), relying on the so-called "Military Revolution thesis" is fundamentally flawed and has left historians and social scientists with a Eurocentric and misguided view of both past and present.
My three main takeaways were:
1. The history of the expansion of the international system since 1500 (or 1492) is not a story of European expansion through superior arms and societal structures over the weaker societies of the Americas, Africa and Asia. Rather, the Europeans were usually only able to set up trading ports at the mercy of local empires and repeatedly had their ass handed to them when engaging in military confrontations. Further, the tools one might identify with European modernity (namely guns and large, professional, state-run armies) were either already present in Asia or not decisive at all.
2. There is a strong tendency to read history very selectively, focusing on the rise of European empires (namely the British) and the Fall of non-European empires (such as the Ottoman and the Chinese). Yet, little attention is payed to the quick dismantling of the European empires in the 20th century or to the massive successes of non-European empires. The Ottoman empire is particularly noteworthy in this regard, repeatedly defeating European armies over multiple centuries, but often just considered "the sick man of Europe" or a disaster waiting to happen. In short, the criteria by which we evaluate empires vary greatly across cases.
3. Based on the Military Revolution Thesis, we often assume states to consistently move toward optimizing its own behavior when it comes to warfare, incorporating new technologies, strategies and even societal structures to support these. Yet, the evidence for this story is highly mixed. Often states hold on to counter-productive strategies in the face of repeated failure or even switch from a succesful strategy to a less useful and more costly one. Sharman argues that we cannot assume states (or any other human organization) to always move toward optimization. Instead, we must take factors such as culture and prestige into account. What's cool and prestigious might not be profitable in neither short nor long run.
One of the great things about the book is that it is an argument about eurocentrism that does not rely on arguments about representation. Often the criticism of eurocentric thinking is that it fails to represent other points of view, the underlying value being academic plurality and inclusion. Sharmen demonstrates how a eurocentric and biased approach to history (and international relations) leave us with ideas that are simply wrong. The Europeans did not go from glory to glory since the 1500s. More often, they met stronger societies and had to submit.
Sharman argues that the conventional thinking about European history since 1500 (and per extension, global history), relying on the so-called "Military Revolution thesis" is fundamentally flawed and has left historians and social scientists with a Eurocentric and misguided view of both past and present.
My three main takeaways were:
1. The history of the expansion of the international system since 1500 (or 1492) is not a story of European expansion through superior arms and societal structures over the weaker societies of the Americas, Africa and Asia. Rather, the Europeans were usually only able to set up trading ports at the mercy of local empires and repeatedly had their ass handed to them when engaging in military confrontations. Further, the tools one might identify with European modernity (namely guns and large, professional, state-run armies) were either already present in Asia or not decisive at all.
2. There is a strong tendency to read history very selectively, focusing on the rise of European empires (namely the British) and the Fall of non-European empires (such as the Ottoman and the Chinese). Yet, little attention is payed to the quick dismantling of the European empires in the 20th century or to the massive successes of non-European empires. The Ottoman empire is particularly noteworthy in this regard, repeatedly defeating European armies over multiple centuries, but often just considered "the sick man of Europe" or a disaster waiting to happen. In short, the criteria by which we evaluate empires vary greatly across cases.
3. Based on the Military Revolution Thesis, we often assume states to consistently move toward optimizing its own behavior when it comes to warfare, incorporating new technologies, strategies and even societal structures to support these. Yet, the evidence for this story is highly mixed. Often states hold on to counter-productive strategies in the face of repeated failure or even switch from a succesful strategy to a less useful and more costly one. Sharman argues that we cannot assume states (or any other human organization) to always move toward optimization. Instead, we must take factors such as culture and prestige into account. What's cool and prestigious might not be profitable in neither short nor long run.
One of the great things about the book is that it is an argument about eurocentrism that does not rely on arguments about representation. Often the criticism of eurocentric thinking is that it fails to represent other points of view, the underlying value being academic plurality and inclusion. Sharmen demonstrates how a eurocentric and biased approach to history (and international relations) leave us with ideas that are simply wrong. The Europeans did not go from glory to glory since the 1500s. More often, they met stronger societies and had to submit.
June 2, 2019
such rubbish passing for "real history" - Sharman certainly knows which way the winds blow these days in academia. Considering his past writing on wealth management, he may not know much about Early Modern history, but he does know how to keep himself employed as a professor: tear down the past and denigrate the West. Shameful all around!
abandoned
April 14, 2020Interesting thesis that Europeans were far weaker internationally from 1500-1800 than western history gives them credit for. But the book is way too academic and detailed for me.
April 10, 2020
An outstanding challenge to the idea that a mere superiority in military technology and tactics allowed Europeans to colonise most of the world - and in so doing built the modern sovereign state. Sharman shows that for the early modern period (1500-1750) the European success was built on very different foundations: They sought sea-trading empires when many of those in Asia or Africa were content with their control of the land. The European's best resources were logistics, allying with local groups and diseases. These were far more significant than the mere possession of the first guns.
This is a short book (150 pages!) which packs a lot into every page. Sharman challenges both explanations of how the modern world was formed, how military's and organisations learn, the way we explain the outcomes of conflict, and though he doesn't really say it, much of International Relations claim to provide not only particular explanations (how this group acted), but general explanations (why this group will always act as such).
One of the many insights I drew from this is that IR as a field needs a much more serious engagement with the study of military affairs. A recent poll of Australian IR scholars showed that of those who study security 75% study 'soft' security issues. I suspect the numbers are the same elsewhere. This point may seem contradictory given Sharman argues it was non-battlefield issues which ultimately mattered most, but the long belief that guns alone did so much reflects a discipline which does not know enough about how military capacity creates power. I do not say this to brag either, since my own career is one of slowly realising just how little I know about military capacity and trying to do something about it.
Mark Twain once apologised that he did not have the time to write a short letter. Jason Sharman has taken the care to deliberately write a short, but important book. He should be as much applauded for that as for any of the dozens of content-insights he brings in this important book. Recommended.
This is a short book (150 pages!) which packs a lot into every page. Sharman challenges both explanations of how the modern world was formed, how military's and organisations learn, the way we explain the outcomes of conflict, and though he doesn't really say it, much of International Relations claim to provide not only particular explanations (how this group acted), but general explanations (why this group will always act as such).
One of the many insights I drew from this is that IR as a field needs a much more serious engagement with the study of military affairs. A recent poll of Australian IR scholars showed that of those who study security 75% study 'soft' security issues. I suspect the numbers are the same elsewhere. This point may seem contradictory given Sharman argues it was non-battlefield issues which ultimately mattered most, but the long belief that guns alone did so much reflects a discipline which does not know enough about how military capacity creates power. I do not say this to brag either, since my own career is one of slowly realising just how little I know about military capacity and trying to do something about it.
Mark Twain once apologised that he did not have the time to write a short letter. Jason Sharman has taken the care to deliberately write a short, but important book. He should be as much applauded for that as for any of the dozens of content-insights he brings in this important book. Recommended.
October 26, 2023
So long as you keep in mind that this is basically a polemic, and an introduction to a wider topic, there is nothing particularly wrong with this monograph. Where Sharman is on target is in calling out the tendency of projecting the Western power dominance of about 1850-1950 back in time, as though it sprung like Athena from the head of Zeus, when for much of the period of early Western maritime expansion, the precocious ocean-going nations were fortunate to carve out narrow areas of control, usually on the sufferance of the Eurasian great powers. The point being that a multi-polar world has been more the norm than the exception, and if contemporary China and India secure their rise to great power status, it will only be the return to a certain norm.
Further, Sharman also critiques the less-than-honest tendency to explain such successful European force projection as there was in terms of invoking the so-called "Military Revolution" post-1500, allied with bad Darwinian thinking (is there any other kind outside of the life sciences?), to create a certain sense of inevitability. Calling out such thinking is fine, but what you don't get from Sharman is any sense that the military historians don't actually believe in this theory categorically themselves, if they ever did, and its influence has certainly faded over the past twenty years or so. The modern trend amongst military historians is to focus as much on organizational culture as anything else, keeping in mind that fashions in tactics and weapons are going to be conditioned by the social and political dynamics within a given military force; not that different from the arguments made by Sharman.
Still, despite my caveats, this is not a bad introduction and I could honestly rate it at 3.5 if given the option.
Further, Sharman also critiques the less-than-honest tendency to explain such successful European force projection as there was in terms of invoking the so-called "Military Revolution" post-1500, allied with bad Darwinian thinking (is there any other kind outside of the life sciences?), to create a certain sense of inevitability. Calling out such thinking is fine, but what you don't get from Sharman is any sense that the military historians don't actually believe in this theory categorically themselves, if they ever did, and its influence has certainly faded over the past twenty years or so. The modern trend amongst military historians is to focus as much on organizational culture as anything else, keeping in mind that fashions in tactics and weapons are going to be conditioned by the social and political dynamics within a given military force; not that different from the arguments made by Sharman.
Still, despite my caveats, this is not a bad introduction and I could honestly rate it at 3.5 if given the option.
January 24, 2020
This is a great, quick read. It is a refutation of the "Military Revolution" thesis for western dominance in the early modern period, from 1500-1750. The military revolution thesis states that the very fractiousness of European politics in the period 1450-1650 drove through a darwinian struggle great advances in military technology and the consolidation of state power and fiscal management necessary to manage and finance large standing armies which the Europeans then unleashed on the rest of the world which was dominated by large land powers like the Ottoman, Mughal, and Ming empires as well as the Aztecs and the Incas.
This theory has always somewhat bothered me because the West relied on their resistance to disease and local allies in the Americas and had little or no military advantage over the South and East Asian states at the time of first contact. Sharman more or less demolishes the thesis from top to bottom, both on a factual and a conceptual level and does so in a cogent and charming way. He demonstrates that military advances the Europeans made in domestic warfare were pretty much never deployed against non-European forces and in any case sea transport of large armies was not possible and the largest expeditions against non-Western powers in North Africa were, generally, fiascoes.
He also points out that even the triumph of the Western powers over non-Western countries during the industrial revolution was remarkably brief when compared with the whole of history and that if you're going to look at how rapidly the west conquered the rest of the world, you must also look to the rapidity of decolonization and the near perfect record of non-Western insurgencies against Western militaries.
Where the book falls short is in alternative explanations. While it may well be that the "Military Revolution" thesis does not hold, it is the case that the mercantile activities of countries like Portugal, the Netherlands, and England significantly enhanced the wealth and power of those states. He points to "cultural" differences between Western and non-Western societies but is strangely silent as to what those differences are and how they operate, especially in comparison with the intellectual annihilation of the "military revolution" which comprises the first 80% of the book.
The book can be read as a send up of "Euro-centrism" in history and he illuminated many flaws in my own thinking with remarkable clarity. Well done. All in all, a great read however, and lightning fast.
This theory has always somewhat bothered me because the West relied on their resistance to disease and local allies in the Americas and had little or no military advantage over the South and East Asian states at the time of first contact. Sharman more or less demolishes the thesis from top to bottom, both on a factual and a conceptual level and does so in a cogent and charming way. He demonstrates that military advances the Europeans made in domestic warfare were pretty much never deployed against non-European forces and in any case sea transport of large armies was not possible and the largest expeditions against non-Western powers in North Africa were, generally, fiascoes.
He also points out that even the triumph of the Western powers over non-Western countries during the industrial revolution was remarkably brief when compared with the whole of history and that if you're going to look at how rapidly the west conquered the rest of the world, you must also look to the rapidity of decolonization and the near perfect record of non-Western insurgencies against Western militaries.
Where the book falls short is in alternative explanations. While it may well be that the "Military Revolution" thesis does not hold, it is the case that the mercantile activities of countries like Portugal, the Netherlands, and England significantly enhanced the wealth and power of those states. He points to "cultural" differences between Western and non-Western societies but is strangely silent as to what those differences are and how they operate, especially in comparison with the intellectual annihilation of the "military revolution" which comprises the first 80% of the book.
The book can be read as a send up of "Euro-centrism" in history and he illuminated many flaws in my own thinking with remarkable clarity. Well done. All in all, a great read however, and lightning fast.
October 17, 2019
This book is an excellent theoretical and historical treatise on what role the revolution of military affairs (RMA) of the 1600s, 1700s, and early 1800s in Western Europe played in those nation's abilities to impose their will through war and other physical coercion onto other nations/kingdoms/societies outside of Europe.
The traditional analysis of this type is epitomized by the classical text of William McNeil, "The Rise of the West". This book postulated that the era of Western ascension, which has often been defined roughly from the 1500s to 1800s, and includes the era's at the tail-end of the European enlightenment, the age of colonialism, and the age of imperialism, was made possible through the coalescing of key technologies, both mechanical and organizational, which included the mastery and refinement of gunpowder weaponry, and the introduction of line and linear field formations to the order of battle, to name a few. This narrative suggest that the multiple-of-potency these technologies afforded the armies of European nations vis-a-vis their counterparts in Arabia, Asia, Africa, and the Americas was so high, that it allowed them to effectively conquer the world by casting aside all belligerents that met these forces on the field of battle, and thus putting these states/kingdoms/nations/societies at the mercy of the burgeoning imperial powers.
This view has gone mostly unchallenged until very recently. This is the first book I've seen as, a lay reader to this field, that seeks to establish a rigorous challenge to this notion. For this purpose, the shortness of the text works to its advantage since it's basically an introduction to the principles of the argument, with more in-depth coverage of the argument being fleshed out in subsequent works in the field.
The book tackles this task in two broad veins: A theoretical critique on whether "selection", as used in biology, and within the context of other formal iterative processes, can actually be applied to warfare, and if so, what would be the entry-level selection would act on within the military domain? The second vein being a case-analysis of battles/campaigns where forces from Europe fought non-European belligerents, and what, if anything can be validated by these historical accounts with respect to the purported principles that underlay the traditional analysis on the impact the early RMA in Europe had on these interactions.
The first approach surprised me personally primarily because it was not expected. The notion of selection has been bandied about with increasing frequency mostly in the social sciences, especially in areas like "evolutionary sociology" which characterize observed social phenomenon, say mating/dating behavior within the context of some evolutionary process where formal selection is driving the behavior of the agents in that evolutionary system. I've always been suspicious of the haphazard use of this concept outside of the strict confines of formal population studies, where even within it, there are often difficulties to disaggregate differences in gene expression from essentially stochastic effects and some selection effect. There is an excellent short treatise by a pioneering biologist in this field on this very topic [https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...] which should be consulted on as an introductory primer on this topic.
Even less convincing is applying formal notions of evolution to military conflict. The author does a good job of conceptually outlining why such an application leads to fallacy, by showing that the entity[ies] by which such a force would have to operate, namely the military organization/general staff/field-command of multiple levels from officer to unit-level of a nation etc. can be shown, by specific historical counterexamples, to not "learn" in any "rational" way. Although not stated formally, the way the author describes “learning” in this context is similar to the way it used in classical supervised machine learning, namely that there exists some value/dimension that can be accounted numerically, and that can be shown that the organization “minimizes” an error (square, absolute, etc.) in some step-wise manner, in this case within the “competition” that in instrumented through battles or campaigns. The author does a good job of outlining some interesting examples where unfounded superstitions informed the tactics/beliefs of field combatants both within European nations and in the greater world right into the 19th century, and despite clear evidence to the contrary on the field, which could be accounted for via casualty rates or other similar metrics, these organizations seemed to have failed to “correct” by adapting and minimizing the operational error by switching out the “superstition-based technology” with something that would have actually ameliorate the situation on the field.
Thus, strict “organizational” learning is suspect, and because warfare, as exercised by humans historically, is essentially an organizational activity, with orders descending unto the units in some hierarchy, it’s difficult to suggest that some broader evolutionary force was at play, driving the European “way of war” forward to supremacy vis-a-vis other ways-of-wars exercised on other continents and/or heritages, and can’t be said to strictly contribute to the “Rise of the West” militarily. Yet, even if we could imagine some new type of non-human war, say war-by-machine, that was purely decentralized, and we could say that some “kind” of evolution is acting on these decentralized units, and thus the ‘body’ of that military force is being impacted by evolution, it’s unclear whether that evolution would lead to a “militarily relevant” outcome formally. Though this is not discussed in the text, there is another layer of added complexity that has yet to be surmounted by military science, namely, it’s unclear whether it is even possible to find a numerical dimension of warfare that can be tabulated/accounted for, and is correlated with “meaningful” outcomes in human warfare. This is related to the challenge of net assessments.
Still more issue with the notion that organizational learning is somehow Darwinian, the author outlines 3 constants that “must” be fixed or true if we can say that selection is operating in the military domain: 1. death rate among organization must be high 2. differences between ineffective and effective states has to be high (and consistent) 3. The environment must be consistent in such a way that those traits that gave certain states an advantage in competition must be consistent. Though the author does not prove it, he does state that if any one of these statements are not true, then it cannot be stated that Darwinian selection is acting on organizations within military competition. The key word here is ‘consistency’ in the formal sense, which when translated often include notions of transitivity and other ‘orderness’ properties, that clearly are not met within the context of military conflict. It does not seem to be the case that there exists some “ultimate” strategy which includes an optimal set of units that a belligerent could deploy in the field, that would be globally superior. In a way, this is similar to a “no-free lunch” theorem for machine learning, but for warfare. In fact, this is not the case, at best a weak argument could be made for many locally superior strategy/unit bundles, but even then the argument with a gross simplification with many holes that could be poked with historical cases. It is clear that if selection is acting on traditional human-centric warfare, it is acting within it in the way that academics in the subjects have traditionally thought of.
Yet, even before one would approach the subject at this level of academic rigor, the author deploys his most devastating, and far simpler attacks at the traditional narrative, which is that they fundamentally contradict actual events as we understand them. First, European expeditionary forces were not at all organized like main-line continental armies in Europe. By necessity, up until the mid 1800s, and even afterwards, most expeditionary forces were much smaller in size relative to their continental home army twins. Further, these forces were often not the professionally trained units of the state’s main force, but mercenary units, often given the imperatur of acting for the state/nation/kingdom through some charter, like the East India Company of Great Britain. More importantly, when looking at the actual way these units behaved during combat, they often did not deploy the sophisticated line/linear formations of the European armies at the time, nor did they have strong disciplines in the field. Many of these forces also had minimal cavalry available to them, thus omitting these forces the most effective family of technique that used cavalry as harrying and/or clean up forces in linear-formation battle.
The author substantiates this argument further by showing that the gunpowder weapon and armor technology the European forces possessed were, when looked in detail, not all that superior to their non-European counterparts, and in many cases, perhaps even slightly inferior. The combination of numerical inferiority and less-than-potent technological advantage suggest the real manner by which European armies were able to gain some dominance in this period: subterfuge, exploiting ecological/humanitarian disaster, and tacit cooperation/acquiencese with the local hegemon and/or major power that they were operating in. To be clear, the author does not state that these technologies were not at all a factor, he admits belief that they were decisive, but not in the early periods, and probably only after the era of the Napoleonic wars had passed. What the author is saying, however, is that technology on the whole, played much less a part in prelude to the “full spectrum dominance” European entities possessed by late 19th/early 20th century vis-a-vis their non-European counterparts, and that the consistent and deft deployment of traditional strategies of ‘balancing and deference’ that is often deployed by middling powers, had a far greater explanatory effect for the later dominance.
It’s hard to argue with the authors conclusion either from a historical case standpoint or from a formal systems standpoint, and what this author has done is not only layout the case against the McNeil thesis in sufficient points, with nicely detailed historical cases as concrete follow-ups, but he’s simultaneously outline a new program of research which has a distinctly quantitative bent to it. Much of the way the author has couched the challenges and context of this field has been by using notions like finding causation, correlations, and measuring effects sizes. It can’t be coincidence that this is the exact language of statistical modeling. Though the author does not outline details at this level, it’s not hard to see that a dedicated student of this field could begin to apply these notions in the way outlined here to start to chip away at some of the questions at large.
Overall, highly recommended addition to this field, and book that will have outsized impact in our understanding of military/technological phenomena going forward.
The traditional analysis of this type is epitomized by the classical text of William McNeil, "The Rise of the West". This book postulated that the era of Western ascension, which has often been defined roughly from the 1500s to 1800s, and includes the era's at the tail-end of the European enlightenment, the age of colonialism, and the age of imperialism, was made possible through the coalescing of key technologies, both mechanical and organizational, which included the mastery and refinement of gunpowder weaponry, and the introduction of line and linear field formations to the order of battle, to name a few. This narrative suggest that the multiple-of-potency these technologies afforded the armies of European nations vis-a-vis their counterparts in Arabia, Asia, Africa, and the Americas was so high, that it allowed them to effectively conquer the world by casting aside all belligerents that met these forces on the field of battle, and thus putting these states/kingdoms/nations/societies at the mercy of the burgeoning imperial powers.
This view has gone mostly unchallenged until very recently. This is the first book I've seen as, a lay reader to this field, that seeks to establish a rigorous challenge to this notion. For this purpose, the shortness of the text works to its advantage since it's basically an introduction to the principles of the argument, with more in-depth coverage of the argument being fleshed out in subsequent works in the field.
The book tackles this task in two broad veins: A theoretical critique on whether "selection", as used in biology, and within the context of other formal iterative processes, can actually be applied to warfare, and if so, what would be the entry-level selection would act on within the military domain? The second vein being a case-analysis of battles/campaigns where forces from Europe fought non-European belligerents, and what, if anything can be validated by these historical accounts with respect to the purported principles that underlay the traditional analysis on the impact the early RMA in Europe had on these interactions.
The first approach surprised me personally primarily because it was not expected. The notion of selection has been bandied about with increasing frequency mostly in the social sciences, especially in areas like "evolutionary sociology" which characterize observed social phenomenon, say mating/dating behavior within the context of some evolutionary process where formal selection is driving the behavior of the agents in that evolutionary system. I've always been suspicious of the haphazard use of this concept outside of the strict confines of formal population studies, where even within it, there are often difficulties to disaggregate differences in gene expression from essentially stochastic effects and some selection effect. There is an excellent short treatise by a pioneering biologist in this field on this very topic [https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...] which should be consulted on as an introductory primer on this topic.
Even less convincing is applying formal notions of evolution to military conflict. The author does a good job of conceptually outlining why such an application leads to fallacy, by showing that the entity[ies] by which such a force would have to operate, namely the military organization/general staff/field-command of multiple levels from officer to unit-level of a nation etc. can be shown, by specific historical counterexamples, to not "learn" in any "rational" way. Although not stated formally, the way the author describes “learning” in this context is similar to the way it used in classical supervised machine learning, namely that there exists some value/dimension that can be accounted numerically, and that can be shown that the organization “minimizes” an error (square, absolute, etc.) in some step-wise manner, in this case within the “competition” that in instrumented through battles or campaigns. The author does a good job of outlining some interesting examples where unfounded superstitions informed the tactics/beliefs of field combatants both within European nations and in the greater world right into the 19th century, and despite clear evidence to the contrary on the field, which could be accounted for via casualty rates or other similar metrics, these organizations seemed to have failed to “correct” by adapting and minimizing the operational error by switching out the “superstition-based technology” with something that would have actually ameliorate the situation on the field.
Thus, strict “organizational” learning is suspect, and because warfare, as exercised by humans historically, is essentially an organizational activity, with orders descending unto the units in some hierarchy, it’s difficult to suggest that some broader evolutionary force was at play, driving the European “way of war” forward to supremacy vis-a-vis other ways-of-wars exercised on other continents and/or heritages, and can’t be said to strictly contribute to the “Rise of the West” militarily. Yet, even if we could imagine some new type of non-human war, say war-by-machine, that was purely decentralized, and we could say that some “kind” of evolution is acting on these decentralized units, and thus the ‘body’ of that military force is being impacted by evolution, it’s unclear whether that evolution would lead to a “militarily relevant” outcome formally. Though this is not discussed in the text, there is another layer of added complexity that has yet to be surmounted by military science, namely, it’s unclear whether it is even possible to find a numerical dimension of warfare that can be tabulated/accounted for, and is correlated with “meaningful” outcomes in human warfare. This is related to the challenge of net assessments.
Still more issue with the notion that organizational learning is somehow Darwinian, the author outlines 3 constants that “must” be fixed or true if we can say that selection is operating in the military domain: 1. death rate among organization must be high 2. differences between ineffective and effective states has to be high (and consistent) 3. The environment must be consistent in such a way that those traits that gave certain states an advantage in competition must be consistent. Though the author does not prove it, he does state that if any one of these statements are not true, then it cannot be stated that Darwinian selection is acting on organizations within military competition. The key word here is ‘consistency’ in the formal sense, which when translated often include notions of transitivity and other ‘orderness’ properties, that clearly are not met within the context of military conflict. It does not seem to be the case that there exists some “ultimate” strategy which includes an optimal set of units that a belligerent could deploy in the field, that would be globally superior. In a way, this is similar to a “no-free lunch” theorem for machine learning, but for warfare. In fact, this is not the case, at best a weak argument could be made for many locally superior strategy/unit bundles, but even then the argument with a gross simplification with many holes that could be poked with historical cases. It is clear that if selection is acting on traditional human-centric warfare, it is acting within it in the way that academics in the subjects have traditionally thought of.
Yet, even before one would approach the subject at this level of academic rigor, the author deploys his most devastating, and far simpler attacks at the traditional narrative, which is that they fundamentally contradict actual events as we understand them. First, European expeditionary forces were not at all organized like main-line continental armies in Europe. By necessity, up until the mid 1800s, and even afterwards, most expeditionary forces were much smaller in size relative to their continental home army twins. Further, these forces were often not the professionally trained units of the state’s main force, but mercenary units, often given the imperatur of acting for the state/nation/kingdom through some charter, like the East India Company of Great Britain. More importantly, when looking at the actual way these units behaved during combat, they often did not deploy the sophisticated line/linear formations of the European armies at the time, nor did they have strong disciplines in the field. Many of these forces also had minimal cavalry available to them, thus omitting these forces the most effective family of technique that used cavalry as harrying and/or clean up forces in linear-formation battle.
The author substantiates this argument further by showing that the gunpowder weapon and armor technology the European forces possessed were, when looked in detail, not all that superior to their non-European counterparts, and in many cases, perhaps even slightly inferior. The combination of numerical inferiority and less-than-potent technological advantage suggest the real manner by which European armies were able to gain some dominance in this period: subterfuge, exploiting ecological/humanitarian disaster, and tacit cooperation/acquiencese with the local hegemon and/or major power that they were operating in. To be clear, the author does not state that these technologies were not at all a factor, he admits belief that they were decisive, but not in the early periods, and probably only after the era of the Napoleonic wars had passed. What the author is saying, however, is that technology on the whole, played much less a part in prelude to the “full spectrum dominance” European entities possessed by late 19th/early 20th century vis-a-vis their non-European counterparts, and that the consistent and deft deployment of traditional strategies of ‘balancing and deference’ that is often deployed by middling powers, had a far greater explanatory effect for the later dominance.
It’s hard to argue with the authors conclusion either from a historical case standpoint or from a formal systems standpoint, and what this author has done is not only layout the case against the McNeil thesis in sufficient points, with nicely detailed historical cases as concrete follow-ups, but he’s simultaneously outline a new program of research which has a distinctly quantitative bent to it. Much of the way the author has couched the challenges and context of this field has been by using notions like finding causation, correlations, and measuring effects sizes. It can’t be coincidence that this is the exact language of statistical modeling. Though the author does not outline details at this level, it’s not hard to see that a dedicated student of this field could begin to apply these notions in the way outlined here to start to chip away at some of the questions at large.
Overall, highly recommended addition to this field, and book that will have outsized impact in our understanding of military/technological phenomena going forward.
August 26, 2023
From the perspective of the present, it appears as if we have always lived in a Western-dominated world system. Though the last two decades have witnessed the rise of non-Western powers such as China and India, the distribution of wealth, power, and influence are still very much skewed towards Europe and its settler-colony outposts such as the United States. Sharman argues instead that the era of Western domination was relatively short-lived and fragile, and that the world is rapidly returning to the status quo that prevailed for much of recorded history in which non-Western powers dominated the international system.
At issue is what has been called the "military revolution hypothesis," put forward by historians such as Michael Roberts and Geoffrey Parker that argues that military innovations in the early modern period (15th cent.) necessitated political and administrative changes that inexorably launched Europe on the path to global dominance. In the early 15th century, European states began to introduce gunpowder weapons and volley fire into their battle tactics. This required well-drilled troops, a more professional officer corps and larger, permanent armies (rather than volunteer troops or peasant conscripts). To defend against cannon, states also needed bigger and heavier fortifications. At sea, ship-mounted cannon required bigger, multi-deck ships and heavier reinforcement for hulls and decks. All this cost money, necessitating a wider tax base, stronger administration, and domestic political arrangements that would enable the mobilization of both men and materiel. Those states that did not adopt this model were defeated and absorbed into larger political units. This led to a "paradigm diffusion," in which militarily successful battle tactics and political/administrative arrangements rapidly diffused within the European sphere.
As Europeans ventured abroad, goes the thesis, the military revolution helped put large, well-drilled, heavily-armed, well-financed troops against Asian, American, and African armies still armed with swords and spears and still used to skirmishing and wild frontal charges. The latter did not stand a chance. European hegemony, marked by globe-spanning empires, the widespread diffusion of Western institutions, and a Western-dominated economic system, inevitably followed.
But Sharman contests this argument, on several grounds. First, he says that the “paradigm diffusion” model requires several conditions that are unlikely to be realized in practice. Second, European powers were not able to field the types of armies that might have benefited from the military revolution, in Asian and African conflicts. Third, the historical record shows that at least till the second half of the 18th century, European powers were mostly supplicants before the large land-based empires of Asia such as the Ottomans, the Safavids, Mughals, the Ming, and the Qing. Each of these arguments is worthy of examination.
First, Sharman’s criticism of the paradigm diffusion model. Based on theories of “organizational learning,” Sharman argues that for learning to occur, there has to be regularly repeated trials; clearly demonstrable cause and effect connections; no barriers to organizational adoption of innovations; and a stable external environment so that cause-effect connections remain largely unchanged. When these conditions are met, there is a chance for organizations to adopt successful practices. And those that do not, in an analogy to evolutionary biology, go extinct. In practice none of these conditions are met in military conflict. Wars, though unfortunately common, are infrequent and occur only once in a generation. Second, the fog of war covers up cause and effect connections even for historians who examine events with the benefit of hindsight, not to speak of commanders in the heat of battle. Third, battlefield tactics and weapons cannot be adopted if the social and political circumstances do not permit (witness American attempts to create a modern army in Afghanistan). And finally, the external environment is too dynamic and complex – and enemies too are constantly learning and adapting.
Sharman’s second critique centers on the record of European powers in Asian and African wars in early modern times. Western powers were rarely able to field armies capable of benefiting from the military revolution. European battle tactics called for fighting in ranks, volley fire, and fortifications, all of which required well-drilled professional troops in large numbers. But European forces were often small bands of mercenaries, exemplified by Cortez’s and Pizzaro’s Spanish adventurers in America. These troops were well-matched with local armies in Asia and Africa, who also had (or soon acquired) access to gun and cannon.
Third, the historical record shows that for much of the 16th and 17th centuries, European powers were confined to small trading stations and treaty ports on the fringes of Africa and Asia. They were supplicants in the courts of the land-based empires and operated mostly on the patches of the globe of no interest to the local powers: swampy lands (Calcutta) and islands (Singapore). The few times European powers challenged the land empires, they regretted it: in 1689, for example, the East India Company had to beg forgiveness of Aurangzeb and pay a huge indemnity, after the Mughals decided to crack down on British harassment of imperial ships in the Arabian Sea.
But things did change eventually. Starting in the mid-18th century, Europeans began to obtain battlefield success first tentatively and then in the 19th century more and more decisively. In the Opium Wars for example, small Western expeditionary forces blasted Qing coastal defenses and advanced in short order to the imperial capital in Beijing, to put the emperor to flight and sack the Forbidden City. Sharman does not dispute that there was a period of European domination – but it was much shorter and very quickly reversed. And it was not due to military advances alone, but owed equally to logistical, transportation and communication innovations, industrial capacity, and economic growth. The telegraph, the railroad and the steamship contributed greatly to the success of empire, as much as the Gatling gun and the repeating rifle.
So how did this notion of “five centuries of European domination” come to be so firmly established? Sharman argues that it is the effect of two factors: Eurocentrism and faulty periodization.
Eurocentrism considers that historical sequences that happened in Europe are the norm, and events elsewhere are deviations, usually inferior. Since military developments in Europe followed a certain sequence – new battlefield tactics and weapons, professional armies, higher military budgets, an administrative state – that is the how events should unfold, and if they do not follow the same pattern elsewhere, then the latter are deficient.
Faulty periodization looks at the last five hundred years as one undifferentiated era of inexorable Western grown and domination. Starting with the age of discovery to the heyday of empire in the interwar years, this is period is characterized as a time of Western ascendancy. European partisans draw a straight line between the shockingly easy success of Spanish adventurers against the Aztecs and the Incas, to the height of empire in the 1930s and cast the whole period as one of steady European advancement. But Sharman sees it differently. For one, as already discussed, Europeans spent a good part of this time as supplicants and fringe players in various Asian and African polities. European dominance ended sooner too - in the aftermath of WW2, the colonies one after the other gained independence. Since then, Western powers despite their conventional military superiority, vast wealth, and technological advantage, have had little success against Third World insurgencies, from Algeria, to Vietnam, to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Faulty periodization also casts Western losses as temporary setbacks before eventual triumph, and non-Western successes as exceptions before the inevitable downfall. Faulty periodization also suppresses contradictory evidence. The era of Western domination also witnessed dramatic growth in the power of non-Western powers: Ming and Qing China and Mughal India saw their greatest territorial gains in the 16th and 17th centuries. Similarly, the two and a half centuries from the fall of Constantinople (1453) to the late-17th century were dominated by the Ottomans who became the dominant power in west Asia, southeastern Europe and north Africa. Despite Lepanto (1571), the Ottomans continued their advances reaching their maximum territorial extent in the 1680s. Yet, from the perspective of periodization, fixing the endpoint at the heyday of Western imperialism in the 1930s, Turkey is characterized as a spent power, the “sick man of Europe.”
So if not paradigm diffusion, what explains organizational learning? Sharman replies that it might be culture! Organizational innovations are adopted or rejected, retained, or discarded, based upon conformity to cultural preferences. Sharman gives one example (in more than one chapter actually), of “bulletproofing” by African insurgent armies, including Uganda’s Holy Spirit movement. It is very easily demonstrated that magic does not stop bullets, and yet the practice persists because it matches the cultural expectations of the warriors. Failure is attributed not to the inefficacy of magic, but to errors in the ritual or to insufficient faith. Another example is the Mughal “mansabdari” system by which nobles were assigned revenue collection rights to a territory in return for an obligation to provide a certain number of cavalry and infantry to the Mughal military. The system had numerous faults: soldiers were loyal to the commander and not to the emperor or the state; the soldiers were mostly conscripts raised at the cheapest rate; the army as a whole never drilled together; there were big differences in training, weaponry and motivation between units; and it was a huge drain on the Mughal treasury. Yet, the system persisted because Mughal nobles measured their social worth and position in terms of their mansabdari rank.
But this also brings up my one quibble with Sharman’s “culture as explanation for state actions” thesis. Sharman argues that economics had little to do with the European drive to empire, in fact he says, European empires were only marginally profitable if not actually loss-making in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Instead, the drive to empire was a cultural imperative, since possession of colonies was seen as the mark of a Great Power, earning a nation admiration and respect from its peers. Thus, latecomers went to a whole lot of expense and trouble to acquire an empire even if their colonies were hardscrabble regions with no economic potential (e.g., Italy in Eritrea and Somalia).
But here is my objection. We have known as far back as Dadabhai Naoroji (“Poverty and Un-British Rule in India,” 1901) that empire drains wealth from colonies, a point made more recently by Shashi Tharoor also (“An Era of Darkness,” 2016). So where does all this money go? I think the truth is – that Sharman does not acknowledge – that empire is enormously profitable to the elite in the metropole, but not so much to the imperial taxpayer who is called on to bear the costs of defense and administration. The imperial project barely breaks even, even as the wealthy and the powerful grow rich on the proceeds of empire. Sharman points out that the East India Company was periodically dipping into the red, and often required bailouts from the British Treasury. But why not? When times are good, the Company hands out fat dividends to its shareholders (who by the way included a fair number of legislators), and when times are bad, it turns up hat in hand before Parliament for a bailout at the public expense.
But despite these small quibbles, this is an excellent book that makes a clear, logical argument with economy and precision. Presciently, it prepares us for a world in which the Western-dominated political order moves to make space for powers such as China and India. As Sharman says, "this would be in many ways a return to the situation that obtained around 1700" (p. 151). "A multipolar global international order becomes the historical norm rather than the exception" (p. 151). The short length (a deliberate choice to make the book accessible to the lay reader, as the author explains in the preface) does not let the author get too much into the literature, though key works are footnoted. To compensate, the author provides 21 pages of bibliography.
At issue is what has been called the "military revolution hypothesis," put forward by historians such as Michael Roberts and Geoffrey Parker that argues that military innovations in the early modern period (15th cent.) necessitated political and administrative changes that inexorably launched Europe on the path to global dominance. In the early 15th century, European states began to introduce gunpowder weapons and volley fire into their battle tactics. This required well-drilled troops, a more professional officer corps and larger, permanent armies (rather than volunteer troops or peasant conscripts). To defend against cannon, states also needed bigger and heavier fortifications. At sea, ship-mounted cannon required bigger, multi-deck ships and heavier reinforcement for hulls and decks. All this cost money, necessitating a wider tax base, stronger administration, and domestic political arrangements that would enable the mobilization of both men and materiel. Those states that did not adopt this model were defeated and absorbed into larger political units. This led to a "paradigm diffusion," in which militarily successful battle tactics and political/administrative arrangements rapidly diffused within the European sphere.
As Europeans ventured abroad, goes the thesis, the military revolution helped put large, well-drilled, heavily-armed, well-financed troops against Asian, American, and African armies still armed with swords and spears and still used to skirmishing and wild frontal charges. The latter did not stand a chance. European hegemony, marked by globe-spanning empires, the widespread diffusion of Western institutions, and a Western-dominated economic system, inevitably followed.
But Sharman contests this argument, on several grounds. First, he says that the “paradigm diffusion” model requires several conditions that are unlikely to be realized in practice. Second, European powers were not able to field the types of armies that might have benefited from the military revolution, in Asian and African conflicts. Third, the historical record shows that at least till the second half of the 18th century, European powers were mostly supplicants before the large land-based empires of Asia such as the Ottomans, the Safavids, Mughals, the Ming, and the Qing. Each of these arguments is worthy of examination.
First, Sharman’s criticism of the paradigm diffusion model. Based on theories of “organizational learning,” Sharman argues that for learning to occur, there has to be regularly repeated trials; clearly demonstrable cause and effect connections; no barriers to organizational adoption of innovations; and a stable external environment so that cause-effect connections remain largely unchanged. When these conditions are met, there is a chance for organizations to adopt successful practices. And those that do not, in an analogy to evolutionary biology, go extinct. In practice none of these conditions are met in military conflict. Wars, though unfortunately common, are infrequent and occur only once in a generation. Second, the fog of war covers up cause and effect connections even for historians who examine events with the benefit of hindsight, not to speak of commanders in the heat of battle. Third, battlefield tactics and weapons cannot be adopted if the social and political circumstances do not permit (witness American attempts to create a modern army in Afghanistan). And finally, the external environment is too dynamic and complex – and enemies too are constantly learning and adapting.
Sharman’s second critique centers on the record of European powers in Asian and African wars in early modern times. Western powers were rarely able to field armies capable of benefiting from the military revolution. European battle tactics called for fighting in ranks, volley fire, and fortifications, all of which required well-drilled professional troops in large numbers. But European forces were often small bands of mercenaries, exemplified by Cortez’s and Pizzaro’s Spanish adventurers in America. These troops were well-matched with local armies in Asia and Africa, who also had (or soon acquired) access to gun and cannon.
Third, the historical record shows that for much of the 16th and 17th centuries, European powers were confined to small trading stations and treaty ports on the fringes of Africa and Asia. They were supplicants in the courts of the land-based empires and operated mostly on the patches of the globe of no interest to the local powers: swampy lands (Calcutta) and islands (Singapore). The few times European powers challenged the land empires, they regretted it: in 1689, for example, the East India Company had to beg forgiveness of Aurangzeb and pay a huge indemnity, after the Mughals decided to crack down on British harassment of imperial ships in the Arabian Sea.
But things did change eventually. Starting in the mid-18th century, Europeans began to obtain battlefield success first tentatively and then in the 19th century more and more decisively. In the Opium Wars for example, small Western expeditionary forces blasted Qing coastal defenses and advanced in short order to the imperial capital in Beijing, to put the emperor to flight and sack the Forbidden City. Sharman does not dispute that there was a period of European domination – but it was much shorter and very quickly reversed. And it was not due to military advances alone, but owed equally to logistical, transportation and communication innovations, industrial capacity, and economic growth. The telegraph, the railroad and the steamship contributed greatly to the success of empire, as much as the Gatling gun and the repeating rifle.
So how did this notion of “five centuries of European domination” come to be so firmly established? Sharman argues that it is the effect of two factors: Eurocentrism and faulty periodization.
Eurocentrism considers that historical sequences that happened in Europe are the norm, and events elsewhere are deviations, usually inferior. Since military developments in Europe followed a certain sequence – new battlefield tactics and weapons, professional armies, higher military budgets, an administrative state – that is the how events should unfold, and if they do not follow the same pattern elsewhere, then the latter are deficient.
Faulty periodization looks at the last five hundred years as one undifferentiated era of inexorable Western grown and domination. Starting with the age of discovery to the heyday of empire in the interwar years, this is period is characterized as a time of Western ascendancy. European partisans draw a straight line between the shockingly easy success of Spanish adventurers against the Aztecs and the Incas, to the height of empire in the 1930s and cast the whole period as one of steady European advancement. But Sharman sees it differently. For one, as already discussed, Europeans spent a good part of this time as supplicants and fringe players in various Asian and African polities. European dominance ended sooner too - in the aftermath of WW2, the colonies one after the other gained independence. Since then, Western powers despite their conventional military superiority, vast wealth, and technological advantage, have had little success against Third World insurgencies, from Algeria, to Vietnam, to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Faulty periodization also casts Western losses as temporary setbacks before eventual triumph, and non-Western successes as exceptions before the inevitable downfall. Faulty periodization also suppresses contradictory evidence. The era of Western domination also witnessed dramatic growth in the power of non-Western powers: Ming and Qing China and Mughal India saw their greatest territorial gains in the 16th and 17th centuries. Similarly, the two and a half centuries from the fall of Constantinople (1453) to the late-17th century were dominated by the Ottomans who became the dominant power in west Asia, southeastern Europe and north Africa. Despite Lepanto (1571), the Ottomans continued their advances reaching their maximum territorial extent in the 1680s. Yet, from the perspective of periodization, fixing the endpoint at the heyday of Western imperialism in the 1930s, Turkey is characterized as a spent power, the “sick man of Europe.”
So if not paradigm diffusion, what explains organizational learning? Sharman replies that it might be culture! Organizational innovations are adopted or rejected, retained, or discarded, based upon conformity to cultural preferences. Sharman gives one example (in more than one chapter actually), of “bulletproofing” by African insurgent armies, including Uganda’s Holy Spirit movement. It is very easily demonstrated that magic does not stop bullets, and yet the practice persists because it matches the cultural expectations of the warriors. Failure is attributed not to the inefficacy of magic, but to errors in the ritual or to insufficient faith. Another example is the Mughal “mansabdari” system by which nobles were assigned revenue collection rights to a territory in return for an obligation to provide a certain number of cavalry and infantry to the Mughal military. The system had numerous faults: soldiers were loyal to the commander and not to the emperor or the state; the soldiers were mostly conscripts raised at the cheapest rate; the army as a whole never drilled together; there were big differences in training, weaponry and motivation between units; and it was a huge drain on the Mughal treasury. Yet, the system persisted because Mughal nobles measured their social worth and position in terms of their mansabdari rank.
But this also brings up my one quibble with Sharman’s “culture as explanation for state actions” thesis. Sharman argues that economics had little to do with the European drive to empire, in fact he says, European empires were only marginally profitable if not actually loss-making in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Instead, the drive to empire was a cultural imperative, since possession of colonies was seen as the mark of a Great Power, earning a nation admiration and respect from its peers. Thus, latecomers went to a whole lot of expense and trouble to acquire an empire even if their colonies were hardscrabble regions with no economic potential (e.g., Italy in Eritrea and Somalia).
But here is my objection. We have known as far back as Dadabhai Naoroji (“Poverty and Un-British Rule in India,” 1901) that empire drains wealth from colonies, a point made more recently by Shashi Tharoor also (“An Era of Darkness,” 2016). So where does all this money go? I think the truth is – that Sharman does not acknowledge – that empire is enormously profitable to the elite in the metropole, but not so much to the imperial taxpayer who is called on to bear the costs of defense and administration. The imperial project barely breaks even, even as the wealthy and the powerful grow rich on the proceeds of empire. Sharman points out that the East India Company was periodically dipping into the red, and often required bailouts from the British Treasury. But why not? When times are good, the Company hands out fat dividends to its shareholders (who by the way included a fair number of legislators), and when times are bad, it turns up hat in hand before Parliament for a bailout at the public expense.
But despite these small quibbles, this is an excellent book that makes a clear, logical argument with economy and precision. Presciently, it prepares us for a world in which the Western-dominated political order moves to make space for powers such as China and India. As Sharman says, "this would be in many ways a return to the situation that obtained around 1700" (p. 151). "A multipolar global international order becomes the historical norm rather than the exception" (p. 151). The short length (a deliberate choice to make the book accessible to the lay reader, as the author explains in the preface) does not let the author get too much into the literature, though key works are footnoted. To compensate, the author provides 21 pages of bibliography.
May 15, 2019
There have been many books written that attempt to explain why Europe came to dominate the world despite its relative economic and political backwardness. Sharman’s work can be added to the pile, but it is still absolutely worth reading because it adroitly debunks many of the commonly held but erroneous explanations for European expansion. In particular, Sharman demolishes Philip Hoffman’s thesis that it was European military power that assured the continent’s ascendence. After all, the great European military innovations of massed volley fire and precise formations could not be deployed by the small bands of conquistadores in the Americas. When these tactics could be employed, such as against the Ottomans, they yielded lackluster results. Sharman instead argues that Europeans came to dominate because they developed political arrangements with developed land powers in Asia that ensured they retained control over the seas. These arrangements also ensured privileged trading rights that boosted European incomes and offered an opening through which Europeans could promote internal instability within the great states of East and South Asia. This thesis is not exactly original – as one reviewer points out, it is a near rip-off of work by Karl Marx, Ronald Robinson, and John Gallagher – but it is well-written and tightly argued. The book is also quite slim. This means that it fails to treat the preexisting literature with the depth and nuance it probably deserves, but it also means the book is eminently accessible and a quick read.
May 25, 2019
Really interesting and I learned a good bit, but it seems to be targeted to a very specific corner of the academic audience that is steeped in a dogma I'm not familiar with. I hope it blows them away with the many, many very specific takedowns of the standard thesis (and his disdain for military historians, I guess?) but I was just a bit confused and unimpressed by it all.
April 29, 2019
My question:
Why does this even matter?
Why does this even matter?
September 14, 2022
I found this book as a well-informed and factual one, but very dull for someone who tries to find out many stories, intrigues, or memorable events. Not my cup of tea!
June 24, 2022
It's a revisionist reading of European global dominance 1500-1800 by challenging the idea of a mighty military revolution in Europe. The bigger aim of the book is in the last line -- if we don’t know where or how we came from, we wont know where we are going, and in closing, he argues if India and China returned as superpowers, it going back to a pre 1700s world, not a new world order; European dominance was a relatively transient (1500-1800, peaking at 80% of global ownership by 1914 at its peak) and anomalous development that concluded with Western powers losing their territories.
Period: end of 1400s to 1500s saw just limited expansionary success & not because of more advanced societies or militaries & weapons
It couldn’t have been better and larger armies because European states didn’t have the numbers to send huge forces across oceans. The guns were slow firing muskets & most combat was hand to hand. It wasn’t the navy that helped either -- navies were to protect the spice trade, defend against pirates and against other Western states. They were pretty limited for land warfare during the 1400s-1700s.
Instead, Spaniards had success in Mexico by depending on local allies, allies in the North, often at odds with each other, deference to non-Western great powers in the land ("go along to get along") & disease (which ultimately led to Europeans outnumbering the indigenous populations). The Portuguese consistently exploited local rivalries in Africa. And there were losses too -- LatAm saw the Mapuche master the horse and neutralize that advantage Europeans may have had
Period: 1600s saw chartered companies (not states) like VOC Dutch Co, East India Co expand, but because of other issues their opponents faced
EIC was estb. In 1600 before actually winning a major victory 157 years later. It got a toehold in 1619 in Surat through diplomacy with the Mughals, and more specifically colluding with local officials to evade custom duties.. Until 1686 when Aurangzeb was pissed and cracked down on customs evasion. The EIC had to pay a huge indemnity and apologize to remain. But parallel, Aurangzeb was fighting an expensive war against the Marathas. The Mughals also were weakened after their defeat to Nadir Shah.
Even then in SE Asia, it was local war tactics that were effective, not well trained militia you saw in Europe land battles. And it certainly didn’t lead to a virtuous cycle of wealth creation -- the VOC declined because the more it expanded, in effect, the thinner its financial margins got given admin and military costs of maintain these regions
A counterfactual to the European military might theory of expansion -- the Ottomans were successful going into Europe, and had comparable weapons. The problem is they recruited and kept a huge military which in peace times fell into disrepair and banditry.
Period: 1750s, 1800s did see European expansion
… But not because of better weapons, culture or organization but because they could mobilize local allies and exploit disunity of their opponents i.e. non military advantages were just as important e.g. medical advances kept new European colonizers alive in Africa as did the railway and steam ship to go inland from the coast where they had naval prowess
Other points challenging the 'military revolution' theory
Ø It’s a eurocentric view (as evidence by the number of eurocentric papers in international relation publications over the last hundred years). Eurocentric arguments often fall back on the vague notion of 'culture'. Another argument is the slice of time we're talking about sees European states and powers exist voer decades, non_Western empires existed for thousands of years.
Ø Europeans may have had advanced weapons, but it wasn’t a sustainable advantage given the practice of Indian regimes hiring European mercenaries, transfer of knowledge did and had to have happened. The Achilles heel is that mercenaries can be bought out, and Europeans did just that including at the battle of Plassey in 1757. Also the co paid mercenaries consistently and on time, another reason they defected
Period: end of 1400s to 1500s saw just limited expansionary success & not because of more advanced societies or militaries & weapons
It couldn’t have been better and larger armies because European states didn’t have the numbers to send huge forces across oceans. The guns were slow firing muskets & most combat was hand to hand. It wasn’t the navy that helped either -- navies were to protect the spice trade, defend against pirates and against other Western states. They were pretty limited for land warfare during the 1400s-1700s.
Instead, Spaniards had success in Mexico by depending on local allies, allies in the North, often at odds with each other, deference to non-Western great powers in the land ("go along to get along") & disease (which ultimately led to Europeans outnumbering the indigenous populations). The Portuguese consistently exploited local rivalries in Africa. And there were losses too -- LatAm saw the Mapuche master the horse and neutralize that advantage Europeans may have had
Period: 1600s saw chartered companies (not states) like VOC Dutch Co, East India Co expand, but because of other issues their opponents faced
EIC was estb. In 1600 before actually winning a major victory 157 years later. It got a toehold in 1619 in Surat through diplomacy with the Mughals, and more specifically colluding with local officials to evade custom duties.. Until 1686 when Aurangzeb was pissed and cracked down on customs evasion. The EIC had to pay a huge indemnity and apologize to remain. But parallel, Aurangzeb was fighting an expensive war against the Marathas. The Mughals also were weakened after their defeat to Nadir Shah.
Even then in SE Asia, it was local war tactics that were effective, not well trained militia you saw in Europe land battles. And it certainly didn’t lead to a virtuous cycle of wealth creation -- the VOC declined because the more it expanded, in effect, the thinner its financial margins got given admin and military costs of maintain these regions
A counterfactual to the European military might theory of expansion -- the Ottomans were successful going into Europe, and had comparable weapons. The problem is they recruited and kept a huge military which in peace times fell into disrepair and banditry.
Period: 1750s, 1800s did see European expansion
… But not because of better weapons, culture or organization but because they could mobilize local allies and exploit disunity of their opponents i.e. non military advantages were just as important e.g. medical advances kept new European colonizers alive in Africa as did the railway and steam ship to go inland from the coast where they had naval prowess
Other points challenging the 'military revolution' theory
Ø It’s a eurocentric view (as evidence by the number of eurocentric papers in international relation publications over the last hundred years). Eurocentric arguments often fall back on the vague notion of 'culture'. Another argument is the slice of time we're talking about sees European states and powers exist voer decades, non_Western empires existed for thousands of years.
Ø Europeans may have had advanced weapons, but it wasn’t a sustainable advantage given the practice of Indian regimes hiring European mercenaries, transfer of knowledge did and had to have happened. The Achilles heel is that mercenaries can be bought out, and Europeans did just that including at the battle of Plassey in 1757. Also the co paid mercenaries consistently and on time, another reason they defected
June 20, 2025
Empires of the Weak is a concise book that tries to cover a lot of ground both literally and figuratively.
Sharman's rejects the thesis that early colonial expansion was driven largely by European military superiority. There's also a meta argument as well, in his rejection of thesis that competition leads to learning and improvement in a competitive military environment.
Instead, he argues that European expansion c. 1500 - 1800 was enabled by a coincidence of interest between Asian and African rulers who were interested in maintaining dominance on land, but not concerned with the sea, and European traders who didn't care about land and wanted only to own trade routes.
Sharman argues that the differences in outcomes from European contact in Africa, the Americas, and Asia heavily reflects differences in susceptibility to disease. In the Americas disease represented an enormous advantage for Europeans who were had greater acquired immunity to diseases like Smallpox. In Africa, by contrast, disease worked against Europeans who were more susceptible than Africans to malaria, while in Asia disease didn't favor either side because European and Asian populations had long shared germs.
The Spanish conquest of the New World was also aided by the fact that the local polities were divided. The Inca and Aztec had both made a lot of enemies without whom the Spanish would surely have been defeated eventually. The technology of the conquistadors (namely war horses and metal armor and swords) surely did give an enormous advantage in rallying and organizing local opposition.
To draw out his argument against the idea that militaries learn and adopt optimal strategies, Sharman discusses the practice of magical bullet proofing. The idea that people can become impervious to bullets by wearing a protective amulet, drinking a potion, applying a cream or following certain ritual practices (e.g. not bathing).
Sharman sees magical bulletproofing as an obvious example of bad military strategy, but was it? If the point was actually to make people bulletproof, it didn't work. But, it seems far more likely that the point was to alleviate the fear of soldiers. One of the biggest problems armies historically faced is that most people, when they are being shot at, are inclined to run in the opposite direction. Bulletproofing (along with ample quantities of alcohol and other drugs) seems like one way to counter that.
In any event, overall the book was pretty interesting. My biggest objection is that Sharman occasionally seems to straw man the views of other historians. I haven't read the primary targets of his ire, but most historians of this period I have read acknowledge the relative weakness of Europe prior to the industrial revolution, so I'm not sure how original the book's thesis really is.
Sharman's rejects the thesis that early colonial expansion was driven largely by European military superiority. There's also a meta argument as well, in his rejection of thesis that competition leads to learning and improvement in a competitive military environment.
Instead, he argues that European expansion c. 1500 - 1800 was enabled by a coincidence of interest between Asian and African rulers who were interested in maintaining dominance on land, but not concerned with the sea, and European traders who didn't care about land and wanted only to own trade routes.
Sharman argues that the differences in outcomes from European contact in Africa, the Americas, and Asia heavily reflects differences in susceptibility to disease. In the Americas disease represented an enormous advantage for Europeans who were had greater acquired immunity to diseases like Smallpox. In Africa, by contrast, disease worked against Europeans who were more susceptible than Africans to malaria, while in Asia disease didn't favor either side because European and Asian populations had long shared germs.
The Spanish conquest of the New World was also aided by the fact that the local polities were divided. The Inca and Aztec had both made a lot of enemies without whom the Spanish would surely have been defeated eventually. The technology of the conquistadors (namely war horses and metal armor and swords) surely did give an enormous advantage in rallying and organizing local opposition.
To draw out his argument against the idea that militaries learn and adopt optimal strategies, Sharman discusses the practice of magical bullet proofing. The idea that people can become impervious to bullets by wearing a protective amulet, drinking a potion, applying a cream or following certain ritual practices (e.g. not bathing).
Sharman sees magical bulletproofing as an obvious example of bad military strategy, but was it? If the point was actually to make people bulletproof, it didn't work. But, it seems far more likely that the point was to alleviate the fear of soldiers. One of the biggest problems armies historically faced is that most people, when they are being shot at, are inclined to run in the opposite direction. Bulletproofing (along with ample quantities of alcohol and other drugs) seems like one way to counter that.
In any event, overall the book was pretty interesting. My biggest objection is that Sharman occasionally seems to straw man the views of other historians. I haven't read the primary targets of his ire, but most historians of this period I have read acknowledge the relative weakness of Europe prior to the industrial revolution, so I'm not sure how original the book's thesis really is.
September 6, 2025
I like history, especially researched history that cuts across the myths we tell ourselves. Especially those myths that say Europeans were naturally going to dominate the world due to [X]. History usually isn't so clear cut. Nuance is the right way to approach history, but these days people only want little sound bites that support their uninformed opinion.
While short, the author packs a lot of detail into the pages. He points out how some historians start with the "European powers dominate now" and then try to apply anything they can to prove it, instead of starting back in time and come forward. The eye opening part is that the Europeans were weak outside of Europe. I know a lot about the conquest of the Americas through other books. There it was mostly disease and local affiliates that tore down the Aztecs and Incas with only a handful of Spanish soliders. I knew a little bit about Africa & the far east, but the book brings those theaters into sharp focus where it follows the same pattern of using the local groups to maintain their dominance. But it wasn't really dominance, as on land the local leaders were much more powerful. The Europeans had the sea lanes, but that was all. Usually when they tried to expand their footprint it went badly.
Guns and cannons are a big part of the discussion, where other historians discount the ability of the people in the far east to build gunpowder weapons that matched Europe. They did. I thought it was a big stab in the heart of "only Europeans innovated" within the Ottoman chapter. I didn't know they had implemented a lot of what Europeans did in warfare decades earlier. They dominated the land and sea, with their empire covering a large portion of eastern Europe. They only stopped when they reached the limit of their logistics. Otherwise the Europeans couldn't beat them.
I think the book is a good introduction to looking at the history of expansion of the European powers from 1500-1800. It casts a different light, one that is more truthful. Think of it as the difference between a history book in high school to one in college. The college books seek to challenge & have you think, while the high school books are to brainwash you to believe the myths.
While short, the author packs a lot of detail into the pages. He points out how some historians start with the "European powers dominate now" and then try to apply anything they can to prove it, instead of starting back in time and come forward. The eye opening part is that the Europeans were weak outside of Europe. I know a lot about the conquest of the Americas through other books. There it was mostly disease and local affiliates that tore down the Aztecs and Incas with only a handful of Spanish soliders. I knew a little bit about Africa & the far east, but the book brings those theaters into sharp focus where it follows the same pattern of using the local groups to maintain their dominance. But it wasn't really dominance, as on land the local leaders were much more powerful. The Europeans had the sea lanes, but that was all. Usually when they tried to expand their footprint it went badly.
Guns and cannons are a big part of the discussion, where other historians discount the ability of the people in the far east to build gunpowder weapons that matched Europe. They did. I thought it was a big stab in the heart of "only Europeans innovated" within the Ottoman chapter. I didn't know they had implemented a lot of what Europeans did in warfare decades earlier. They dominated the land and sea, with their empire covering a large portion of eastern Europe. They only stopped when they reached the limit of their logistics. Otherwise the Europeans couldn't beat them.
I think the book is a good introduction to looking at the history of expansion of the European powers from 1500-1800. It casts a different light, one that is more truthful. Think of it as the difference between a history book in high school to one in college. The college books seek to challenge & have you think, while the high school books are to brainwash you to believe the myths.
March 5, 2024
This is a strange book. Much of the analysis aligns with more traditional WSA and dependancy analyses of the rise of European power within the world-system. This is where the book shines in my opinion. Its short outlines of Spanish and Portuguese, Dutch and British East India Company (companies sovereign), and Ottoman conquest within the context of a holistic system is engaging and informative, even to those who have read, for example, Wallerstein's or Braudel's works on these periods. The materialist analysis of military tactics and the impacts of political cohesion (see China) on expansionism is really useful. However, the book is topped and tailed with tedious academicising that attempts to place this text within its confused liberal sociology milieu. The author notes throughout the conclusion that readers may be confused by the argument of long-term European weakness despite eventual Americo-European hegemony - this may be the case for many (your Guns, Germs and Steel geniuses) - but it's not all that confounding to those versed in unequal exchange, Marxist or world-systems thinking. What *is* confusing is the author interjecting (in a short book) to place institutions, norms and, to a lesser degree, culture upstream from material conditions in an attempt to explain what is much more easily and adequately explained, to my mind, by an already-extensive scholarship (see Wallerstein, Arrighi, Emmanuel, Andre Gunder Frank, Braudel and others). This is definitely recommended, but I can see why the reviews are such a mixed bag; enough room is left for the reader to insert their own context and biases (for better or - mostly - worse).
August 4, 2025
J.C. Sharman könyve üdítően friss történelemkönyv, ami az európai történelmi narratíva heroikus diadalmenetének újragondolására tesz kísérletet.
Az európai terjeszkedésről mindenkinek a sikeres hódításaink és a "mindent feje tetejére állító" haditchnikánk, valamint fejlett tárasdalomszervező készségeink vannak okokként felsorakoztatva. Sharman azonban igyekszik a finalista érvelést és gondolkodásmódot - ami a történész szakmát is megmételyezi - szétbontani, mert utólag a történelemre pillantva, könnyű minden folyamatot egyszerű oksági viszonyba rendezni és nagyképűen kijelenteni, hogy minden cselekedetünk része volt a "nagy tervnek", ami végül dominanciát eredményezett.
A hős európai narratíva erejére rengeteg kötet a példa, pár évvel ezelőtt Roger Crowley a Hódítók: Hogyan kovácsolta össze Portugália a történelem első tengeri világbirodalmát című kötete is kiváló példa, amit imádtam olvasni, Sharman után azonban visszafogotabban "revellálok" majd hasonló hódítókönyvek diszkusszióit olvasva.
Az európai terjeszkedésről mindenkinek a sikeres hódításaink és a "mindent feje tetejére állító" haditchnikánk, valamint fejlett tárasdalomszervező készségeink vannak okokként felsorakoztatva. Sharman azonban igyekszik a finalista érvelést és gondolkodásmódot - ami a történész szakmát is megmételyezi - szétbontani, mert utólag a történelemre pillantva, könnyű minden folyamatot egyszerű oksági viszonyba rendezni és nagyképűen kijelenteni, hogy minden cselekedetünk része volt a "nagy tervnek", ami végül dominanciát eredményezett.
A hős európai narratíva erejére rengeteg kötet a példa, pár évvel ezelőtt Roger Crowley a Hódítók: Hogyan kovácsolta össze Portugália a történelem első tengeri világbirodalmát című kötete is kiváló példa, amit imádtam olvasni, Sharman után azonban visszafogotabban "revellálok" majd hasonló hódítókönyvek diszkusszióit olvasva.
August 26, 2023
A concise and compelling refutation of importance of the "guns" component of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" thesis. Evaluating European expansionism in the early modern era, Sharman argues that it is ahistorical to project the 19th century peak of Western hegemony back on the preceding centuries. During the early modern era, Western powers were more likely to cooperate with, or even be subordinated to, non-Western polities (hence "Empires of the Weak"). Sharman also refutes the idea that Western expansion in the early modern era was primarily the result of Western military supremacy. In the Americas, disease played a far greater role in establishing European dominance, and most Asian militaries were technologically on par with Europe (not to mention their ability to amass far greater numbers of troops against European expeditionary forces).
August 1, 2021
Alternates between interesting and (irritating+repetitive).
Essentially this is an insider-baseball book, a set of arguments about historiography. It's not written for the public, it's written to argue against colleagues. And so, for every fascinating paragraph of some poorly known piece of history, there are two paragraphs arguing (again and again and again!) why this piece of history shows that X's thesis and Y's theory are false.
Worth skimming, but not worth more time than that. Perhaps someone else will take up the arguments and put them in a more palatable form.
Essentially this is an insider-baseball book, a set of arguments about historiography. It's not written for the public, it's written to argue against colleagues. And so, for every fascinating paragraph of some poorly known piece of history, there are two paragraphs arguing (again and again and again!) why this piece of history shows that X's thesis and Y's theory are false.
Worth skimming, but not worth more time than that. Perhaps someone else will take up the arguments and put them in a more palatable form.
October 28, 2019
Approach this as a short textbook, not a popular history. I didn't love it, but it accomplishes what the author intends to do, and it will give even skeptics a few things to think about.
I think the audiobook experience detracted slightly–just in terms of added difficulty keeping all the facts straight and given the occasional density of the prose–but the rich (and richly accented) narration was pleasant.
I think the audiobook experience detracted slightly–just in terms of added difficulty keeping all the facts straight and given the occasional density of the prose–but the rich (and richly accented) narration was pleasant.
July 7, 2020
Well this wasn't quite what I expected -- a lot less political and a lot more political-sciencey. No matter -- there is something really soothing about reading a well put together academic text. Nice unpretentious voice, really well structured. Nice writing, but some strange things with the syntax -- unexpected commas between adjectives -- and what do British writers have against parallel structure?
July 4, 2019
Read to preview for a possible book for my AP Euro class. Would work great in AP World/world history classes as well. Author does a good job proving his thesis that Europe doesn't become a great super power until the 19th century, not the 15-18th centuries as is preached in so many classes. A good read for those who like social studies but others may be bored.
February 23, 2020
I didn’t find the main arguments all that new, but they are important arguments. I just wish the book was more accessible to non-specialists. Most non-historians believe that Europe began dominating the world militarily and economically around the time of Columbus. This book demonstrates that that is just not true, which is important, but the presentation could be more compelling and accessible.
July 10, 2024
This book is sure to stir some debate, as it supports the thesis that early colonization of the Americas, Asia and Africa wasn’t based on technological superiority or military tactics, which has been the long held assumption.
I listened to the audiobook. I may have to get the physical book. This was interesting and worth a second going over.
I listened to the audiobook. I may have to get the physical book. This was interesting and worth a second going over.
May 15, 2019
Excellent, overdue challenge to the Military Revolution thesis of European dominance. Even more interesting challenge to the evolutionary model of military technology, with broader implications in other fields.
I didnt agree with everything, but look forward to more publications on this topic
I didnt agree with everything, but look forward to more publications on this topic
January 8, 2022
Persuasive and enlightening regarding European colonisation from 1500-1800, with satisfying conclusion, however, somewhat more academic prose than I was expecting and requires some basic knowledge/understanding of the period it examines. In my opinion...
August 9, 2022
pretty compelling case that european imperialism early on is accidentally effective, and has more to do with germs than guns and steel; shift takes place in the 19th century, which could have been explored more.
November 22, 2023
Convincing and short book arguing that military transformation was not the reason for European conquest of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Both problematizes the scope of European conquest and emphasizes the success of Asian land based empires.
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