Firearms: A Global History to 1700
Chase begins this book with an intriguing dilemma: the Chinese invented firearms, but the Europeans perfected them. For Chase, the puzzle resolves itself when one considers the primary enemies faced by the Chinese and the Europeans. In China, where the main threat arose from nomadic light cavalry from the north and west, firearms offered little advantage. In particular, early firearms were virtually useless on horseback and the Chinese could not maintain a force of infantry mobile enough to counter the light cavalry. In this case, the Chinese had little need to use or develop firearms. The Europeans, however, encountered large bodies of infantry, and in these battles firearms provided a larger advantage, at least when compared to light cavalry engagements. Chase traces his argument in a broad temporal swath (from the 13h to 18th centuries) examining not only China and Europe, but also Japan, Korea and the Islamic lands.
Underlying Chase’s argument lays a structural explanation. Given the importance of the type of enemy (cavalry versus infantry), questions naturally arise as to why the Europeans faced infantry and not light cavalry? In addition, what led to the Chinese encounters with the light cavalry as opposed to infantry? It is here that Chase appeals to what I would term a structural argument. In particular, the environment that indigenous people in Asia encountered led to a more nomadic lifestyle with a reliance on mobility and cavalry. The Europeans, however, could more easily adopt a sedentary lifestyle and eschew mobility (in terms of lifestyle and warfare).
Clearly any attempt to answer such a broad question with a sweeping historic study is going to be susceptible to critiques that it misses nuances. Ideally the book would have done a better job at integrating insights of the “Military Revolution” theory. In particular, one sees his lack of attention to these issues in his argument that effective infantry arrived in both Europe and Japan around 1300. Yet this simplification, to be generous, ignores, at least in the European case, earlier versions of effective infantry developed and used by the Greeks, Danes, Saxons, and Franks (to name a few) and how they lost their value with the arrival of the stirrup and heavy cavalry.
Perhaps even more problematic for Chase is his inattention to the effect of politics on the development and use of gunpowder weapons. In Europe, the application and improvement of firearms occurred as the state itself was strengthening. In other words, starting around 1300 European states slowly began to develop the ability to extract more resources from society. In addition, political power became increasingly concentrated in sovereigns, who were engaged in a brutal struggle for survival against one another. These developments arguably had an important effect on the use of firearms. For instance, without the intense rivalries between the sovereigns, what incentive would have existed to dedicate scarce resources to the further development of firearms? Without the ability to extract more resources from society, how would these sovereigns raise, maintain, and use large armies of infantry?
The effect of politics also sheds light on the lack of development of firearms in China and Japan. While these regions certainly had political competitions, the nature and intensity did not generate similar pressures. For instance, the nomadic raiders that the Chinese encountered did not present the same consistent threat that France represented for England. This is especially the case in Japan, which arguably had the lowest amount of competitive pressures.
The discussion of politics and the military revolution highlights the most important omission from Chase’s book: general incentive to innovate. While Chase rightly argues that the type of enemy that a state faced impacts the type of weapons that will be developed, he seemingly assumes that the incentive to develop these new weapons is constant. This is clearly not the case. Innovation and adoption of new weapons generally occurs under intense pressure, i.e. when the survival of the state is at stake. More often than not, European states between 1300 and 1700 faced these trials, which forced them to innovate or fail.
In the end, however, Chase offers an intriguing answer to an important puzzle. Structure certainly matters, and quite possibly through the causal mechanism (geographic determinism to an extent) espoused by Chase. Yet I would argue that his treatment is one part of the answer and not the final word.