The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb by Peter A. Lorge

By Peter A. Lorge

Documents exhibit that the chinese language invented gunpowder within the 800s. through the 1200s that they had unleashed the 1st guns of battle upon their unsuspecting neighbours. This terribly formidable e-book lines the heritage of that invention and its influence at the surrounding Asian international - Korea, Japan, South East Asia and South Asia - from the 9th during the 20th century. because the ebook makes transparent, the unfold of conflict and its expertise had devastating effects at the political and cultural cloth of these early societies even though every one reacted very in a different way. The ebook, that is choked with information regarding army technique, interregional battle and the advance of armaments, additionally engages with the most important debates and demanding situations conventional pondering on Europe's contribution to army know-how in Asia. Articulate and entire, this e-book should be a great addition to the undergraduate school room and to all these attracted to Asian stories and army historical past.

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W. Greener, The Gun and its Development, Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2002 (reprint of the 9th edn published 1910; 1st edn 1881). Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Ian V. Hogg, The Story of the Gun, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. 26 See for example Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: Europe, China, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000; R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997; Donald Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

Fire-spears played no significant role in the defense of the Song capital in 1126–7, but only a few years later they played a critical role at the siege of De’an. Knowledge of this weapon, both how to make it and, just as significantly, how to use it on the battlefield, was not widespread in the early twelfth century, even at the capital. Very few people may have known the possibilities presented by gunpowder’s capabilities; ordinary soldiers might have known how to use bombs, grenades, and smoke bombs, without being aware of what the powder inside a bomb would do when ignited inside a tube with an open end.

The fire-tube was a bamboo tube with a handle at the base that initially operated in exactly the same manner as the fire-spear, minus the spear. This separation of the fire-tube from a functioning hand-to-hand weapon was important for two reasons: first, it emphasized the independent value of a chemicalbased weapon and, second, it left the user in dire need of a hand-to-hand weapon. The latter problem was solved when an iron barrel was fixed to the handle, rendering the spent weapon a still usable club.

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