Age of Gunpowder Empires, 1450-1800 (1990) by William H. McNeill

“As long as human foresight remains imperfect, and our passions continue to induce us to fight one another, managing armed force wisely will remain both difficult and important.” So concludes historian William H. McNeil in this nifty essay of 48 pages, which is based largely on his lengthy treatise, “The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since 1000 A.D.” The author underscores the dangers of failing to keep pace with technical and military innovation. He uses Renaissance Europe as a case study to make his point.

The year 1453, when the Turks conquered Constantinople and the French defeated the English in the Hundred Years War, is often viewed as the dividing line between Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Both of these events were strongly influenced by the use of gunpowder by the victor. A short time later, between 1465 and 1477, once nearly immovable siege artillery began mobile when large and heavy stone cannonballs were replaced by much smaller, yet similarly effective iron ones. These smaller caliber weapons could be put on wheels and easily keep up with foot soldiers. Enormous firepower could now travel with armies. For a relatively brief period, from roughly 1475 to 1525, McNeil claims that Europe was theoretically open to total domination if one power had acted quickly enough. None did. By the 1520s, Europeans had figured out the counter-measure to armies marching with powerful, small caliber artillery – the low, thick and slanted earthen walls of the trace italliene fortress. Thus, Europe would remain unconquered, divided. The same would not be true of lands abroad.

It just so happened that artillery technology matured at almost precisely the same time that the Atlantic powers (England, Portugal, Spain, and Holland) had perfected a sailing ship capable of withstanding the rigors of the open ocean. The vessels were sturdy enough to carry and fire dozens of the most powerful cannon. After gun-ports were introduced in 1514, artillery could be housed and fired just above the waterline, which dramatically improved balance and safety. McNeil notes that European warship design would remain relatively constant for the next 400 years. “The result of these facts was to give cannon-carrying European vessels an easy superiority over all other shipping at almost exactly the time when European ships and navigators first discovered how to exploit ocean winds and currents so as to sail at will between home ports and the Americas or Asia.” The man-of-war, unmatched and not replicated by foreign powers, would enable Europe to rule the world’s oceans and establish strategic beachheads on every inhabitable continent.

Roughly a century after securing the seas, Europeans next made dramatic improvements in infantry warfare. Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, established a flexible, formidable, and reliable armed force that McNeil suggests “ought to count as one of the most extraordinary achievements of the age.” With a relentless focus on drill and non-stop activity, along with a universal organizational structure of squads, platoons, companies and battalions, Maurice created, for the first time, a professional army that was responsive to orders and insulated from the potentially dangerous influence of the peasant and urban societies from which the soldiers came. In theory, “Maurice could move his troops around a battlefield as a chess player moves pieces on his board.” An illustrated Dutch manual of drill that first appeared in 1607 rapidly spread across the continent and was broadly adopted by European armies. However, by the eighteenth century, “the headlong pace of military innovation in Europe had slowed perceptibly,” McNeil writes. Armies had become so large (often over 100,000 men) and drills so sophisticated that even minor changes to equipment became prohibitively expensive to introduce. Thus, the sclerotic western military bureaucracy was born. But not before allowing European powers to conquer, at relatively low cost, a third of the globe.

In closing, McNeil writes “gunpowder weaponry cost innumerable lives and helped to keep European society and politics in turmoil. Yet in the long run it also gave Europeans the means to enrich themselves (with knowledge and skill as well as with material goods) and allowed them to dominate other lands and peoples around the globe.” It is a cautionary tale for any well-meaning citizen who viscerally rejects military spending and research.