The military revolution : military innovation and the rise of the West, 1500-1800

In 1984, historian Geoffrey Parker delivered the Lee Knowles Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge that expanded on historian Michael Roberts’ original argument that gunpowder stimulated a “military revolution” in Europe between 1560 and 1660. Now entering its second edition, The Military Revolution boasts a new afterword that defends the two original theses that a ‘military revolution’ emphatically occurred during the sixteenth-century, and that its technical components—the capital ship, infantry firepower, and the artillery fortress—bestowed decisive military advantage upon Europeans and made possible the ‘Rise of the West.’
Paker proceeds chronologically and thematically, beginning with an overview of the three components of the military revolution: the introduction of artillery, the development of the artillery fortress (trace italienne), and the mobilization of larger field armies. Parker suggests that Europeans adopted artillery to overcome the stalemate between offense and defense that, for centuries, favored the latter. Parker envisions qualitative and quantitative improvements in field artillery subsequently provoking another stalemate with the transformation in fortification construction: replacing vertical fortifications with shorter, thicker ramparts that withstood cannon shot and maximized counter-battery fire. Simultaneously, a revolution in field warfare occurred as armies replaced frontal assaults and hand-to-hand combat with projectile-based tactics (artillery, hand guns, bows). New weapons catalyzed the tactical innovation of new formations to maximize firepower, while also supplanting the mounted knight and pike formation. These first two components—the revolution in fortifications and the composition and tactics of armies—precipitated the final component, larger field armies. Yet larger armies did not achieve decisive victory for states. Ironically, the increasing size of armies and the proliferation of artillery fortresses precluded a “decisive campaign” within Europe for several centuries, and many states resorted to der kliene kriege that used small sapper units to capture strategic objectives.
From the sixteenth century onward, the military revolution provoked two parallel developments: the first in how European states financed and supplied massive armies and the second in European naval warfare. First, Parker opines that expensive armies compelled states to reorganize their economic and bureaucratic capacity to achieve three goals: mobilize manpower, prevent desertion, and supply the army. States mobilized manpower by mustering volunteers and conscripts. States particularly sought veterans who brought considerable combat experience to an otherwise untested army. Volunteers were forthcoming, but limited. Hence, states also utilized the indelningsverk, or parish allocation system of manpower quotas. While mobilizing a heterogeneous army was one problem, states also had to keep men in the field, and thus incentivized soldiers with promises of storm-pay, shared ransom, and pillage. A “system of military devolution” emerged on the tactical level as states increasingly deferred logistics to both independent contractors and to soldiers who systematically exploited the land by extorting fire-money (protection rent) and strained the “contributions system” to acquire clothing, lodging, and victuals. If private coffers ran dry, the state offered guarantees of demand for horses, firearms, or clothing that pulled innovation from the market.
Finally, Parker sees European states breaking the continental military stalemate through naval power. Parker advances two claims about naval development. First, he argues that European interstate competition on land facilitated the evolution of naval fleets from galleys to the capital warship. Second, Parker contends that Europe’s sophisticated navy, coupled with firearms, secured for them 35% of the earth before the industrial revolution. Europeans enjoyed decisive military advantages in Africa and the Americas because the indigenous populations lacked comparable tactics and firepower. Pre-1800 imperial expansion stemmed both from decisive tactical and technological advantages and the failure of European opponents to innovate corresponding technology and tactics—rival empires, like the Ottomans, lacked the military order, discipline, and technique to match European rates of fire. However, Parker concludes that until the Industrial Revolution, Europeans would lack the appropriate combination of naval and land force to completely open trade in East Asia.
Parker may be criticized for his insistence on military superiority as the determining factor in European global expansion. It’s unclear how Parker weighs military superiority relative to other possible factors promoting European expansion. Did the Aztec Empire collapse because it lacked “defensible bases” against Spanish artillery? Certainly, European diseases and Aztec political instability, and Spanish gunpowder, impelled the Aztec collapse. Parker’s focus on military force pulls non-Europeans into the narrative mostly during their miserable encounters with a superior European military. While his thesis accommodates culture, it does not thoroughly analyze how factors other than military superiority aided the ‘Rise of the West.’ Nevertheless, Parker offers a compelling explanation of European ascendancy between 1500 and 1800.