Guns and Their Impact on History

It is easy to write early modern world history as if guns were European. Without question, Europe's advance in world trade and colonialism owed much to European advances in gunnery, particularly on ships. Guns also had massive effects with early modern Europe, making feudal warfare and strongholds such as castles less effective. Siege cannon could reduce noble castles to ruin; this forced the nobility into new behaviors and clearly weakened feudal politics and the feudal ethic.

Increasingly, however, historians examine the use of guns in other cultures. Obviously, explosive powder was Chinese in origin. But nomadic peoples quickly picked up the implications. Siege cannon did not cause the rise of the Mongols, which was based on cavalry, but they were added to the Mongol arsenal as the armies began to attack cities in China, Russia, and Islamic areas. The Ottomans used janissaries as their artillery corps, and this became a driving force behind Ottoman expansion. Babur, in forming the Mughal empire in India, used cannon as well. There is no question guns played a major role in the formation of Asia as well as European empires. One key result was the decline of nomadic attacks. Even though the Mongols and other nomads were intially adept with cannon, in the long run developing an armament industry and improving weaponry depended on a large tax base, that is, on established governments. Here was a key component in the nomadic decline in the early modern period.

Guns also complicated the later development of many of the land-based gunpowder empires as well. Guns allowed expansion of territory in advance of effective communication or government. In both the Ottoman and Mughal empires, a key result of such expansion was weak central control and great power in the hands of regional military leaders. This in turn weakened the empires still further. Western European states, smaller, managed a more effective bureaucratic and taxation system, which Russia was able to copy to some extent. This increased the Western or Russian competitive edge against the Islamic empires. Ultimately, the story of guns tips the global balance of power in favor of Europe-which brings the story back to more familiar contours. But there is important complexity in the middle of the process- the 14th- to 17th-century transition period in the relationship of guns and empires- that needs attention as well.