Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400-1750 Cavalry, Guns, Government and Ships

by Roy, Kaushik

• ISBN13: 9781780937656
• ISBN10: 1780937652
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-07-17
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

A substantial amount of work has been carried out to explore the military systems of Western Europe during the early modern era, but the military trajectories of the Asian states have received relatively little attention. This study provides the first comparative study of the major Asian empires' military systems and explores the extent of the impact of West European military transition on the extra-European world.

Kaushik Roy conducts a comparative analysis of the armies and navies of the large agrarian bureaucratic empires of Asia, focusing on the question of how far the Asian polities were able to integrate gunpowder weapons in their military systems. Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400-1750 offers important insights into the common patterns in war making across the region, and the impact of firearms and artillery.

Author Biography

Kaushik Roy is Reader in History at Jadavpur University, India and Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway. The author of many articles and books, his most recent volume is War, Culture and Society in Early Modern South Asia 1740 - 1849 (2011).

Table of Contents

Preface \ Glossary \ Introduction \ 1. The Culture of Warfare in Asia before 1500 \ 2. Gunpowder Technology and Land Battles of the Asian Empires: 1500-1750 \ 3. Siege Warfare and Siege Artillery in Asia \ 4. Naval Warfare by the Asian States \ 5. Military Systems and Societies \ Conclusion \ Bibliography \ Index