Firearms and Military Adaptation: The Ottomans and the European Military Revolution, 1450–1800

The mass adoption of firearms as a tool of warfare dramatically changed the nature of military conflict from the mid fifteenth century onward, prompting historians of early modern Europe to describe the changes as a “gunpowder revolution” or “Military Revolution”—a thesis that provoked a spirited scholarly debate in the 1990s. Although the original concept, as set forth by Michael Roberts in 1955, did not single out firearms technology, in the influential elaboration of the thesis by Geoffrey Parker (1988), firearms and artillery fortifications (trace italienne, which were developed in response to artillery firepower) became the main building blocks of the thesis. According to the thesis, the new fortresses required much larger armies to successfully besiege them, leading to a dramatic increase in the size of European armies. To build and main-tain artillery fortifications, large artillery trains, and ever-larger armies in turn required a more centralized government. Thus, the introduction of firearms led to the rise of centralized states in Europe—and, on a global scale, to the “rise of the West.”