Book Review: Gunpowder and an appetite for destruction

As the world is witnessing tensions in the South China Sea, disarray in the Middle East and a vengeful Russia, many are wondering why Europe is becoming such a weak global player. Yet, despite a shift in economic power from the West to the East, Europe is still the world’s largest economy despite years of stagnation. In “Why Did Europe Conquer The World?” Philip Hoffman, professor of business economics and professor of history at the California Institute of Technology, attempts to explain the startling reasons behind Europe’s historic global supremacy.
Many of us would be surprised to learn that Western Europe, apart from Cordoba, which was part of the Muslim world, was not the best place to live in the 10th century: “Choosing Europe would be, in short, like opting to move to Afghanistan today. You would be far better off picking the Muslim Middle East, for back in 900 it was richer and more advanced, culturally and technologically, and would be a more inviting destination,” Hoffman writes.
However, besides Muslim civilizations, the Chinese and the Japanese as well as South Asians also had access to weapons and were in a position to dominate the world. If we take into consideration that industrialization began in England in the late 18th century, two reasons, disease and gunpowder, might hold the key to Europe’s global supremacy.
The Europeans were resistant to diseases such as smallpox and measles and this played a role in the conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires. However, this argument falls through in the case of the Portuguese who successfully invaded South Asia in the beginning of the 16th century, knowing that South Asians were also immune to some diseases.
In the case of Pizarro’s victory of the Incas, one has to keep in mind that despite the fact that the Incas had suffered many losses due to the epidemic, their army was still far larger. In 1532, Pizarro with only 167 men subjugated an army of 5,000 to 6,000 men.
Three years later, when the Incas rebelled, an army of over 100,000 men surrounded the city of Cuzco where 190 conquistadores resisted successfully a yearlong siege.
How could the Europeans colonize 35 percent of the world by 1800 and up to 84 percent by 1914? For most military historians the answer lies in one word: gunpowder.
Between 1500 and 1800 gunpowder transformed warfare providing firearms, artillery, ships armed with guns, and fortifications that could resist bombardment. The Portuguese used this technology to gain a foothold in South Asia at the beginning of the 16th century. Their armed ships could attack and subjugate cities as well as vanquish large fleets. The Portuguese despite being outnumbered, nearly 20 to one, managed to capture the strategic port of Malacca by staging an amphibious landing during which their troops turned back attacking war elephants with their pikes. Once they had secured Malacca, they immediately constructed a European style fortress to protect it from attack. Such fortresses (which eventually spread throughout the Portuguese Empire) were virtually invincible.
Knowing that gunpowder had originated in China, one wonders why the Chinese, Japanese and Ottoman military technology, by the late 17th century, lagged behind the advanced military technology used by the European armies.
“In Europe, political conditions made it possible to mobilize gigantic sums for armies and navies, and military conditions favored the gunpowder technology which because it was new, had enormous potential for improvement …,” Hoffman writes.
The need to advance the gunpowder technology was fueled by the rulers’ desire to expand their dominions or in other words “the business of rulers was war.” It has been calculated that in the 1780s, over 7 percent of gross domestic product in France and 12 percent in Britain was spent on warfare. For countries which were poor by modern standards, this was a huge amount.
The key to the European acquisition of gunpowder technology depends on four essential conditions: first, there must be frequent wars; second, massive military spending; third, use of the most advanced technologies; and finally, few obstacles to adopt military innovations.
All these conditions were met in Western Europe from the late Middle Ages up through the 18th century. Although the Chinese had access to gunpowder in the 9th century (four centuries before the Europeans) once the gunpowder warfare ended in China in the middle of 15th century, the Europeans took the lead. In Japan, by the middle of the 17th century, when the Tokugawa Shogunate unified the country and eliminated opposition, there was no longer any need for war and the innovations in warfare technology also stopped.
India proves that unending warfare and the need for military weapons is not enough to advance the gunpowder technology. The inability to summon resources at a low cost led to a failure to innovate, but it also explains why the East India Company became a dominant military power in India. The company could mobilize military resources at a lower cost and they had also access to local tax revenue when they took control of the wealthy province of Bengal.
Finally, between the late 15th and late 17th century, neither Russia nor the Ottoman Empire advanced the gunpowder technology although they used it. They were followers and not leaders.
After 1815, diplomats at the Congress of Vienna had set up a coalition that dissuaded armed conflicts within Europe. Furthermore, political and administrative reforms reduced the political cost of mobilizing resources.
“One final difference distinguished the 19th century, a critical one. It was now clear that military technology could be advanced not just via learning by doing during wars but by research and development that could be undertaken in peacetime by the military itself or by private entrepreneurs eager for military contracts,” Hoffman writes.
However, private entrepreneurs were not the only ones to play a role in the research for better gunpowder technology. Military officers and government researchers also drove the warfare technology to new levels of destructiveness.
Although the 19th century diplomacy discouraged fighting in Europe, the race to add colonies was on. European leaders wanted to build empires abroad with the help of the best military and medical technology. Between 1823 and 1836, around 97 percent of British troops in West Africa died or had to quit the army. From 1909 to 1913, the mortality rate dropped to under 1 percent. Surviving tropical disease opened the road to the colonization of vast territories in Central Africa.
Cecil Rhodes doubled the size of the territory controlled by the British South Africa Company in Rhodesia. A contingent of 700 Europeans equipped with superior machine guns vanquished an army of 5,000 rifle-bearing Ndebele warriors in 1893. Thanks to their superior technology, the European big powers colonized Australia, South and Southeast Asia and also seized control of most of Africa.
When the conquest was over, gunpowder technology was still important because Europeans could rule without much cost. There was no need for big armies but for smaller and well-armed troops. At the end of World War I, the race for colonies came to a halt and the case against colonialism gained momentum. After World War II, Western powers were concentrating on economic recovery and indigenous nationalists were increasingly hostile to European domination. By the late 1970s, the European colonial empires had virtually disappeared.
What did the western Europeans gain from their colonies and the advances to the gunpowder technology? If the British Empire generated no profits from 1880 until 1912, the Spanish took the spoils of war namely the silver and the sugar and coffee produced by slaves. They also gained New World crops such as maize and potatoes.
Wars, however, came also with a heavy cost, especially outside Europe with the dreadful treatment of slaves. But some economic historians claim that the colonization and the wars waged in Europe helped trigger the British Industrial Revolution. At this point, Hoffman also adds the critical role played by political institutions, the same ones that won Britain’s wars by allowing the country to mobilize resources at a low political cost. “They were a product of Britain’s political history. Political history is then one of ultimate causes behind both the European conquest of the world and the ‘great divergence’ which saw western Europeans incomes rise above those elsewhere during the Industrial Revolution” concludes Hoffman.
Why did Europe conquer the world? The answer to this question takes us to the forefront of history, economy and political science. In a brilliant analysis, Hoffman demonstrates the dynamic interaction between the financing of the war, the innovation in warfare technology, and the political institutions, which sparked the race toward colonization and prepared the UK for the Industrial Revolution. This ambitious study can help us understand why Europe is slipping toward the sidelines and risks once again becoming the chessboard on which the US and Russia play for advantage.
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