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A first look at gunpowder's revolutionary impact onChina's role in global history The Chinese inventedgunpowder and began exploring its military uses ...
With The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, Tonio Andrade champions a comparative, global approach, appropriate for such a large question. His answer is that China did rise, enjoying not only parity but, provocatively, superiority through much of its history.
The gunpowder age: China, military innovation, and the rise of the West in world history By Tonio Andrade. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Pp. x+432. 25 b/w illustrations, 10 maps. Hardback £32.95, ISBN: 978-0-691-13597-7; paperback £19.95, ISBN: 978-0-691-17814-1. - Volume 12 Issue 2
The gunpowder age: China, military innovation, and the rise of the West in world history By Andrade Tonio . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Pp. x+432. 25 b/w illustrations, 10...
In Part I Andrade shows that the Chinese not only invented gunpowder, as is widely known, but also successfully used it for warfare, which is often ignored. In Part II he shows how Europe got the gun and why and how Western Europe and not China developed gunpowder artillery.
Before long, gunpowder was used for a great variety of purposes in China, including entertainment, medicine, engineering, and warfare. The Chinese had experimented with incendiary devices for military purposes since long before the discovery of gunpowder.
This book examines the Great Divergence between China and the West by concentrating on warfare. It suggests that there is a military pattern to the Chinese past that can help us make sense of China’s peri-ods of strength, decline, and resurgence. But it doesn’t focus on China alone.
