For more than 200 years, Western historians and sociologists have been particularly keen to ask the question: "Why the West (Europe)...?" Or "Why doesn't the East (China)...?" Although such issues have received a lot of criticism in recent years, they are still a hot topic in the humanities academic community in search of the reasons for the "great divergence" or "European miracle" between the East and the West.
The geopolitics of European competition was once the preferred answer to this question. This answer was proposed by the late historian McNeil in his book "The Race for Riches", and Jared Diamond, who turned from biology to history, influenced countless people's Guns, Germs and Steel, and further popularized it.
However, in the late 20th century, this Western-centrist conception of Western scholars was increasingly criticized. Kenneth Chase took a different approach, offering a different perspective from the perspective of military history.
In Firearms: A Global History to 1700, Chase first divided Eurasia and Africa into three parts. Located in the central area, there is an "anti-Z-shaped" area, which is called the "Arid Zone" because of its dry climate. This area includes both dry steppes and desert areas, and agriculture cannot be cultivated, so the people living here are mainly nomadic, such as sheep, cattle and horses in the steppes of Central Asia, and camels and sheep in the Arabian Peninsula. Historically, political organizations that rose from these regions and established dynasties and empires were dominated by highly mobile light cavalry, such as the Mongol Empire and the Arab Empire.
The agricultural cultivation zone outside the arid zone is divided into two regions, one is the "inner zone" that is in direct contact with the arid zone, such as China, India, Eastern Europe and West Asia. The other is the "outer zone" outside of nomadic influence, which includes Western Europe and Japan.
Before the advent of firearms, Chase believed that societies in the Inner Enclosure had to either build walls (such as China and Russia) or use heavy cavalry to deal with invasions by nomadic people from arid regions. The advent of firearms did not actually give much advantage to the society of the inner enclosure. Chase believed that the early firearms were slow to be loaded and less accurate, and that in the face of rapidly moving nomadic light cavalry, they could often shoot at most one round and did not have a high hit rate. Therefore, firearms in the Ming Dynasty and the Ottoman Empire lacked the motivation to continue to improve.
In the outer areas, the outer areas such as Japan and Western Europe also use heavy cavalry, but before the emergence of firearms, the "infantry revolution" has begun, and firearms are a large killing weapon against dense infantry phalanxes, and after the introduction of muskets in Japan during the Warring States period, they were quickly popularized and improved, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who unified Japan, then used musketeers to invade Korea. Although the Ming Dynasty helped Korea win the victory, Chase believes that it is not the advanced chinese firearms. Infantry warfare was also predominantly between Western European countries, so this prompted Western Europe to compete to improve firearms.
There is also a significant difference between the outer and inner perimeter zones in that the inner perimeter tends to fight with firearms and chariots against steppe or desert cavalry, while the outer perimeters, which are not threatened by nomadism, use firearms and spear phalanxes. The former is like a Hussite chariot, the latter is like a Spanish phalanx.
Hussite chariot
Spanish phalanx
Regarding the difference between firearms and threats, Chase's views are summarized as follows:
Firearms developed a relationship with nomadic and infantry threats
Compared with McNeill, Chase's views are closer to Diamond's, and both believe in the importance of geographical environment, and Chase emphasizes the human geography more than the natural geography of mountains, rivers, lakes and seas. But like these two predecessors, neither of them escaped the trap of Eurocentrism. This tendency is further exacerbated by the fact that two of the most vocal contemporaries, Ian Morris and Philip Hoffman, have largely derived references to the backwardness of Chinese firearms in their work.
The understanding of Chinese firearms and technology by older generations of "Eurocentrics" such as McNeill and Diamond often derives from second-hand literature, and even the publication of Joseph Needham's imperial magnum opus, A History of Science and Technology in China, has not changed McNeil. Chase is much better than them, and 1/4 of the book is written in China, using a lot of first- and second-hand literature, but still flying in the ointment. Tonio Andrade, a sinologist who wrote From Dan Yao to Gun, wrote an article criticizing Chase.
Ouyang Tai pointed out from Chinese historical sources that firearms were widely used by Ming dynasty armies precisely because they were extremely effective against cavalry, for example, the many battles with Mongolia in the early Ming Dynasty proved that firearms could defeat Mongol cavalry not only in field battles but also in defensive battles. He criticized Chase for being too eager to abandon the competitive model of McNeil and others, when in fact, it was precisely in the hundred years from 1450 to 1550 that it was a period of relative peace in the Ming Dynasty, and it was also this period that there was a brief "small divergence" between Ming China and Europe.
However, Ouyang Tai's view is also not correct, and between 1450 and 1550, the Ming Dynasty was still at war. During the Chenghua years, he pacified the Jingxiang bandits and the southwestern barbarians internally, resisted the Tatar Jurchens externally, recovered hetao, and passed through Hami. Not to mention the Hongzhi Zhongxing, and the Tatar tribes at the end of its period, the Ming army reorganized the military. During the Rebellion of King Anhua and King Ning during the Zhengde Period, he defeated Dayan Khan at Yingzhou, so he was called "Emperor Wuzong" after his death. Later, the Jiajing Emperor, Wukou prevailed, and famous generals such as Qi Jiguang appeared. Therefore, this period is not without progress, but also actively open up ideas, the introduction of a variety of weapons that can be used, in addition to the bird hammer, Flang machine, etc., as well as other cold weapons such as wolf wrench.
Wolverine
If we look at it from the perspective of the development of Western firearms alone, the bulkiness of the arquebusier and the 28-step loading process really cannot deal effectively with the light cavalry. This is also the reason why after the introduction of the bird hammer to China, the northern Kyushu border defense less use of bird hammer, while the traditional fire hammer and three-eyed fire hammer that can fire shotgun shells are much more effective against the Mongolian light cavalry.
Ming Dynasty three-eyed fire hammer
European firearms eventually surpassed China, and it was not until the end of the 18th century at the earliest, and Cai Si and Ouyang Tai both acknowledged this. It was the Industrial Revolution that eventually turned European standards into world standards, but before that, don't forget that the diversity of firearms in China once offered many possibilities for firearms.