Civilization #45: The Gunpowder Revolution

How did Europe, starting around the year 1700, conquer the world? After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe became divided, poor, and weak compared with the rest of the world. But then, starting in 1700, Europe very quickly—in only about 200 years—would go on to conquer the entire globe. Today, we will examine how this happened.

Before we begin, it's important to remember a core concept: the nature of the military determines the nature of the political system in societies and nations.

We've looked at four specific examples:

• Sparta: Because Sparta had a hoplite army, it became an oligarchy, meaning rule by the few or the elite. Hoplites were farmers who could afford their own armor and weaponry.
• Athens: Athens had a navy, and so it was a democracy. The idea here is that anyone and everyone can row a boat. If you can row a boat, you can fight a war, help Athens win, and therefore participate in the political process.
• Macedonia: The home of Alexander the Great, Macedonia had a cavalry-based army. Because only the nobility could afford horses, it was a monarchy.
• Rome: What made Rome distinct is that it was willing to make tremendous sacrifices on the battlefield because it could replenish its soldiers with allies from neighboring nations in the Italian peninsula. As such, it was a republic. The difference between a republic and a democracy is that in a democracy, everyone has the right to vote, and decisions are based on majority rule. But in a republic, it is ruled by laws, tradition, and history. People will do what has been traditionally accepted as the norm, and as such, you can bring immigrants into your society very quickly. This is important because Rome would become the model for America. America is not a democracy; it is a republic—a very important difference.

Remember this idea: the nature of the military will determine the nature of your political system.

A Brief History of Pre-Gunpowder Warfare

In Greece, when the city-states were fighting each other—much like the Warring States period in China—the main soldier was the hoplite. "Hoplite" means shield in Greek. The hoplite was a self-sufficient soldier; most of the time, he was a farmer, but when there was a war, he would grab his armor, shield, and spear and go to war. You didn't need an economy to allow the hoplite to exist; this was a self-sufficient system.

Over time, the Macedonians would take the hoplite formation and turn it into the Macedonian phalanx, and the Romans would have their legion. The difference between this system and the traditional Greek system is that you now have a standing army. These are professional soldiers that must be supported by the economy.

Roman cavalry, obviously, consisted of nobility because only they could afford horses. The Vikings were also pretty self-sufficient, able to build and repair their own ships quickly and go off in small bands.

The steppe people became archers, with the Mongolians as the classic example. These people could ride horses and shoot arrows from birth, which is why they were such effective soldiers and, for the longest time, the dominant military force in the world. They could come in and conquer all the agricultural empires, including the Turks and the Mongolians.

In medieval Europe, a new system developed where the knight became the main military force. The knight required armored horses, armor, and weapons, which was very expensive. You had to train from an early age to become a knight, which is why you now have a system called feudalism, where the entire economy revolves around maintaining knights for war.

What makes feudalism stick is the idea of castles. Feudalism is about decentralization, where knights and lords have control over local territory, and there's nothing the king can do about it. Why? Because if there's a fight between the lords and the king, the lords can just hide in their castles. It's very hard to besiege and destroy a castle. First, there's a defensive perimeter, the moat, and then the high walls. Eventually, the king will have to give up. In the feudal system, the king is more like a figurehead, an appointed chairman or elected leader, but he does not have much power over local areas.

1453: The Year Everything Changed

This changes in 1453 in the city of Constantinople. For close to a thousand years, Constantinople was the wealthiest, most powerful city in Europe. They were the heirs to the Roman Empire, considering themselves the Eastern Roman Empire, and they were invincible because of their high walls. The Byzantine Empire was powerful for a thousand years because you could not besiege the city.

But in 1453, this changes because the Ottoman Turks come in with cannons. They lay siege to Constantinople and destroy the walls. This was unimaginable before. It is gunpowder that allows the Ottomans to destroy the once-impenetrable Constantinople, and this marks a revolution in Europe. Now, people understand that you need gunpowder if you are to win wars in the future.

Over the centuries, gunpowder will radically remake the world in three fundamental ways:

1. The steppe people cease to be a threat. For thousands of years, the steppes—the Mongolians, the Turks—drove history because they could conquer empires and establish new societies. Now, with gunpowder, cities can defend themselves against the steppe people. Eventually, the Russians will colonize the steppes, and they will cease to be a factor in the development of global history.
2. This marks the beginning of Europe as the dominant global power. It was China that invented gunpowder over a thousand years ago, but it was Europe that would perfect it as the ultimate military weapon. It would allow Europe to defeat everyone, including the Ottoman Turks and the Chinese.
3. Gunpowder will usher in a whole-society revolution that will remake the fabric and structure of European society.

The Rise of the Gunpowder Empires

Before, the borderlands—the steppe people, the Vikings—usually tended to win out against empires, even though empires had far more resources, people, and technology. The borderlands had energy, courage, and openness to new ideas. The empire had mass, organization, and depth (the ability to lose many battles). For most of human history, the borderlands had the advantage.

With the advent of gunpowder, the dynamic changes. Now, the empire is able to control and crush the borderlands. The main reason is that with gunpowder technology, you need organization and centralization. Before, armies were self-sufficient. But with gunpowder, you need a professional army, engineers, and the resources to make gunpowder. You need specialization, and with specialization, you need centralization, hierarchy, and bureaucracy—things that empires do very well and borderlands do not. That's why, eventually, the empires will win out.

There are four major gunpowder empires, meaning these four societies were most equipped to take advantage of the gunpowder revolution:

• The Ottomans: They were the first and most important. They took the cannons and artillery and destroyed Constantinople, becoming the dominant power in Europe and the Middle East. What made the Ottoman Empire so fierce was its use of professional soldiers called Janissaries. Janissaries were young Christian boys who became slaves to the Ottomans and were educated to become professional soldiers. Because they were essentially slaves, they owed their entire loyalty to the Sultan.
• The Mughal Empire: This was the height of Indian civilization. They were a centralized bureaucracy and were also able to take advantage of gunpowder.
• The Safavid Empire: Located in modern-day Iran, they were the heirs to the Persian Empire, which had created the world's first bureaucracy.
• China: The last and arguably most powerful of these gunpowder empires was the Ming Empire. Remember, it was China who invented gunpowder.

Interestingly, when China invented gunpowder, it was not used that effectively. The Chinese army used it mainly as bombs or fireworks—as incendiaries to blow things up. But because of the Islamic Golden Age and Genghis Khan's conquests, globalization came into being, and the technology of paper and gunpowder spread to Europe. It was the Europeans who innovated gunpowder and turned it into a propellant—something you use to shoot a projectile. That's why we have cannons and muskets. The technology would then come back to China, and China would adapt it into their own army.

The European Paradox and the Whole-Society Approach

The paradox is this: it was China who invented gunpowder, and the four great gunpowder empires were the Ottomans, the Safavids, the Mughals, and the Chinese. But at the end of the day, it is Europe that conquers the entire world.

The answer is that European nations would surpass the gunpowder empires because they would adopt a whole-society approach to warfare.

To effectively integrate gunpowder into your military, you need to change the structure of your society. You have to change the status quo. You have to move from a society that is heavily centralized to one that is both centralized and open. Europe had to make three major changes to become a modern military power:

1. From a feudal system to a nation-state system. Feudalism is decentralized local power. A nation-state has a centralized bureaucracy. You need that.
2. From a focus on villages and agriculture to a focus on towns and industry. With gunpowder, you need specialized workers, engineers, and ironworkers, and that happens in towns, not villages. When you move to towns, you start to create proto-capitalism. Merchants become more important than bureaucrats because they procure the resources necessary for gunpowder.
3. A shift in focus from religion to science. Religion asks, "What does God want from us?" Science asks, "How can we win this war? How can we make gunpowder more effective? How can we kill more people?"

These three major revolutions happened in Europe but not really anywhere else. When they happened, they unleashed extremely violent and powerful revolutions, including the French and American Revolutions. It was a bloody process that took centuries to unfold, but it would make Europe the dominant power in the world, allowing it to conquer the globe and force nations like China to adopt European social frameworks.

The main advantage Europe had was also its main disadvantage: ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, it was always divided, poor, and fighting itself. We call this concept open cooperative competition, and it is the main driver of innovation in the world. When was China most creative? During the Warring States period. This is consistently true throughout history. Whenever a society is fractured and its different parts are forced to fight each other, this leads to massive innovation, not just in the military but also in society, philosophy, and literature.

Forging the European War Machine

In the beginning, it was not obvious that gunpowder was a revolutionary force. It would take centuries before militaries used it as their main weapon. Initially, gunpowder was very unstable, hard to store, and hard to make. The guns were too heavy, so they were only a small part of the military.

Artillery vs. Fortification

There has always been a battle between artillery and fortification. Even though the Ottomans used cannons to destroy Constantinople, engineers figured out ways to better defend cities. The first strategy was earthworks—simply digging trenches around your city so cannons could not get into range.

Then, they figured out something called a star fortress, another military revolution. Most fortresses before were rectangular, but a star fortress has different points so that even if one part gets destroyed, you can fill the gaps from other points. You basically have to attack the entire fortress at once, and most armies don't have the resources to do that. The star fortress allows you to be resilient and flexible.

The Logistics of Gunpowder

Gunpowder is made using three resources: saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. Charcoal is easy to get. Sulfur comes from volcanoes, and in Europe, the place with the most volcanoes was the Italian peninsula. This is one reason why the vast majority of European wars were fought over Italy—for its sulfur, its control of trade, and the presence of the Pope.

Saltpeter, or potassium nitrate, comes from manure. It doesn't grow naturally, so they had to farm it in what were called nitriaries, taking animal manure and planting it in the ground. This became an industry unto itself. As chemists enhanced gunpowder, they discovered that saltpeter should go from 41% to almost 70% of the composition. The Europeans had to figure out ways to mass-produce it.

Chemists also worked in laboratories to refine the technology. A huge issue was that gunpowder was hard to store; if it rained, it was useless. They constantly had to refine its chemical composition to make it resilient, easier to store, and easier to transport. There was also a good possibility that it would explode on you along the way.

You also needed ironworks and foundries to make cannons, which helps explain why towns became more important than villages.

The Problem of Early Firearms

Early guns, called the arquebus, were very heavy. A soldier needed something to stabilize the gun, but even then, it was not very accurate. You were better off with a bow and arrow. The other thing about the arquebus and the musket is that they were very slow to reload—it could take ten minutes or even half an hour.

You had two issues: inaccuracy and slowness. The only solution was to have a mass army with a lot of soldiers firing at once. You didn't even want to aim; you just wanted to shoot directly at cavalry or other soldiers. That's why empires like the Ming and the Ottomans were most able to use gunpowder effectively—they could organize mass armies. The Ming were one of the main innovators, using a tactic called volley fire. Soldiers would line up, shoot, walk to the back, and a new line would come up and shoot again.

Creating the Modern Soldier

Over time, gunpowder became more effective, accurate, and faster. Now, you could conscript more soldiers. But you also needed your soldiers to be obedient, because you were asking them to charge into gunpowder. You needed to change the nature of people from peace-loving, simple individuals used to freedom to ones who were obedient, bloodthirsty, and could kill other people.

That's why you have the invention of schools. The modern school system comes from the need to create as many soldiers as possible for your mass army. A key concept here is synchronicity: structuring your society so that people are able to follow the rules. The two societies that do synchronicity the best are Germany and Japan. Go to the subway in Germany or Japan, and even though it's crowded, everyone stands in line perfectly. That's why in the 20th century, Japan and Germany had such effective militaries and industries. Schools prepare people not just for the military but also for the assembly line.

Gunpowder marks a whole-society revolution, changing not just how wars are fought but the very nature of what it means to be human.

A Continent at War

What's really important about Europe at this time is that it never stopped fighting. It was always fighting wars internally and externally against the Ottomans. The Hungarian-Ottoman wars lasted for about 300 years, and in the beginning, the Ottomans destroyed the Europeans. Up until 1700, the Ottomans were the dominant military power.

The wars in Europe became increasingly violent and deadly as armies got larger and weapons became more precise.

• Second Italian War (1499-1504): ~200,000 killed
• Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604): 48,000 died. This was pivotal because England destroyed the Spanish Armada, making England the dominant naval power until America in World War II.
• Thirty Years' War (1618-1648): A religious war that killed between 4.5 and 8 million people. This was the worst war in Europe before World War I.
• Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678): 342,000 killed.
• War of the Holy League (1683-1699): Almost 400,000 killed. This is when Europe was finally able to defeat the Ottoman Empire, marking a turning point where Europe became the dominant military power.
• Seven Years' War (1756-1763): The first true world war, fought between France and England for control of the globe. Almost a million people were killed.
• French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802): 663,000 killed. This is the beginning of the nation-state, when citizens who are not professional soldiers take up arms out of revolutionary devotion and love for their country.
• World War I (1914-1918): The climax, with 20 million people dead.

The casualty rates went up exponentially, showing how fast the Europeans were innovating in bureaucracy (taxing and conscripting more effectively) and technology (machine guns, trenches).

You may be asking, why were all these wars being fought? The answer is that Europe was divided, and the main policy of all its kingdoms was balance of power. Whenever a new power arose—Spain, then France, then Russia, then Germany—the other powers would get together and try to take it down.

The Paradox of Growth: How Did Europe Recover?

Even though these wars were deadly and continuous, the population of every nation in Europe went up over time. How was this possible?

The rise of the nation-state is a key factor. The nation-state replaces the role of religion in people's lives. Before, you sacrificed your life for God. Now, with the French Revolution, you dedicate your life to the nation. This means doing whatever it takes for your nation to beat others, which includes working hard, making money, and having a lot of children. This was facilitated by the scientific and agricultural revolution, which brought crops like the potato and corn from the Americas, providing more nutrition. The government provided policies that promoted population growth because it was a necessity for war.

War gives people meaning and purpose. It's like rooting for a sports team; you want your team to win no matter what. War galvanizes the energy of people, making them feel extremely patriotic even as their children are being killed.

It also gives people hope for the future. This is paradoxical, but with war, a lot of people die. With death comes opportunities that didn't exist before, creating social mobility. It's possible for a peasant's son to join the army, become a captain, and come back to start his own business. In peacetime, the social hierarchy stays stagnant. Because we live in a world of peace, the Pax Americana, many young people refuse to have children. They don't see a future where they can rise up in the social hierarchy. There are fewer economic opportunities, and old people aren't dying, so wealth becomes monopolized by them. Young people feel there's no point in being ambitious.

Why Europe, Not China?

The logic of the whole-society approach makes sense, but why was it Europe that adopted it and not China, the Ottomans, or the Indians? A whole-society approach means a radical transformation of your social hierarchy and order. The elite don't want to give up power. Their power has to be taken away from them.

Let's look at China. China was one of the first societies to centralize and accumulate the resources to make great inventions. The four great inventions of China are the compass, paper, printmaking, and gunpowder. China invented these hundreds of years before Europe. The printing press was in China around the year 800; in Europe, it was 1400.

But these four inventions did not really impact society in China. In Europe, however:

• The compass brought the Age of Exploration.
• Paper and printmaking created universal literacy, which gave rise to the Renaissance and the Reformation.
• Gunpowder allowed Europe to conquer the world.

Why didn't China make use of these inventions? The problem was the Confucian bureaucrats. Their source of power was their monopoly over literacy and knowledge. They didn't want to make it possible for everyone to read and write because that would reduce their power. The compass would allow Chinese to explore the world and bring in new ideas; the bureaucrats didn't want that. With gunpowder, if everyone has a gun, they can revolt against you.

For China, it was much more important to maintain the social hierarchy than to innovate and dominate the world. If you give governments a choice, they will always choose to maintain the social hierarchy.

But Europe didn't have a choice. It was a matter of life and death. You either innovate, or you will get destroyed by your neighbor. European nations were under constant external pressure from their rivals and internal pressure from their own people. If people fight and die for you, they want a say in society. This creates contradictions that force you to balance competing interests, which leads to innovation. If you don't innovate, your enemies will conquer you, or your people will overthrow you. You have no choice but to innovate.