The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History

by Tonio Andrade

The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind?

Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s—much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China—like Europe—was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world’s great military powers.

By showing that China’s military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, War, Military History, Technology, Science

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 26, 2016

Reviews

[Charles Haywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Gunpowder Age" succeeds in its lesser goal, which is convincing the reader that the common belief the Chinese only used gunpowder for fireworks is wrong.  But it fails in its greater goal, which is convincing the reader that except for a brief period in recent history, China has been the equal of the West in the technology of warfare.  And, in the wreckage of its failure, it confirms and reinforces the accurate perception that China has, for a thousand years, been lacking in scientific and cultural innovation.  Since a lack of innovation has negative implications for the Chinese future, and by modern Western standards is a negative judgment on Chinese society, this is probably not the effect that the Sinophile author of this book, Tonio Andrade, intended to achieve.

Andrade accepts the hard-to-deny contention that warfare drives the progress of military technology.  He implicitly accepts the related contention that European progress as a whole, from roughly A.D. 900 on, was driven by the “competing state” paradigm, of which military innovation is an important component.  For purposes of this book, all military innovation is gunpowder innovation; Andrade does not discuss other aspects of Chinese military practice, except as they impinge on gunpowder tactics, as in the case of fortifications.  The author’s stated goal is to examine “the full sweep” of gunpowder history in China, and to prove both that China did not fall behind the West until the modern era and that it innovated successfully beyond the mere invention of a crude form of gunpowder.

A common argument, and a commonly accepted argument, is that China from A.D. 900 on did not materially progress (in the sense of escaping the Malthusian Trap or of innovating in significant ways that benefitted the society) because it was a mostly unitary state not subject to existential threats, thus not subject to the same competitive pressures as Europe in the same time period.  Andrade rejects this, claiming that instead “China’s past is filled with war and interstate competition.”  His central claim is that only during what he calls the “Great Qing Peace,” from roughly A.D. 1725 to 1850, did China fall behind the West in military prowess.  To demonstrate this, he offers both narrative discussion and a line chart, showing the number of conflicts per year in each of China and Europe, per year, from A.D. 1350 to 1920.  The Great Qing Peace happened at the same time that European military activity, and therefore innovation, intensified, while it stagnated in China, although up to that time China was supposedly the equal of Europe in military innovation and prowess.  (Andrade cautions the reader, though, that China’s stagnation during the Great Qing Peace was not due merely to a lack of warfare; he notes the numerous theories competing to explain the undoubted stagnation, and here as elsewhere is careful to not reject out of hand either revisionist or traditionalist explanations of Chinese behavior.)  Either way, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a time when China fell far behind the West in all aspects.

Thus, Andrade believes that an image of China as always unitary and static, if not stagnant, is wrong, because it applies to the whole of Chinese history what happened during a small slice of time.  Moreover, the usual scholarly view of Chinese culture overall as not as interested in progress as the West, in large part because of Confucianism, is also derived from an overly narrow focus on that time period, because during the Great Qing Peace, and only then, “Confucian scholars understandably tended to focus on nonmilitary matters.”  Given that this tends against the opinion of informed scholars, in order to prove his point, most of Andrade’s book is devoted to finding and relating the opinions and activities throughout Chinese history of Chinese statesmen, scholars, and scientists in favor of, and in the cause of advancing, aggressive progress through gunpowder weapon innovation.  This is obviously necessary, because if it is both true that conflict was the norm in Chinese history, and that little innovation resulted, Andrade’s thesis falls apart before it even gets going.  Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Andrade ultimately proves.

Having clearly laid out his thesis and its basic reasoning, Andrade next turns to the details of Chinese history, beginning with the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960–1279).  He notes the various dynamic aspects of the Song, including their navigation by magnetic compass.  He does not, however, note that the Chinese had had the compass for nearly a thousand years by that time, during which they did not use it for navigation, which would seem relevant to Chinese rates of innovation when discussing gunpowder.  Andrade calls this the “Song Warring States Period,” attempting to piggyback on the better known actual “Warring States Period,” from 475 to 221 B.C.  His point is that the Song had powerful nearby enemies against whom they had to contend (the Xi Xia and the Jin, as well as the Mongols), and thus while the dynasty itself did not have internal conflict (it was a “long-term state system”), the amount of conflict was analogous to Europe from A.D. 1450 onwards.  Andrade ascribes Song dynamism (in all areas, not just military), to “what [modern military historian] Geoffrey Parker has called the ‘challenge and response’ dynamic,” which seems plausible, although Andrade uses the term “challenge and response” throughout the book while apparently remaining unaware its real originator was the much more famous Arnold Toynbee, who saw all of human history through that frame.  Nor does Andrade show that innovation was common during the original Warring States Period, or for that matter at any point up to then.  In any case, this overview of the Song is meant to establish a parallel between Europe and China in warfare driving innovation to parity as the normal state of affairs, and later divergence as an anomaly.

Andrade then turns to the details of the key of his book, gunpowder.  He explains that it was invented around A.D. 1000 by the Chinese, although it was a crude substance compared to later gunpowder, useful only as a moderately successful incendiary.  Within 150 years, though, the Song were using “fire lances,” “a long staff at the end of which is affixed a tube filled with gunpowder.”  Eventually, pellets, arrows and other items that could be expelled were added, until a crude type of pseudo-gun was formed.  Mostly, though, these seem to have been used as incendiaries (the Chinese habit of lack of clarity in exposition keeps showing up here, such as calling these devices “fire medicine,” a term used to cover a huge variety of divergent devices).  When fighting the Mongols, apparently there is also some suggestion that the Song developed “iron bombs,” which may have been a type of contained gunpowder explosive, although they were still using bamboo tubes as “guns.”

Here, though, Andrade’s narrative begins to suffer badly from the same fault that afflicts Greg Pomeranz’s "The Great Divergence" in its discussions of China—a great amount of supposition and interpolation, always resolved in favor of the interpretation that favors the author’s thesis.  This seems to be a besetting problem of Sinophile authors; the same problem affects Joseph Needham’s massive study of Chinese history, which has been justly accused of exaggerating Chinese technological accomplishments, and on which Andrade repeatedly relies.  He also relies very heavily on Chinese-language writings by several Chinese authors of recent vintage, about whom the reader knows and can know nothing.  We can know, though, that free inquiry of academics in China today is limited at best, and that the Party is more likely to reward those finding a hidden glorious Chinese past than those confirming Western superiority.

Andrade next covers the early Ming Dynasty, beginning in 1367.  Around this time the first metal guns emerged; we are told repeatedly that the Ming “stipulated that gunners should comprise 10 percent of soldiers.”  These were very short and light guns, apparently almost exclusively used in an anti-personnel manner, what are today called “hand cannon.”  It is at this point that Andrade begins comparisons to Europe, noting that the first guns appear in Europe A.D. 1326 (oddly, before they appear in the lands between China and Europe, but without prior experimentation in Europe, implying that they arrived fully formed from China in an unknown manner, probably through the Mongols).  European guns were initially also small, but extremely rapidly became bigger—within less than fifty years, the French were casting cannon weighing two thousand pounds.  Andrade ascribes this rapid innovation to the difference between European fortifications, relatively thin and made of stone that could be battered down with large cannon, and Chinese fortifications, which were mostly many meters thick and made mostly of tamped earth on which even large cannon had little effect, meaning that in China, you had to storm the gate complex to enter a fortified space.  He does not explain why large cannon were not developed to smash Chinese gate complexes, nor why by the 1600s, the Portuguese were using carronades to breach Chinese-style earth walls in China, while the Chinese had still not developed beyond crude hand cannon.  Nor does he explain the many other massive and very rapid advances in European cannon, such as huge improvements in gunpowder quality and the use of iron balls, as well as very quick development of the “classic cannon . . .  long and thin, tapering toward the muzzle, . . . [which] gave the gunpowder more time to impart energy to the projectile.”  (On a side note, Andrade claims, giving the formula for kinetic energy, that because iron is three times denser than the marble balls used by the Chinese, “an iron ball could be ten or twenty or thirty times more destructive at the same velocity than a marble ball of the same dimensions, depending on that velocity.”  But kinetic energy is directly proportional to the mass of the object and proportional to the square of velocity, so if the velocity is the same, the iron ball would only have three times the kinetic energy—Andrade appears to be confusing which variable is squared.)

By the early 1500s, having made no improvements in the meantime, the Chinese were introduced to the vastly improved European guns (via the Portuguese), and “immediately recognized that they were superior to their own.”  Andrade claims, plausibly enough, that the Chinese promptly got to work catching up.  His main source for this is Wang Hong (1466-1536), a Ming functionary.  “Although his enemies nearly succeeded in having him written out of history, today Chinese celebrate him as an anti-imperial hero and the first successful partisan of ‘learning from the west.’ ”  Again, though, Andrade does not seem to grasp that the modern Party may choose to exaggerate Wang Hong’s contributions as part of a propaganda campaign that emphasizes China’s progress and de-emphasizes its “Confucian” reputation for stasis.  Other sources seem a bit thin, too—Andrade cites an undergraduate thesis from 2013 for critical statistical data about Korean marksmanship with seventeenth century smoothbore muskets, to suggest they were really using rifles.  Being an undergraduate doesn’t mean the author is wrong, but big claims require big evidence.

And even if you believe Wang Hong’s ambiguous claims, the evidence is very slim that the Chinese immediately matched the Portuguese, as hard as they may have tried.  Variations on the phrase “It seems likely” become depressingly common at this point in the book.  Certainly the Chinese worked to copy the “Frankish cannon,” but Andrade is desperate to show that the Chinese not only succeeded but innovated, correctly identifying that demonstrating mere copying reinforces the views he is trying to demolish.  So, he repeatedly makes claims similar to “as they used [the Frankish guns, they] ingeniously altered them. . . . Indeed, scholars in China have taken to referring to the late Ming period as a period of fusion, during which there occurred a hybridization of Western guns and traditional Chinese guns.”  His sole evidence for this, though, is a claim by a Chinese-language source that the Chinese created guns with iron interiors and brass exteriors, a supposedly superior design of which I have never heard and to which I can find no reference to anywhere (and anyway, I am pretty sure that “brass” cannons are actually bronze).  And at the same time, he describes how the Chinese reverse engineered a captured Portuguese gun with an elevation screw—by casting the screw as one piece with the gun, since they failed completely to understand how it worked.  This hardly suggests innovation.  Not once in this book does Andrade give an demonstrable example of the continual advancement by leapfrogging over the advancements of others that has characterized the West for the better part of a millennium.  And this failure to actually show any innovation destroys the main point of Andrade’s book, because if the Chinese only ever copied (and often badly), therefore at the maximum point of advancement only being able to achieve mere parity, then the Chinese haven’t innovated in gunpowder warfare for a thousand years.

Perhaps realizing that he’s not succeeding at showing innovation in weapon design, Andrade then goes on a very long digression about drill techniques for volley fire, involving interchange of ranks and ordered reloading, claiming that the Chinese originated it and it was an ancient, highly developed technique.  He does this to rebut the claim that Europeans originated drill, but his examples of supposed volley fire manuals are sparse, and his evidence for actual use of drilled volley fire in the European manner is slim to none (which is probably why all military historians, as Andrade admits, ascribe the development of drilled volley fire by Europeans as a critical and unique element of European global dominance).

This discussion merges into a discussion of musketry in the 1600s, where Andrade attempts to show that Chinese (and Korean) musketry was the equal of European.  Andrade claims that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the “Age of Parity”;  he says that “Some Sinophone historians refer to this period as the era of Sino-Western military hybridization.”  Maybe they do, but given that Andrade gives not a single example of any innovation by Asian countries in gunpowder weaponry after A.D. 1300, a better term would be the “era of maximum frenzy of Chinese copying of Western innovations so they could keep up as best they could.”  Andrade makes claims such as that in this time period “Everyone was adopting and adapting from everyone,” implying that “everyone” was responsible for innovation.  But the Chinese innovated nothing at all from A.D. 1100 on.  They copied European guns, European fortifications, European navigation and European ship rigging, none of which they had anything even vaguely equivalent to, and also copied everything else they could get their hands on.  Andrade further notes the superiority of the European scientific method, which allowed for using Newtonian physics to calculate ballistics and Boyle’s gas laws to calculate howitzer fuse timing, something the Chinese never achieved anything remotely similar to.  Unable to demonstrate any technological innovation, Andrade closely examines a variety of minor conflicts between the Chinese and the Portuguese, Dutch and Russians, some ending in defeat for the Chinese, some for the Westerners, and concludes that there was “parity.”  Maybe.  Or maybe the Westerners, many of whom were small groups of adventurers without government support, sometimes lost despite vastly superior technology, especially when far from home and without allies or the possibility of resupply.  The Chinese weren’t fighting in Lisbon or Moscow, after all, but in or near their major cities.

After this so-called period of parity, with small conflicts, there was little fighting by China from 1750 to 1840 or so.  In this period apparently the Chinese not only failed to innovate, which Andrade ascribes to the “Long Qin Peace,” but their warfare skills totally fell apart.  Their gunpowder was thrown away as worthless by Westerners when captured; they had cannon with “uneven bores and primitive carriages”; only matchlock muskets; terrible fortifications, and so on.  That is, after 150 years of careful study and supposedly wholly successful attempts to match the West, in less than a hundred years (not really a “long peace”) the Chinese regressed totally, unable even to cast a straight bore cannon.  This seems like a lot to chalk up to a mere reduction in warfare, especially since the graph on which Andrade relies to show this shows only a modest reduction in Chinese conflicts in this time period (and he also specifically goes to some lengths to say his graph is pretty unreliable).  More likely the Chinese had never achieved any kind of parity and this level of quality was always the best the Chinese could do.

Meanwhile, of course, Europeans had continued fantastic advances in all sorts of weapons technology, even before the Industrial Revolution (including adapting an Indian innovation, the rocket).  Thus, when warfare began again, in nineteenth century conflicts between China and the West, as is well known, the Chinese were utterly routed.  The Chinese then began aggressive copying again—and were defeated by the Japanese, who were even better at copying, in that not only did they copy, but adopted Western habits of scientific thinking, and were not hampered by Confucianism (although Andrade really dislikes ascribing Chinese stasis to Confucianism).

While his thesis doesn’t come out very well, all this is interesting history.  I think Andrade’s major failure is his desperation to ignore the very different culture of China.  “Different” doesn’t necessarily mean “inferior,” though of course it can.  If you ask Graham Allison in "Destined For War," for example, the Chinese have a “supremacist world view bound up in Chinese identity,” which is just a different way of viewing the world.  But many cultural differences do affect the ability to engage in military innovation.  As Toby Huff documents extensively, for example, in his "The Rise of Early Modern Science," Chinese scholarly writing is not like  European writing—it is elliptical, disorganized, and largely incomprehensible, not directed to easy communication and creating a base for further study and innovation by others.  This difference in analytical approaches must have real consequences, and may be part of the reason for the historical inferiority of Chinese gunpowder warfare, but Andrade ignores it.

[Review finishes as first comment.]

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's lovely to see such broad incorporation of sources, including extensive Chinese-language research, tied to a tight, focused argument. Tonio Andrade tackles previous historical narratives of divergence and comparative weakness centered on the Qing empire, positing a general parity if not superiority of East Asian gunpowder weapons and tactics over European equivalents until a 'great military divergence' beginning in the mid-18th century. He roots this divergence in a variety of factors but leans heavily on the contingency of need (the Qing empire had consolidated a relatively peaceful regional balance of power and had no near-term competitors, whereas European empires were locked into conflict from the mid 18th to the mid 19th centuries- the theory being that military competition drives military innovation) as well as another contingent effervescence of scientific inquiry in Enlightenment Europe that led to unpredictable advances in ballistics, chemistry, advanced technical drafting, and increasingly sophisticated machine tools. Andrade demolishes cultural arguments head on, documenting a long tradition of Confucian scholars engaged in scientific inquiry, military innovation, and global learning and competition.

In sum, you will learn a lot about gunpowder and associated military innovations. But the book also works as a global history of challenge-response and cross-civilization learning. Andrade does a good job of explaining military divergence without recourse to unidirectional or triumphalist arguments- indeed, for much of the gunpowder story Europe is a peripheral laggard. However, when the balance tips it aligns with a variety of other factors (political, economic, and the utterly random and contingent) that set the Qing back in the Opium Wars and the Sino-Japanese War.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why is it that academic military histories are much more readable than their non-military counterparts? Maybe they expect a broader audience? This was a great read on the evolution of gunpowder warfare, much of which covers China's contributions to the art, which hasn't been tackled by the English speaking military writing community until recently. Many of the earlier weapons are bizarre, early powder mixes were more of a fire tool and not really explosive. The later developments are covered as well as why China seemed to have completely lost its edge starting with the Opium wars. makes extensive use of Asian reference works, unlike earlier works from the 90's and prior. Covers much of the politics and society of the military in gunpowder (900-1900) China at the critical points.

For the academically inclined, this book is about 1/4 footnotes and bibliography neatly tucked away in the back where it doesn't interfere with the narration.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on my schooling I was pretty sure of the following facts about gunpowder:

1. It was invented in China
2. The Chinese used it in battle but it had limited direct impact on warfare
3. Europeans used it to make cannons, which had a big impact by the early 16th century
4. Personal firearms were of very limited effectiveness until much later

Pretty much all of this turns out to be wrong (except point 1) and the reason why it's wrong is quite interesting. The history of gunpowder in warfare was written by European military historians, who tended to take its evolution in Europe and assume it worked mostly the same way in China, only without really mastering it (as demonstrated by the defeats in the Opium War in the 19th century.)

In fact this is not at all what happened. The Chinese invented gunpowder by the 10th century and used it for warfare early, but as an incendiary instead of an explosive: not out of a lack of inventiveness but because early mixtures couldn't work effectively in enclosed areas without air. By the time Europeans imported it was already optimized and they could use it in cannons--which were effective in Europe because European fortifications had much thinner walls.

The Chinese meanwhile were using it in personal firearms much more effectively because they had an unbroken tradition of drill that the Europeans didn't have. Proportions of infantry armed with guns in the Ming dynasty, Japan and especially Korea were a hundred years ahead of Europe. The Chinese quickly copied European cannons when exposed to them by the Portugese in the 16th century.

What the Chinese never quite mastered--for various reasons, mostly a lack of incentives--was the Rennaissance fortresses and effective naval cannons in the 17th century. Still they probably remained at overall parity through the mid-18th century, when the scientific groundwork of the Europeans and eventually the the Industrial revolution opened a gap that was impossible to close. (Andrade is clear when he talks about the scientific contributions that he is talking only about it's impact on military matters; impact on other aspects of industrialization in Europe is somewhat more disputed.)

The last point is that China *was* quick to start copying European arms by the 19th century, and not completely ineffective: Their ship construction probably rivaled Japan in the late part of the century. The challenge they faced was that the Europeans weren't standing still either, so it was gap they could not close.

A well written fascinating history, full of new facts to me, by a China scholar taking full advantage of his sources.

[TG Lin · Rating 5 out of 5]

「五百年 vs 五千年」？不，只有「三百年」。

這是一本介紹中西「火藥軍事史」的專書。作者歐陽泰寫過幾本書，我覺得都非常具有啟發性。比起史景遷那種專事溫吞爬資料的寫作而言，作者同時在「找資料」與「起論述」的功力更勝一籌。

以我自己長成過程中的受教而言，針對中西歷史發展的軌跡，大概都會從明朝放棄海權（鄭和下西洋的終結）開始「罵」起，然後一路罵到清末民初的中國積弱；用個大概的時間來講，差不多就是「近五百年」為期︰此時歐洲搞起大航海大躍進，東亞則是固步保守。然而，隨著近年來出版的新論述愈來愈多才發現，這種根源自歐洲中心的自信「五百年」理論，其實並不正確。明代中葉之後的「世界觀」，並非如過去的想像一樣自絕於外，而是積極努力地順應新時代，明末與清初的官員絲毫不介意採用外國的新技術。具體到本書的「火藥時代」的軍事發展，中國的槍炮技術雖然初接觸時有些落後，但仍能很迅速地追上最新科技，接連打敗葡萄牙、荷蘭、俄國，可以說是「均勢」的局面。歐洲的殖民事業，在東亞大陸是完全施展不開來的。

作者認為，直到乾隆朝的中期——作者大略定義的年份是 1760——中國進入了「清朝大和平（The Great Qing Peace）」，而歐洲則是戰亂頻仍，在生存壓力下不斷地發展出新科技、以及更基礎的科學革命（數學物理化學的進步），這才是中西軍事史上的「大分流」時期。等到八十年後的 1840 年鴉片戰爭期間，中國才發覺想要迎頭追上，居然連「制器之器」（製造精密規格產品的一切相關機器）都需重頭開始，乃至於跌跌撞撞辛勤了一百多年，才重新在現代站起。本書認為，過去我們總愛由歐洲人的觀點批評中國文化（特別是最大箭靶子的儒家）的根基不如西方的「進取」，這應該是錯誤的。歐陽泰是可以直接由完善的中文資料中尋找出證據（其實我們老早就知道的），宋代明代、乃至於清末的中興名臣等，從來就不畏懼「論兵」、甚至是對一切實用的「奇技淫巧」興趣高張侃侃而談。至於這種軍事大分流的現象，只能由中西社會所面對的不同環境來作合理論述。

這是一部很精彩的書。本書作者貫通的中西史料，不像前幾代的西方漢學家，不會刻意地褒此貶彼，而是將「中國史」也納入「世界史」的一部分（是的，過去的歐美學者是將「歐洲史」作為人類世界史的發展常軌標準，「中國史」則是作為「他者」的特殊番外篇章……）。此外，作者對「城牆」的研究（中國傳統城牆超厚，近代早期之前並沒有像歐洲人開發轟牆火砲的動機，並弄出了「文藝復興堡／稜堡」的堅強堡壘工稱技術），十分值得細細研讀。

[Andres Felipe Contreras Buitrago · Rating 5 out of 5]

Las expectativas que tenía sobre este libro eran algo bajas, algunas reseñas decían que esperaban otra cosa del texto, esto puede tener algo de razón, tal vez el título no es el más adecuado. No obstante, el libro es muy bueno, los capítulos son cortos, y es clara la tesis del autor en cada uno, la prosa es sencilla y amena, me sorprendió mucho lo bien escrito que estaba el libro.

La primera parte es sobre los comienzo de la pólvora en China, este polvo se conocía en el territorio desde el siglo XII, su descubrimiento no fue fácil, y sus primeros usos como arma estaban más en animales o armas muy experimentales; no obstante, durante la dinastía song hubo constantes combates, lo que llevo a una mayor inovacion respecto al uso de esta. También es importante decir, que China en esa época estaba muy avanzada económicamente.

Será el mismo emperador el que incentivaria el uso de la pólvora en las armas, está se uso en las lanzas y arcos, más que todo como material incendiario, se construyeron complejos para la elaboración de nuevas armas a base de pólvora. Con la invasión mongola a China, no sé detendría el uso de esta, en varios asedios mongoles, en las catapultas había pólvora. Posteriormente, se diversificó las armas que hacían uso de la pólvora, uno de los grandes inventos fue el cañón chino, este se usó más que todo en contra de las personas y no contra las estructuras.

En la segunda parte, los cañones chinos llegan a la Europa medieval, los primeros usos era una calca de los chinos, la elaboración siguió siendo muy similar, aunque su uso no fue fácil, puesto que los orientales ya tenían toda una formación respecto su uso. Su gran acogida, en la época tardío mediaval se debió a que está arma era muy buena derribando las defensas enemigas, en una época de muchas batallas medivales, por ello, los reyes invertían más en esta arma, esto no pasaba con los chinos ya que sus murallas eran muy gruesas y fuertes, lo que hacía que los cañones no les hicieran nada.

En China, se vivió con los Ming un periodo de paz lo cual hizo que no se siguieran mejorando los cañones, cosa que no paso en Europa donde las guerras llevaron a una gran mejoría de estos tanto en su tamaño como en sus proyectiles. Estos cañones harían gala en la primera guerra sino-portuguesa, los chinos quedaron impresionados ante esta nueva arma, por lo cual debieron copiarla, haciendo que gracias a esta ganarán la guerra, aunque también se debió por la superioridad numérica china.

En la tercera parte, tenemos una época de paridad entre chinos y europeos, luego de la guerra contra los portugueses los chinos se embarcaron en la empresa de construir cañones francos, la ventaja que tenían es que contaban con la técnica, la industria y los materiales para hacerlo, eso llevó a una mejoría de los cañones creando incluso nuevos subtipos de estos.

La instrucción militar, se dice fue algo que le dio a los europeos una gran ventaja en su expansión, la cuestión es que los chinos por varios siglos ya contaban con una gran formación en instrucción militar, los europeos por muchos siglos habían quedado rezagados ante ejércitos medivales poco organizados y disciplinados. Los chinos sabían la técnica del fuego por salva desde hacía ya mucho tiempo.

El mosquete, otra arma europea fue otra que se adaptó rápidamente en Oriente, fue primero China quien las recibió y uso estas armas con la técnica del fuego por salvas, gracias a esto es que lograron ganarle a los rusos y neerlandeses. Otros que las acogieron con gran acogida, fueron los japoneses los cuales estaban en una guerra interna, y los coreanos, mismos que llevaron a cabo una reforma militar, dónde está arma estaba en el epicentro de estos cambios, sus manuales de formación militar con esta arma superaron a los chinos.

Pese a la victoria china y la paridad entre Europa, este último continente tenía dos ventajas muy importantes: la primera eran el ámbito naval, sus barcos estaban mejor hechos, contando con cañones en los costados que se recargaban más rápidamente, sus velas hacían que las naves pudieran manejarse más fácilmente; la segunda, era las fortificaciones de traza italiana, mismas que eran muy resistentes a los cañones chinos y podían disparar desde cualquier lado, los chinos no pudieron acabar con estás fortificaciones tanto contra países bajos como por Francia, la victoria contra estos se debió más otros factores como las condiciones climáticas y la ayuda externa.

En la tercera parte, es la época de gran divergencia, donde los europeos tenían ahora una gran ventaja frente a los chinos, estos últimos vivieron medio siglo en paz, con conflictos si, pero que no estimulaban mucho la inovacion, en Europa por su parte el siglo XVIII y el XIX se caracterizaron por una gran cantidad de guerras, lo que llevó a mejorar la balística, los cañones, la pólvora que se usaba y las técnicas que se empleaban para usarlo, como las matemáticas. Los chinos tenían armas e instrucciones militares muy anticuadas. Todo esto quedó reflejado en la primera guerra del opio.

Los chinos ante esta guerra también trataron de copiar las armas europeas, la cuestión es que no había mucho interés por hacer reformas militares, y la brecha entre las dos naciones ya era mucha, las copias de los cañones no eran muy buenas, los chinos les faltaban herramientas y técnicas como el dibujo técnico para si quiera alcanzarlos.

Después de la guerra del opio, se vivieron muchas guerras que llevaron a ciertas mejoras chinas, pese a todo el sistema político chino era muy atrasado, no estaba tan abierto a las reformas, su ejército era muy fragmentado, el estado no invertía mucho en el campo militar, todo lo anterior se reflejó en la guerra sino-japonesa donde los nipones se mostraron más organizados, con mayor logística y mayor instrucción militar, con la restauración meiji, se abrieron más occidente haciendo de este país una potencia en la región.

En libro, concluye, retomando varias ideas de los capítulos, mostrando así que china si vivió conflictos como los europeos, no fue tan unida como se cree, y su cultura y religión nunca les impidió que invitieran e inovaran en el campo militar. Hoy china está retomando su poderío militar como nunca antes. El león ha despertado.

[Cell · Rating 5 out of 5]

對於沒啥背景知識的人而言也能輕易閱讀的書籍
本書的主軸是對於「歐洲是多國分立，中國是一大統，所以歐洲有競爭有進步」的論點進行修正改良(我的理解啦，雖然作者的角度好像是反駁)
中西城牆差異對於火器發展的影響
及反駁儒家思想是拖累發展的迷思

提倡心學的大儒王陽明有透過佛朗機砲(Frankish cannon)讚頌人的言論還真是形象崩壞
--
雖然作者說是粗略的工具，對於古籍用 Ngram Viewer 的概念去找出歷史事件年份與趨勢的關聯性
原來這也是n-gram的應用方式之一
我以前只想到用來確認 gray 和 grey 誰用的多的應用方式，看來是太小看這工具了
--
想到要在全軍破敵系列要打下星形要塞(書中寫文藝復興堡壘)還真是惡夢

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Professor Andrade walks us through the development and use of firearm weapons in China and in Europe, and there are plenty of sources to show that the Chinese were more advanced in the design and the use of those weapons up until what is known as the Great Divergence, or the advances made by European science and military technology that gave the West such an advantage over their Oriental rivals from the beginning of the 18th until the middle of the 20th century. The exception to this rule was the Europeans' advantage in artillery, as Chinese fortifications were simply to large and thick to be battered apart by cannon balls. While the author is certainly thorough proving his point (and he has a good one), much time is wasted in entertaining but pointless anecdotes. Indeed, one of the book's weaknesses is the Andrade's impression that he has a sense of humor; always a danger for a military historian. He also feels the need to fill his text with the names of his Chinese sources written in Chinese characters. 浪費時間.
All in all, this work is on the cusp between serious and non-serious history, although there is a lot to learn here. I suppose I'd like to see an author examine this important historical process with the weight and substance it deserves.

[Niko]

3 stars feels harsh, as obviously Mr. Andrade worked very hard on this, yet 4 stars is just too generous. Good anecdotes (the origin of the overbite in human evolution, didn't think I'd learn that here) & the main topics & themes are all interesting & redeem the milquetoast, ambiguous, 'sobering,' argument attempted. I found even the experience of reading this strangely difficult, it's intentions confusing, as it works hard to aesthetically improve an unflattering truth that it cannot help but present. This work is perhaps most useful in comparisons with other adopter/adapter countries, particularly Russia & Japan. Mr. Andrade himself rather cautions the student to keep their grain of salt handy, he's not a General Notions guy. I found his book on Taiwan & Koxinga to be a better read.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Guns, and ships, and so the balance shifts." This is an exciting book that has given me several new insights and fun factoids (human overbites are fairly recent due to eating utensils) and provides an interesting case for the "challenge-response" or "Warring states" explanation of military development, especially concerning gun powder weapons. Though a few arguments were not clearly formulated, this is a really good book. Andrade's writing style is also excellent, making his book a joy to read.

I also thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated all the fantastical names which medieval Chinese inventors and strategists gave their weapons (e.g. sky bridges, "Watermelon bomb", and "One mother and fourteen children bomb").

[Vikas Erraballi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revisionist history of military/technological progress in China that turns over many of the common tropes (“Confucianism hindered progress” etc.). Makes the argument 19th c. was a short period of transition and generally hues to Napoleon’s adage on the sleeping giant. At times, the evidence it presents seem light compared to the conclusions one might draw, but still useful as a way to wash away the old tropes.

[Stephen Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've recently been reading a lot of world history, looking at why the west came to dominate the world while China did not. There are a lot of answers involved, but Tonio Andrade keeps a narrower focus. He wonders not about the economics (although he takes that into account), but about when and how the west passed China in gunpowder weaponry. His answer is that it happened in fairly late (late 18th/early 19th century) and that up until that point, the two regions both innovated and adapted, but the Qing Dynasty was too conservative by the 19th century and didn't promote innovation. The industrial revolution was also a main factor, but he looks at the culture of innovation that existed in the west at time as a bigger factor.

Andrade goes all the way back to the Song Dynasty (and even digs a little into the Tang) to show that the Chinese were actually very innovative in how they used gunpowder as a weapon, although not initially as a gun. The recipe for gunpowder was not refined enough to produce the force needed to project bullets, but they used gunpowder in other weapons, some of which we might call bombs or grenades. He suggests that China did invent the gun first and that the basic design eventually travelled to Europe. The strongest evidence for this is that there are no records of the development of earlier gunpowder weapons in Europe (as there are in China) so the gun appears to have arrived in Europe already in a recognizable form.

Europe made some refinements to guns and cannon and had some success fighting the Ming Dynasty, but the Ming quickly adapted, often innovating off of European designs, so there was never a lasting advantage to either side in weaponry. As Andrade explores this, he goes into detail on several that I found very interesting.

1) He suggests that Europeans innovated more in cannons because of the nature of their fortifications. European fortresses has thinner and more vertical walls, so developing strong cannon had a potentially be payoff. Chinese walls were much thicker and angled, as well as being filled by earth. All of this meant it was extremely difficult to break through, so investing in cannon was uneconomical. To support this argument, Andrade points out that as Europeans developed better cannons they also developed thicker, angled walled, much as the Chinese already used.

2) Andrade accepts the ideas that conflict in Europe forced them to innovate, still focusing on the military rather than the economic. He argues that China was also very innovative for the same reason, citing the Song and Ming Dynasties in particular. But the Qing Dynasty established almost a century of peace leading up to the First Opium War in 1839 and the dynasty itself was very conservative, partly because of ideology and partly because of its status as a ruling minority ethnic group. So at a time that Europeans were making advance after advance, the Qing were stagnating, which contributed to the military divergence. Those advances in cannon, rifles, and ships made a huge difference in 19th century conflicts. Interestingly, Andrade doesn't attribute discipline and drill among those innovations. China had a long tradition of that in the military, including versions of the countermarch, but it had fallen into disuse as the Qing neglected its military. So the Europeans had an advantage in discipline, but that was mainly due to Qing decline.

3) Andrade finishes with attempts by the Qing to catch up to Europeans. He makes that argument that there were examples of the Qing actually making quality guns and ships and says that Chinese advances were more common than we normally think. He argues against the idea that modernization under the Qing took place in only isolated instances. This was the least convincing part of the his argument for me. His narrative did make the point that there were some successes, but taken together, he reinforced the idea that the Qing government and Chinese society as a whole have very little success. It felt like the limited successes they had were, in fact, isolated anomalies where individuals or small groups were able to push forward, but never for any sustained period.

This book is easy to read (although I occasionally feel that Andrade was rooting for the Chinese) and the author is very careful to say what we know and what we don't. He does an excellent job of discussing various theories and why he supports a particular one (or why he doesn't). He is informative and interesting without overreaching and making wild claims. So this is a great book for people interested in military history, China or how European power grew in the 19th century.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

The field of military history often seems obsessed with picayune details about muzzle shapes and types of gun rifling and so forth. This book does discuss such issues, and in detail, but it brings a sweep of world history to them, and makes locates them in the great scientific, industrial, and, yes, military revolutions that created the modern world.

As the author shows, the story, coming down from Jared Diamond and others, that Chinese innovation stalled because its unified landmass and consequent unified governments prevented competitive states from inventing new political and scientific techniques, is at best half true. In fact, after the unified Han dynasty fell apart in the early 200s, there were centuries of war. Even during the so-called unified Song period, from 960 to 1227, there were always at least three competing states (in the latter period it was the XI Xia and Jin and Southern Song, later the Song fought off the Mongols for decades). It was in this period that the Chinese developed gunpowder and early "fire lances" and "thunderclap bombs," which mainly tried to burn as opposed to shoot enemies. Europe didn't discover Chinese gunpowder weapons until the 1320s. And, counter to the theory that the unified Ming under Emperor Hongwu ended any lingering battles and unified China for good, the "Martial Emperor" and his successors, with their "Bureau of Armaments" and "Military Armory Bureau" constructed versions of the modern gun, with muzzle sizes shrinking relative to the length of the gun (eventually about 30 to 1) at the same time Europe did, and used it to fight enemies at home and abroad.

Yet by the 1450s there was a temporary mini-divergence. Chinese thick-earthen walls made them impenetrable, which ironically made the development of siege-cannon unnecessary, unlike in Europe, where the Burgundians and others learned to cast powerful cannon to destroy castles, and the Ming rule did solidify and focus on ruling land at home rather than venturing out, either by land or sea, abroad. But within a century or so the Chinese wars started up, and they had caught up again in military technology. They perfected military drill and volley techniques for their infantry fighters (especially through famed theorist Qui Jiguanag) before Europeans did, made musketeers about 30% of their forces when in Europe they were still no more than 10% (in fact the Korean peninsula dominated here), and managed to fight off the Dutch on Taiwan in the 1660s and the Russians in the Northwest in the 1680s.

Still, the great Qing peace of the 18th century did again lead to divergence, shown by the development in Europe of fast and mobile rigging on sailing ships with multi-story broadsides, carronade mobile artillery, trace itallien fortresses, and other innovations that stymied the Chinese. By the time of the Opium War of 1839, it was no contest, but few remembered how recent that total European dominance had been.

In the end, despite focusing on the costs and benefits of Chinese unification for their military prowess, the author is forced to admit that it was something in the culture of modern science that truly allowed the Europeans to come ahead. Things like the Piedmontese Royal Artillery and Military Engineering Academy (1732), and its equivalent in France, which trained Napoleon, gave gunners knowledge of ballistics, firing times, and chemistry. Benjamin Robins in the early 18th century learned how to use Newtonian mechanics to discover that slower cannonballs actually went further due to decreased wind resistance, and he reengineered them as a result. The Famous mathematician Leonard Euler explored the effects of barrel pressure of the gradually exploding powder that everyone else had assumed exploded instantly. Pere and Fil William Congreve perfected machines and chemistry to create the right formula for gunpowder at England's Royal Powder Mills. Obviously divided states can explain why the scientific endeavor in Europe went into tools of war, but it can't explain itself why the scientific revolution itself took off. Like Joel Mokyr, the author just notes that something in early modern Europe supported invention.

So what seems at first like a specialized military history is in fact a wonderful meditation on the nature of scientific and technological discovery, their dissemination, and their effects on the rise and fall of nations.

[Hadrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work of military history marries two separate trends in scholarship: the first is a "global" history of a specific commodity, drawing from multiple sources and archives (one recent example being Sven Beckert's history of cotton); the second is a study of comparative development, from a debate started by authors such as Kenneth Pomeranz. This history of the "gunpowder age" is a broad examination of not just a specific technology but also a comparison of its adaptation and use.

Andrade's proposal is easy to understand: military adaptations or the greater adoption of new technologies are more likely to occur in periods of prolonged conflict. As Europe was split up between multiple warring states, warfare was interminable and so military innovation continued; China enjoyed relative periods of peace and therefore less of a need to adapt. He does not refer to specific dynasties, but relative periods within them: For example, he refers to a "Song Warring States Period", encompassing the wars with the Jurchens and Mongols, instead of the standard dynastic periodization.

Additionally, Andrade addresses specific questions and dispels certain stereotypes about military history and military technology. He is direct and specific on the various uses of gunpowder, which appears notoriously difficult from the use of old texts and limited availability of technical diagrams or descriptions. But here are some useful points: guns, at least in a semi-recognizable form, were invented around the time of the Mongolian conquests; Ming guns were often smaller and designed as anti-personnel weapons -- Ming fortifications, built from rammed earth, were too sturdy for most cannon at the time to crack open. Ming armies developed a kind of drill for the use of their guns, and Joseon Korea and Sengoku Japan also made extensive use of military drill. Ming armies were able to compete, at a level of parity, with contemporary colonial empires such as the Portugese. Qing armies were at parity with European armies until at least the mid-18th century, and were capable of outstanding feats of organization and logistics. And so on, and so on.

Even more striking is the assertion that officials in the bureaucracy were openly contemptuous of the new technology, and Andrade dismisses the assertion that Confucianism or other factors played a role in their downfall. Even at the Qing Dynasty's lowest point in the 19th century, government armories were still capable of producing ships and guns comparable to European states or Japan; the interest in military technology remained. The failure of the Qing armies was a result of their poorer training and court squabbling.

This is a substantial contribution to Chinese history and military history but also can be considered in a broader context.

[Rob Hocking · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gunpowder Age:

This is an excellent book on the history of gunpowder in warfare. The book begins by dispelling the myth that gunpowder was invented in China but guns were only invented after its arrival in the West (a myth I myself had believed prior to reading the book). This is not true, and the book cites numerous examples of gun warfare in China well before the arrival of the gun in Europe (it's worth noting, however, that in Chinese "gun powder" is called 火藥 - fire medicine - because it was discovered by accident by alchemists attempting to create medicine).

The very earliest gunpowder weapon appears to be "fire arrows" (used in China around the year 900, consisting of arrows wrapped in lit gunpowder) and a "fire bird" - which is literally just a bird with some burning gunpowder in a pouch suspended around its neck that you release in the direction of your enemy and hope that it will land on something flammable and set it on fire. Fire birds were in use around 1044 in China.

By the year 1100, China had invented the "fire lance" - a long hollowed out staff that you stuff with gunpowder, and when lit shoots out a "lance" of fire. People quickly figured out that if you stuffed a bunch of pellets down the tube of a fire lance before lighting it they would become projectiles doing bonus damage, and the direct ancestor of the gun was born.

However, the development of the gun didn't really take off until it was imported into Europe in the 1300s. Why? The author offers an intriguing explanation, and it has to do with one of my favorite ideas: arms races. Specifically, in Europe - where city walls at the time were measured in feet - conditions were ripe for an arms race of ever bigger guns and ever thicker walls to occur, and one did. In China, however, where even in the 900s city wall widths were measured in meters instead of feet - the activation energy needed to initiate a guns/walls arms race was just too high - and so it didn't happen.

This meant that when Europeans and Chinese met again in battle in the 1600s - Europeans had both much better guns and better walls as a result of their arms race. On the walls side of things, they had the "renaissance fortress" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastion... - a fortress with walls that are not only thick, but also designed in such a way that the guns on its walls have no blind spots. Chinese armies - for example the armies of 鄭成功 when they kicked the Dutch out of Taiwan - were used to being able to simply storm up to city walls, get into a blind spot of the defenses, and scale ladders - they where at a loss as to how to deal with the renaissance fortress. Giant European cannons similarly shattered Chinese fortresses in the Opium war.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent revision of the traditional "gunpowder revolution" thesis. Toni Andrade writes smoothly and engagingly. His argument is well-researched, well-evidenced, nuanced and convincing.

It was not generally understood how early in time gunpowder weapons were developed - as early as the 10th century - or quite what they were - not guns, but a fascinatingly bewildering variety of appliances. From Chinese beginnings, we are taken through an investigation of the progression of gunpowder weapons development and usage via European adoption of the gun, its spread across Asia, establishing an age of parity between Europe and China (at least) in the early modern period, followed by the Great Military Divergence in the late eighteenth and early 19th century, as the Qing established a long period of relative peace, in contrast to the continuing warfare in Europe. Without the stimulus of warfare, China fell behind, leaving it vulnerable to expansionist Europeans in the 19th century.

There is much about Chinese and Japanese modernisation in the late 19th century, with new insights into China's relative failure. I would have welcomed some coverage of the Indian sub-continent as a counterpoint. It was good to see the inclusion of a summary of the high quality Korean experience in the early modern period, in relation to their highly effective musketry.

This book is a refreshing contrast to the usual Eurocentric, or rather West-centric, approach to military development. European superiority was not all-embracing, even in its periods of expansion prior to the 19th century. There is here a useful corrective about the development of drilled gun-wielding infantry: not so much European superiority as European catch-up, as China had a long tradition of drilled crossbowmen that was adopted for gunners well before Maurice of Nassau!

[James S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is basically a scholarly version of the Jared Diamond-type history book where the author tries to explain some grand historical question. In this case the question is: if China invented gunpowder first, why did the Europeans pull ahead in gunpowder technology?

The author is a genuine historian (as opposed to Diamond) as well as a Sinologist, so the book is more serious than any by Diamond, but it's also less readable. Andrade's argument is that for most of the 2nd millennium, China and Europe were roughly comparable in terms of firepower capabilities. According to him, it was only in the "Great Qing Peace" (roughly 1760 - 1840) that Europe pulled ahead. Before that the two ends of the Eurasian continent were more or less at parity.

Fair enough, even if the thesis isn't exactly mind-blowingly novel. The issue is that Andrade's book frequently gets lost in obscure thickets of medieval Chinese history to the extent that the main path, his central argument, is neglected. As an example, when discussing Ming gunpowder, Andrade spends 8 dense and, frankly, dull pages discussing one obscure siege. It's difficult, densely cited, and slow-going. In addition, it seems to argue against his point, since he admits that Ming guns were not capable of breaching city walls, whereas European guns were.

Overall, there are interesting sections, but I have doubts about this book's argument as well as its execution.

(As an aside, the #1 review of this book on Goodreads as of the time of this writing is a review by an extremely far-right activist who founded a supposedly secret male-only society - à la the Christmas Adventurer's Club - dedicated to the installation of an autocratic government in the US. Read about him on Wikipedia. Yet his review makes some good points about Andrade's book. It's the epitome of "the worst person you know made a great point.")

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book, providing a comparative history of the evolution of military technology between Europe and China. The author, historian Tonio Andrade, explains the timeline for a “great divergence” between Eastern (primarily Chinese) and Western (primarily the Atlantic coast nations) through a detailed comparative history of gunpowder technology for the military. Andrade labels his work a comparative world history, eschewing any focus on specific cultures or nations for a consistent contrasting between East and West. The resulting chronological history is interesting for its deep understanding of Eurasian military development from the 900s CE through to the late 1800s. With his ”long view” and broad understanding of both East and West, Andrade delivers a very useful and open understanding of the current and potential interactions between China and the U.S., one based not economic determinism but historical rhythms. As an academic work, the book is heavily referenced, with Andrade primarily explaining existing historical theories accompanied by a heavy use of examples. I really appreciated the detailed bibliography. Highly recommended for anyone interested in a better understanding of the historical forces at work in the competitive relationship between China and the U.S.

[Henry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this for a class on War. I did learn a lot about Chinese history and also the history of weapons throughout the ages and with emphasis on China's evolution of the gun and other weapons. I recommend this to people who are interested in the subject matter of gunpowder weapons and military tactics in general. This book is definitely not for a broad audience so buyer beware. Andrade likes to be contrarian on conventional wisdom on the topics at hand only because he cites various works that contradict those topics. For example, he declines to admit that Confucianism ethics is the reason why China fell behind Europe when it came to developing a better military technology. These are the sort of topics that get talked about in the book and so be aware of the prior knowledge that is recommended to know beforehand although Andrade does give a reasonable explanation as to the meat of the common arguments made throughout time concerning different topics. All in all, there were times when I was deeply involved in what he had to say and there are other chapters that I found myself just wanting to skip simply because of the drudgery of it.

[Ahmet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book looks at Europe and China’s parallel military developments from the first uses of gunpowder on the battlefield and argues the idea that Europe’s later military dominance was incubated by protracted competition between relatively stable states, which encouraged military innovation.

Just as a survey of the evolution of gunpowder warfare, The Gunpowder Age stands on its own as an incredible story. The overview of the first few centuries of innovation is fascinating and picturesque. This book provides a useful corrective to the impression of a China that simply floundered through the rest of the centuries. European powers benefitted from the compounding effects of technological advancements, and it is all the more incredible how Qing reformers undertook to scramble up the steepening exponential curve.

[Charlie Ye · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure why so many of the historical citations in Tonio Andrade’s book are either problematic or simply lack rigor. The section on Qi Jiguang is a perfect example: a closer look reveals that it is impossible to derive his conclusions from Qi’s actual discourse. It seems that overseas Sinologists, at times, are still just like most Westerners have been for centuries—too young too simple, sometimes naive.

[Tianxiao · Rating 5 out of 5]

与彭慕兰的《经济大分流》类似，本书要探讨的问题是中国的军事从什么时间开始大幅落后于欧洲，以至于在鸦片战争惨败之后一蹶不振，影响了中国近代百年的进程。
作者通过史料、文献统计的数据，对比古代时期东方与西方的战争频率，在所谓的“康乾盛世”之前，中国的战争频度和对火药的利用，一度领先欧洲，在期间互有上下，但总体上并不算绝对的落后。然而十五世纪起，由于对实验科学的重视，使得欧洲逐渐掌握了更先进的科技，即使如此中国也并没有完全封闭自我，仍然在火器的革新上与欧洲保持了大体的一致。但在清朝实现大一统之后，“盛世”消磨了进步的意志，体制彻底阻碍了改变的意愿...
作者自知史料毕竟有限，结论也未必绝对正确。历史学本身，似乎也越来越依赖科学，甚至可以说历史学也是一门科学。在不断挖掘新的史料文献的过程中，我们对于自己的过往会一遍一遍的刷新认知，这是历史如此迷人之处。

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the beginning section detailing the rise of gunpowder and its use for war in China (contrary to popular belief). The book made some interesting, salient points with decreasing effectiveness as it progressed. The editing in the last third was simply sloppy and distracting, but overall, I enjoyed it.

[Evan Þ. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gunpowder was invented in China. Guns were invented in China, after centuries of gradual innovation. What happened? How did China decline so as to be so militarily behind by the 1800's?

Andrade looks into the details of China's use of guns, arguing with extensive evidence that it was ahead of Europe into the 1400's and at military parity with Europe as late as the mid-1700's (when China defeated the Dutch in Taiwan, and the Russians in Manchuria.) But, the long peace under the Qing Dynasty had led to a neglect of military drill and innovation, while Europe was embarking on new heights of science and technology that were about to lead to a new industrialized form of warfare. China tried to copy that and had some successes, but entrenched forces held it back (unlike in Japan, where the Meiji Restoration had swept away most of the entrenched forces).

Andrade's got a persuasive case about the timeline of the divergence. About the causes, his case isn't quite so persuasive, and he does mention some other potentially-significant forces such as financing. But still, I agree that the ones he fingers are indeed significant.

[Lindsay McBride · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the way that the author used stories to tell the history of the gunpowder age. Some of the technical innovation in it was boring to me, but if you’re into the science behind weaponry you would find it interesting. I learned a lot about history I didn’t know from reading this though and it was an engaging read.

[Andrew Tollemache · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting exploration and revisionist take on how even though the CHinese invented gunpowder, guns and their in war, by the 18th and 19th century the Chinese had fallen far behind the Europeans in firearm technology and use in war.

[Chien Chin-yu · Rating 5 out of 5]

書中主要比較東西方在火藥上的發展差異，並試圖以軍事上壓力—回應的觀點解釋為何東西方在十八世紀末會有如此大的差異。

書中有許多的論點頗具說服力，例如因為東西方城牆的建造概念不同，導致雙方的火器發展方向也不同；儒臣並非改革的阻力，黨爭以及如何捨棄舊時代的既得利益才是問題。但如果只以軍事上的壓力—回應觀點來看待東西方的分流還是稍嫌薄弱，作者在最後幾章提到西方因為有「製器之器」以及基礎科學的發展才使得東西方的差距越來越大，基礎科學的發展受到各種影響甚多，例如商業行為、航海的需求等等，諸國軍事上的競爭是否可以當作主因還有待商榷。

[Steve Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very new information to me with a tremendous amount of primary sourcing to back it up. I think the author offers a compelling argument to prove his thesis that the Chinese were incredible innovators during times where we thought they were stagnant. Very good book.

[Pam · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book has a lot of interesting information it is just dry and boring.

[Nunzio Cicone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic military history. Highly informative without getting bogged down in details.