History Compass 9/10 (2011): 818–826, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2011.00802.

Development and Spread of Firearms in Medieval and

Early Modern Eurasia
Peter Lorge*
Vanderbilt University

Abstract
Recent research has overturned the pre-existing understanding of the history of guns and gun-
powder. This has invalidated the Military Revolution theory that argued that firearms revolution-
ized Europe warfare between 1500 and 1800, leading to the modern nation state. More research
will be necessary to detail how and why gunpowder and guns spread throughout the world the
way they did, and why Europeans were able to advance gun technology so quickly beginning in
the 17th century.

Until very recently, it appeared that most of the facts of the history of gunpowder and
guns were well known, and that scholarly disagreement turned mostly on the issue of
interpreting those facts. There were two main issues under debate. First, was there a ‘Mil-
itary Revolution’ in Europe sometime between 1500 and 1800 caused by firearms, and
did that revolution lead to the creation of the modern nation state? Second, why did
Europe exploit this new technology so much better than other cultures, notably the Chi-
nese, who invented it, and thereby come to dominate the modern world? The answers
to these questions bear directly on many critical issues in modern history well beyond the
narrower field of technological history. New research done over the past 10 years or so,
some of it still unpublished, has overturned many of the accepted facts and thereby
opened up the study of guns and gunpowder to further research and fundamental reeval-
uation.
The historical field itself has also changed tremendously since the pioneers of the his-
tory of gunpowder began their research. The study of technological history has deepened,
and the geographic scope of mainstream history departments has vastly expanded to
include non-Western historians. Partly as a result of this, there is now a further shift
toward studying world or global history. This is particularly important with respect to
guns and gunpowder because these technologies spread outward from China to all parts
of the world, not just Europe, and improved European and Turkish gunpowder weapons,
in turn, came back to Asia. Technology, like other ideas or goods, flowed in all direc-
tions from quite early on.
We are now faced with a far more complex picture of both the effects of gunpowder
weapons on warfare and the meaning of technology in society. A number of historians,
myself included, have challenged the Eurocentric notions of a Western superiority based
upon fundamental cultural values and a ‘Rise of the West’ beginning in 1500. The 20th
century economic rise of Japan, and now China and India, has made it clear to some, at
least, that the ‘dominance’ of the West in the 19th and 20th centuries is more an histori-
cal happenstance than a demonstration of inherent western superiority. Some historians
have responded vigorously to this challenge, reasserting that the obvious western

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 Development and Spread of Firearms 819

economic and military dominance in modern times was real and quantifiable. In their
view, there is a fundamental Western superiority.1
The gun lies at the core of all of these questions as a key element in the development
of the modern world. From this perspective, if the invention of the gun was instrumental
in creating the modern world, then we must look to China for the origins of modernity.
Yet the spread of guns was not a straightforward process of technological diffusion where
the new weapon or knowledge of how to manufacture it travels by trade or war to other
lands and is adopted and appropriated by new cultures. That only deals with the spread
of a technology, not its reception. The receiving cultures must in their turn make sense
of the new technology, and attempt to fit it into its own culture.2
New technology seldom fits perfectly into an existing culture, and initiates a process of
adaptation. Both the culture and the technology may make allowances or adjustments in
this process. This is a very complicated process, particularly with military technology,
operating at and between many levels and groups in a society, among different neighbor-
ing polities, cultural values, existing power relationships and military circumstances,
wealth, costs of the technology, etc. Sometimes a technology can be adapted and used in
new ways, and sometimes the most effective exploitation of a new technology can only
come about by, explicitly or inadvertently, changing one’s culture to be more like that of
the culture that originated the technology.
In the case of guns and gunpowder, both reactions obtained: in some places guns and
gunpowder were adapted to the existing system of warfare and society, and in some
places, notably Europe, society eventually became more like that of China in order to
use guns most effectively. In the discussion that follows, I will first explore some of the
historiographical problems of concerned with the invention of gunpowder, and then con-
sider the Asian and European receptions, respectively, of guns and gunpowder, and finally
discuss the new research on guns.

The Problem of Primacy

An earlier generation of technological and scientific historians sought to determine who
first invented gunpowder. For these pioneering scholars, the question of primacy was the
critical issue, making research into the history of gunpowder into a search for origins.
This ‘point and diffusion’ model presented a straightforward explanation for the invention
and transmission of science, technology and ideas that ultimately bolstered the modern
Western justification of an understood Western world domination. Particularly in the
realm of science and technology, the foundation of many strains of Western triumphal-
ism, the political and cultural implications of scientific discovery deeply infused historical
research. The historians of science and technology who sought to prove that gunpowder
was invented in China, most prominently Joseph Needham, did so as a way of validat-
ing China’s history and culture to Westerners (and even, it must be said, to many Chi-
nese).3 Once it was proven that the Chinese had primacy in this particular technology,
the job was done.
It was not so simple, however, for several reasons. First, China’s invention of gunpow-
der seemed to clash with China’s later weakness with respect to Western imperialists. In
the absence of any military history of China, a problem that is only now being addressed,
it was hard to determine what role gunpowder played in Chinese warfare prior to the
arrival of Europeans.4 Most historians assumed that China simply didn’t use gunpowder
in warfare, which explained why the Europeans had such a great technological and mili-
tary advantage when they reached China. This gave rise to the popular and persistent

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820 Development and Spread of Firearms

myth that the Chinese only used gunpowder for fireworks, whereas Europeans grasped
the true potential of gunpowder. The different response to the technology was explained
by the peaceful orientation of Chinese society, or at least anti-technology ⁄ invention based
somehow in Confucianism, versus the practical, militaristic and technology and innova-
tion interested European culture, which grew out of Ancient Greek philosophy. None of
these characterizations were true, but as with so many myths they continue to appear
even today.
The second reason proving Chinese primacy in inventing gunpowder settled very little
in historical terms was that the technological issues involved were considerably more
complex than simply discovering that mixing together saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal in
the right proportions made gunpowder. Joseph Needham argued that only high nitrate
mixtures could produce ‘true’ guns, and that it took the Chinese some time to discover
the most powerful formula for gunpowder. He extended this line of reasoning to argue
that the sudden appearance of the optimal formula in Europe proved it was received from
China. Whereas in China there was initially a broad range of formulae that eventually
resolved into one specific one for guns, in Europe they began with a near optimal
formula.5
Needham overlooked the technologically challenging issues involved in producing salt-
peter, processing the mixture, devising gun barrels, projectiles, and a host of other small,
but critical requirements needed to produce and operate guns. Not the least of these chal-
lenges was the intellectual problem of incorporating new weapons into warfare. Chinese
or European culture was a backdrop to gunpowder technology, with both cultures ren-
dered in simplistic, monolithic, and unchanging terms. In this view, gunpowder and guns
were not products of Chinese culture that had to be absorbed into European culture, but
seemed to exist in an external world of technology and science.
Gunpowder or even the gun is not a simple or single technology that can be neatly
traced historically. Gunpowder can be used militarily as an incendiary weapon, to drive
rockets, explode grenades, destroy fortifications, produce smoke, and in short range
flame-throwing devices, in addition to propelling shot in a true gun. Guns vary in size
from hand held weapons to large artillery pieces, all of which, depending upon the pro-
jectile used, could have very different effects on fortifications and in the open field. The
modernist perspective that concentrates solely upon the handgun, cannon, and rocket
mistakes the much messier early history for backward or unenlightened thinking.
Gunpowder was used effectively in many ways consonant with the needs of warfare at
different times and places.

Guns and Gunpowder in Asia

There is no general way to characterize the response to gunpowder and guns in Asia,
except to say that they were used when they became available. Asians understood the
military value of the technology, and were limited more by their ability to manufacture
gunpowder and guns than by resistance to using it in warfare. Large cannon in particular
required rare and extremely precise knowledge for founding, with disastrous conse-
quences when done wrong. They were also expensive to produce and difficult to trans-
port.
In Asia, guns and gunpowder were adapted to local cultures without inducing notice-
able political or social changes. Political and social changes occurred when one group
used guns or gunpowder weapons more effectively in war than its opponent, a circum-
stance no different than any previous military one. Apart from these military induced

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 Development and Spread of Firearms 821

changes, gunpowder does not appear to have revolutionized Asian society. Asian warfare
was revolutionized, with the use of guns becoming ubiquitous and necessary in Asian
armies, but military changes did not in and of themselves produce wider change.6 The
process of military revolution took place at different times in different places. Many places
absorbed gun technology in waves, as newer weapons became available. The arrival of
Europeans simply continued this process.7
This adaptation of guns into the immense diversity of Asian cultures produced a simi-
larly diverse set of military practices. Guns were used in every size and manner, both for
warfare and military or political symbolism. Gunpowder was manufactured in a wide
range of mixtures and granulations, with widely varied performance. In many places gun-
powder was made by hand locally, as is still done today by some communities along the
border with China and Burma. Handguns are much more forgiving of irregular powder,
and indeed handguns themselves could be manufactured local blacksmiths. By compari-
son, cannon had to be produced by a highly skilled master, and they required very care-
fully produced gunpowder to function properly and safely. It should also be pointed out
that the compound bows used by steppe people were more expensive and time-consum-
ing to produce than early handguns.
Asian societies did not suddenly begin to change their government practices in order to
use guns in their militaries, as would happen in Europe. The evidence from Asia argues
that social or cultural change is not an automatic or necessary response to guns. In some
places, guns reinforced central authority and in others undermined it. Differing terrain,
weather, military cultures, and political organizations all influenced the effects of the new
technology. Different waves of technology from different sources also presented groups
with multiple approaches to using guns in warfare. Not only was there not a single
response to guns, there was not a single instance of the introduction of guns into Asia.

Guns and Gunpowder in Europe

The development of guns, and European culture as a result of improvements in gun tech-
nology, also presents us with a seemingly straightforward narrative. Guns led to the over-
throw of feudalism and the rise of the centralized nation state. Cannon knocked down
the castles of local warlords, and only the most powerful lords, usually kings, could afford
to buy or construct cannon. This economic advantage provided the military edge to deci-
sively shift power to the central ruler. Eventually the spread of gunpowder weapons led
both to a gradual displacement of muscle powered missile weapons with handguns, and
torsion or counterpoise powered siege machinery with cannon. These technological
changes led to radical changes in military practice (professional, disciplined armies, artil-
lery fortresses, increased army size) that in turn brought about in some way the modern
nation state.8
As with the spread of gunpowder and guns in the rest of Eurasia, the process in Eur-
ope was not very simple. Some regional lords were able to afford effective siege trains,
and kings were not always wealthier than some of their subordinate lords. Europe was
also not a simple society without variation. A number of political systems functioned side
by side, and the military power of a local powerholder was not based solely on his castle.
Culture mattered in determining the ways in which battles and wars were fought. Indeed,
it seems as if it were the political and cultural changes that led to new modes of warfare.
These political and social changes succeeded because there was a new mode of warfare
now available that did not require the previous political and social organization to support
an effective military.

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822 Development and Spread of Firearms

Guns allowed or facilitated significant military, political, and social change, perhaps
enough to constitute a ‘revolution’, but did not entirely overturn the previous system.
A conspicuous aristocracy or landholding families, usually with titles, remained in power
at all levels of European society. Aristocrats still led in war, even if they now no longer
fought only other aristocrats on horseback. Yet the very fact that vast numbers of com-
moners were drawn into the armies of the European powers was an important change.
Guns made it so that there was very little difference in the fighting value of men of high
or low birth. Fighting was no longer the defining mark of the upper class.
Guns spread the means of violence throughout European society in a manner that
broke the upper class monopoly on the effective military use of force. At the same time,
as armies became ‘national’, or at least royal ⁄ imperial and not personal or local, soldiers
became directly tied to the central authorities. The central authorities developed bureau-
cracies to track their subjects in order to tax and draft them for service. These are features
we now recognize as characteristic of modern states. They are also features we recognize
as characteristic of the Chinese imperial system. Keeping in mind that there was little in
the way of real democracy in early modern Europe, the system that developed seemingly
because of the presence of guns was very Chinese.

The Revolution is Dead: Starting Over in the History of Guns and Gunpowder
The dramatic shifts in early modern European society coincided with similarly dramatic
changes in military technology and practice. Historians not unreasonably assumed that
coincidence was causation, the only question being which was cause and which effect?
Did guns bring about the modern nation state, or did the modern nation state facilitate
the use of guns on the battlefield? The main intellectual problem was to confine these
changes to the ‘early modern’ period, variously defined, and therefore to see a sudden
shift that constituted a revolution. Since the modern period was, by definition, a radical
change from the preceding medieval or renaissance periods, very little attention was paid
to what had happened in those earlier periods. Guns ended the feudal system either by
knocking down medieval castle walls or by driving knights from the battlefield, and huge
armies arose along with the trace italienne fortifications around cities.
Unfortunately for these theories, that is not what happened. Cannon did not knock
down medieval fortifications and a number of cheaper and simpler cannon defenses for
cities and fortifications were widely used.9 Moreover, Needham’s emphasis on the opti-
mal formula for gunpowder as critical for the creation of a true gun has also been proven
false. Gunpowder with much lower proportions of nitrate is perfectly capable of driving
bullets or projectiles out of barrels.10 There is therefore no particular significance to the
‘optimal’ formula for gunpowder, and it cannot be used as proof that Europe received
gunpowder from China.
We are not, however, back at square one for the very obvious reason that we now
know that some of our earlier ideas about gunpowder and guns are wrong. Most clearly,
there was no military revolution in the early modern period. The use of guns in war and
the changes that occurred as a result was a gradual process that began before the modern
period. There was nothing sudden, and in that sense ‘revolutionary’ about it. The shift to
chemically powered weapons was ‘revolutionary’ only in the sense that it was a dramatic
change in weaponry and lethality, but cold steel remained in use into the 19th century
(and even beyond if we consider the vestigial use of the bayonet in the 20th century).
China was certainly the inventor of gunpowder and guns, but a number of questions
remain to be answered with respect to the spread of gunpowder to the rest of Eurasia.

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 Development and Spread of Firearms 823

While it is possible to manufacture saltpeter almost anywhere, and there are a number
of sources of sulfur (charcoal, of course, being readily available wherever there is
wood), it may have taken Europeans and other Eurasian peoples some time to establish
sources for the constituents of gunpowder. Before they did so, they may well have
relied upon importing saltpeter from China.11 If sources were extremely limited, then
the major constraint on gun use may well have been finding enough saltpeter or sulfur.
Thus, changes in the quantity and quality of firearms used in warfare may have an
underlying industrial component. These are questions that are just beginning to be
researched.
The revolution is unquestionably dead, and this has significant implications for the
larger debates about European world dominance. Most obviously, William H. McNeill’s
‘rise of the West’ thesis begins that rise in 1500.12 Subsequent historians have largely
followed that date, both implicitly and explicitly relying upon the Military Revolution
to explain Europe’s modern world hegemony. Working from an economic and social
perspective, R. Bin Wong and Kenneth Pomeranz have pushed that date back to
1800.13 This is also supported by military and technological history. Whatever happened
in Europe to produce ‘modernity’ it was not the Military Revolution of Roberts or
Parker.

Conclusion
The export of China’s new military technology around the world was a complex pro-
cess. Several technologies reached many different societies and were received in very
different ways over the course of centuries. At the same time, and in spite of the very
limited capabilities of early gunpowder weapons, most recipients appear to have quickly
realized the military value of the technology. The adoption of China’s new military
technology was a Eurasian phenomenon that subsequently spread to the rest of the
world. The European reception of gunpowder and guns has hitherto received the most
scholarly attention because the effects of the new technology on European society were
believed to be the most dramatic. In no other society, including China’s, did guns
appear to have so great an effect outside the battlefield. And without guns Europeans
would not have become the modern, globe-spanning imperialists of early modern
times.
If the effect of guns on the world is clear, the reasons for the changes wrought by the
new technology remain murky. Guns as a technology do not and did not necessitate a
particular military, political, and cultural response. It was easy to maintain that there was
only one natural response as long as only Europeans appeared to have received and
accepted guns; now that it is clear that many Asian polities also received and accepted
guns we must seek for more answers. The European response to guns while not necessar-
ily more dramatic, was very different from that of other receiving groups. Guns changed
Europe in a very particular way, but it was a way particular to Europe and China, not
guns. European governments became more like Chinese imperial governments over the
course of the early modern period, whether because of or as a prerequisite for the full
exploitation of guns remains the subject of debate.
The trade in and spread of guns and gunpowder around the world provide historians
with a wonderful opportunity to compare and contrast the reaction and reception of this
technology across cultures. This is truly an issue of global history, involving trade,
resources, and cultures as much as military and political affairs. Despite the acknowledged
importance of gunpowder to world history, this research has only just begun.

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824 Development and Spread of Firearms

Short Biography
Peter Lorge is Assistant Professor of Medieval Chinese and Military History at Vanderbilt
University. He works on the military history of 10th and 11th century China, and is the
author of War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795 (Routledge, 2005)
and The Asian Military Revolution (Cambridge 2008). His forthcoming book is a history of
Chinese martial arts. He is currently working on a translation of Sunzi’s (Sun-tzu) Art of
War that will include the complete 11 commentaries collected in the 13th century.

Notes
* Correspondence: Vanderbilt University, VU Station B#351802, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, TN 37235-
1802, USA. Email: peter.lorge@vanderbilt.edu.

1
M. Joseph Bryant, ‘The West and the Rest Revisited: Debating Capitalist Origins, European Colonialism, and
the Advent of Modernity’, The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 31 ⁄ 4 (2006): 403–44; David Landes, The Wealth and
Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998). Bry-
ant’s views have been vigorously, and in my view effectively, challenged. See Jack Goldstone, ‘Capitalist Origins,
the Advent of Modernity, and Coherent Explanation: A Response to Joseph M. Bryant’, Canadian Journal of Sociol-
ogy, 33 ⁄ 1 (2008): 119–33; Mark Elvin, ‘Defining the Explicanda in the ‘West and the Rest’ Debate: Bryant’s
Critique and its Critics’, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 33 ⁄ 1 (2008): 168–86.
2
Kenneth Chase argues that the reception of gunpowder weapons was keyed directly to particular modes of
warfare. See Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
3
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Part 7: Military Technology, The Gunpowder Epic (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986).
4
For some of the new works on Chinese military history see Hans Van de Ven (ed.), Warfare in Chinese History,
Leiden: Brill, 2000; David Graff, Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300–900) (London: Routledge, 2001); David Graff and
Robin Higham (eds.), A Military History of China (Boulder: Westview Press, 2002); Peter Lorge, War, Politics and
Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795 (London: Routledge, 2005); Peter Worthing, A Military History of Modern
China (Santa Barbra, CA: Praeger International, 2007); Yingcong Dai, The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strat-
egy in the Early Qing (University of Washigton Press, 2009); Nicola Di Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial
China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Kenneth Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail:
Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592–1598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009); and
Peter Lorge (ed.), Debating War in Chinese History (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
5
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Part 7: Military Technology, The Gunpowder Epic (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 342–8, and 352.
6
For the conflict between China, Japan and Korea in the late 16th century, including extensive coverage of the
battlefield differences between Chinese cannon and Japanese muskets, see Kenneth Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a
Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592–1598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
2009); for the influence of Chinese guns in Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, see Laichen Sun, ‘Chinese Military
Technology Transfers from Ming China and the Emergence of Northern Mainland Southeast Asia (c. 1390–1527)’,
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34 ⁄ 3 (2003): 495–517; ‘Gunpowder Technology and Commerce in East and
Southeast Asia: Toward Defining an ‘Age of Gunpowder’ in Asia, c. 1368–1683’, in The Proceedings of the Northeast
Asia in Maritime Perspective: A Dialogue with Southeast Asia Workshop, Okinawa, Japan, 29–30 October 2004 (Osaka:
Osaka University, 2004), 174–88; ‘Chinese-style Firearms in Dai Viet (Vietnam): The Archaeological Evidence,’
Review of Culture (Macao), 27 (2008): 42–59; ‘Chinese-style Firearms in Southeast Asia: Focusing on Archeological
Evidence,’ in Michael Arthur Aung-Thwin and Kenneth Hall (eds.), New Perspectives on the History and Historiography
of Southeast Asia: Continuing Explorations (Routledge, 2011), chapter 5; and ‘Saltpeter Trade and War-making in
Early Modern Asia,’ in Fujita Kayoko, Momoki Shiro, and Anthony Reid (eds.), Offshore Asia: Maritime Interactions
in Eastern Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, forthcoming). For India, see Iqtidar Alam Khan,
Gunpowder and Firearms Warfare in Medieval India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), and more generally
on warfare in India Kaushik Roy, From Hydaspes to Kargil: A History of Warfare in India from 326 BCE to AD 1999
(New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), and Roy’s forthcoming book: War, Culture and Society in Early Modern South Asia,
1740–1849 (Routledge). On later imperial Chinese trade, war and interaction with Europeans, see Tonio Andrade,
‘Beyond Guns, Germs, and Steel: European Expansion in Eurasian Perspective, 1400–1800’, Journal of Early Modern
History, 14 (2010): 165–86; and Andrade’s forthcoming book Europe’s First War with China: How Koxinga Defeated
the Dutch and Conquered Taiwan (Princeton University Press).
7
For a fuller discussion of these issues, see Peter Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008).

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 Development and Spread of Firearms 825
8
Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 19–20, and Gunther E.
Rothenburg, ‘Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Montecuccoli, and the ‘Military Revolution’ of
the Seventeenth Century’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1986), 32–63. For the original proposal of the Military Revolution thesis see Michael Roberts, ‘The Military Revo-
lution, 1560–1660’, originally delivered as his 1955 inaugural lecture at Queens University Belfast. Initial publica-
tion as a pamphlet The Military Revolution, 1560–1660 (Belfast, 1956), then reprinted with revisions in Roberts’
Essays in Swedish History (1967). This was subsequently revised in Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military
Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 7. Parker’s
position was further discussed in Clifford Rogers (ed.), The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Trans-
formation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995). Individual contributors made their arguments for
and against the theory of a military revolution without much reference to each other. Parker’s response at the end
of the volume was disappointing; he pointed out that the objections to his theory did not agree with each other,
and even conflicted. Rather than dispute the individual objections, he implied that their overall lack of consensus
effectively canceled each other out.
9
For these two issues see, respectively, Kelly De Vries, ‘ ‘The Walls Come Tumbling Down’: The Myth of Forti-
fication Vulnerability to Early Gunpowder Weapons’, in Andrew Villalon and Donald Kagay (eds.), The Hundred
Years War, LJ (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 429–46; and Kelly De Vries, ‘Facing the New Military Technology: Non-Trace
Italienne Anti-Gunpowder Weaponry Defenses, 1350–1550’, in Brett Steele and Tamara Dorland (eds.), Heirs of
Archimedes: Science and the Art of War through the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005), 37–71.
10
Robert Douglas Smith, Rewriting the History of Gunpowder (Denmark: Middelaldercentret, 2010).
11
India is another possible source for saltpeter. On the trade in Indian saltpeter, see James W. Frey, ‘The Indian
Saltpeter Trade, The Military Revolution, and the Rise of Britain as a Global Superpower’, The Historian (Septem-
ber 2009), 507–54. Frey is certainly correct that India was a major supplier of saltpeter in the 17th century. Saltpe-
ter was extensively exported from India to Europe from the early 17th century, indeed it was a main source of
profit for the British East India Company, but it was produced in India much earlier. How much earlier remains
unclear. Gunpowder appears to have arrived with the Mongols in the 13th century. See Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Origin
and Development of Gunpowder Technology in India, A.D. 1250–1500’, Indian Historical Review, 1 (1977): 20–9.
The question is where Europe got its saltpeter in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries.
12
William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963).
13
R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 2000); Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Econ-
omy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Jack Goldstone, ‘The Rise of the West – or Not? A Revision to
Socioeconomic History’, Sociological Theory, 18 ⁄ 2 (2000): 173–94; Jack Goody, Capitalism and Modernity: The Great
Debate (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004).

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