A Wider Perspective: War outside the West

Myths of military revolution: European expansion and Eurocentrism

“…South Asia has a particular significance, in being for Parker and others the primary theater of war between Western and non-Western powers prior to 1800 outside Europe (i.e. excluding the centuries-long struggle with the Ottomans discussed later), given its demographic weight relative to other regions (Black, 2004a: 221; Parker, 1996 [1988]: 136). Parker (2002) and others stress the importance of trace italienne fortresses in allowing European forces in the Indian Ocean littoral to hold out against much larger attacking forces, yet these are said to require very large forces to be effective, forces that, as discussed earlier, were simply not available.…”

“…To make up for their lack of numbers, described earlier, local allies were decisive for European efforts to establish and defend their presence overseas (Black, 2004a: 221; Thompson, 1999: 144). Cortes was supported by tens of thousands of warriors from the local rivals of the Aztecs in the climactic battles.…”

“…In the European context, the Ottomans have been referred to as the superpower of the early modern era (Kadercan, 2013/2014: 130; Murphey, 1999: 53). Yet, despite being judged as too backward to fit the modernizing military revolution template, the Ottomans did not seem to suffer any loss of inherent competitiveness against Western forces (Black, 2004a: 218; 2004b: 76, 84; Guilmartin, 1995: 283). For all the explosive growth in the territory under the sway of Western European powers in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Balkans and North Africa saw mainly European defeats at the hands of Ottoman and other Islamic opponents (Black, 1998: 44–46; Cook, 1994).…”

“…Andrade (2013:11) estimates that there are “two or three orders of magnitude” more work on Europe than any other region (see also Glete, 2000: 11; Subrahmanyam, 2006). Jeremy Black (2004a: 212) describes how this bias plays out in history: [The] tendency [is] first to focus largely, if not exclusively, on Western developments, and secondly to consider those elsewhere in terms of Western paradigms.… Thus, for example, the focus in discussion of military revolutions is the West, the definitions are Western, and in so far as non-Western powers feature it is to record the success of their Western counterparts.…”