Biting the Bullet

Vulcan ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-53
Author(s):  
Stephen Turnbull
Keyword(s):  
Military Revolution

Abstract The deployment and use of European harquebuses following their introduction to Japan in 1543 is conventionally regarded as having followed a straightforward path of enthusiastic adoption, wherein the Japanese adapted and improved the revolutionary new weapons. This paper demonstrates that the procedure was instead both haphazard and idiosyncratic. In many cases firearms were tried by Japan’s rival daimyo (lords) and then either neglected or used ineffectively, a hit-and-miss approach that can even be identified in the person of Oda Nobunaga, the man who is usually credited with Japan’s military revolution. The situation is however complicated by the nomenclature used for the guns themselves, the projectiles, and even the nature of the wounds they caused. As for their impact, until the battle of Nagashino in 1575 all the actions involving firearms took place at defended positions with almost no mention of guns being used during open battles.

Shakespeare and the ‘Military Revolution’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Pugliatti
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Technical Advances ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
The Military

This chapter recounts how developments in the technology of battle had by Shakespeare’s time caught up with even the relatively resistant, cavalry-oriented English nobility. Outlining these technical advances, it discovers numerous moments in Shakespeare indicative of popular responsiveness to war and its new face. Alone among English writers, it was Shakespeare who (repeatedly) termed cannon-fire ‘devilish’; and the chapter demonstrates how different characters in 1Henry IV are on the turn in the long evolution from (equestrian) medieval chivalry, through (treacherous, infantry-deployed) gunpowder weapons, to the perfumed post-militarist courtier. It notes Shakespeare’s staged presentation of conscription as farcically at odds with the official theory of a voluntarism for able-bodied adults. Two soldiers miserably questioning the ethics of war the night before Agincourt prove well apprised of the Christian just war theory—yet Williams shrewdly contests its exculpation of royal leaders from responsibility for their subjects’ deaths.

The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050

2002 ◽  
Vol 117 (473) ◽  
pp. 1041-1042
Author(s):  
J. Black
Keyword(s):  
Military Revolution

A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 1550-1800.

1992 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
J. Michael Hill ◽  
Jeremy Black
Keyword(s):  
European Society ◽  
Military Revolution

The Republic Was an Empire

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-155
Author(s):  
Jonathan Scott
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Union ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imperial Ideology ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Dutch Model

This chapter deals with the circumstances leading to the first of three Anglo-Dutch wars. Beginning with a proposal for political union, the chapter addresses the growing animosity between the English and the Dutch through two major themes. In the first place, from the moment of its foundation the English republic was, and behaved like, an empire. Second, it was the product, as in the Netherlands, of a rebellion and fiscal/military revolution which built the state. More than its Dutch model, the English republic entailed a sharp, indeed spectacular, break with the past, accompanied by a revolutionary as well as an imperial ideology.

scholarly journals La industria española de defensa ante los nuevos conflictos: capacidades a aportar

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-81
Author(s):  
Christian Villanueva
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Third ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
The Us ◽  
Revolution In Military Affairs ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
Criminal Groups

Conflicts such as Nagorno-Karabakh, the Donbas, Libya, Syria and Yemen have shown that even in such different scenarios, the diffusion of the key advances that were at the heart of the Revolution in Military Affairs is a fact. Moreover, most of these advances are so well established that they are now in daily use not only by many states, but also by their proxies and even by transnational terrorist and criminal groups. This phenomenon is intimately associated with the erosion of US military superiority, a country that is seeing how the People's Republic of China or the Russian Federation, but also North Korea or Iran, are capable of challenging the former superpower. In this scenario, aware of the need to compensate for the advances made by the other players, the US has launched a series of initiatives, such as the Third Offset Strategy, aimed at achieving new technological and arms developments that could lead to a new Revolution in Military Affairs or, perhaps, a full-fledged Military Revolution. In this complex context, in which conflicts fought with inherited means will converge with new weapons, systems and platforms and with the entry into service of developments that we cannot yet imagine, the Spanish defence industry will have to struggle to survive, knowing that its main customer - the Spanish Ministry of Defence - is in a very delicate situation in terms of facing this new stage.

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