The Military Revolution, Administrative Development, and Cultural Change in Early Modern Russia

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall Poe
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Administrative Development ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
The Military

The Military Revolution, Administrative Development, and Cultural Change in Early Modern Russia

1998 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall Poe
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Functional Differentiation ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Large Network ◽  
Russian Government ◽  
Military Reform ◽  
Administrative Development ◽  
Organic Solidarity ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
The Military

AbstractAmong Western historians it is generally agreed that the "military revolution" spurred bureaucratization, and that bureaucracy in turn caused social and cultural change. This essay examines the links between military reform, administrative development, and cultural change in the Muscovite context. It argues that the "Europeanizing" military reforms of the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century indeed had a significant impact on both Russian government and culture, at least among the service elite. In the era of Ivan III (1462-1505), the Muscovite court was a moderately-sized gathering of unlettered warriors who, together with a small group of scribes, managed a considerable principality in northeastern Rus'. A bit more than a century later the court was a much more complex entity comprising a well-stratified political elite, a system of functionally differentiated chancelleries, and a large network of gunpowder military forces. Behind this transformation were successive waves of military reform, waves which brought with them well-elaborated literate administration. The coming of literate administration to the governing class-the court elite, chancellery personnel, and higher gentry-had four effects: integration on an imperial level; increased status and functional differentiation; a slow movement from mechanical to organic solidarity; and, finally, the impersonalization of social identity.

The Consequences of the Military Revolution in Muscovy: A Comparative Perspective

1996 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 603-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall Poe
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
World History ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Revolution

What has been called the early modern military revolution may be described most simply as the replacement of small cavalry forces by huge gunpowder infantry armies. The revolution was a diffusionary process with a relatively well-understood chronology and geography. The innovations at its core began in northern Italy in the later fifteenth century and spread throughout central, northern, and eastern Europe in the three centuries that followed. Seen in this way, it was a unique and unitary phenomenon. Thus we speak ofthemilitary revolution, an episode in world history, instead of several different revolutions in the constituent parts of Europe. Nonetheless, the course and impact of the revolution were different in the regions it eventually affected.

scholarly journals Myths of military revolution: European expansion and Eurocentrism

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.C. Sharman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Western Expansion ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
Military Innovations ◽  
The Military ◽  
Social Root

This article critiques explanations of the rise of the West in the early modern period premised on the thesis that military competition drove the development of gunpowder technology, new tactics, and the Westphalian state, innovations that enabled European trans-continental conquests. Even theories in International Relations and other fields that posit economic or social root causes of Western expansion often rely on this “military revolution” thesis as a crucial intervening variable. Yet, the factors that defined the military revolution in Europe were absent in European expeditions to Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and conventional accounts are often marred by Eurocentric biases. Given the insignificance of military innovations, Western expansion prior to the Industrial Revolution is best explained by Europeans’ ability to garner local support and allies, but especially by their deference to powerful non-Western polities.

scholarly journals Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
The Military ◽  
Country People ◽  
Scholarly Attention

During the early modern centuries, gunpowder and artillery revolutionized warfare, and armies grew rapidly. To sustain their new military machines, the European rulers turned increasingly to their civilian subjects, making all levels of civil society serve the needs of the military. This volume examines civil-military interaction in the multinational Swedish Realm in 1550–1800, with a focus on its eastern part, present-day Finland, which was an important supply region and battlefield bordered by Russia. Sweden was one of the frontrunners of the Military Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries. The crown was eager to adapt European models, but its attempts to outsource military supply to civilians in a realm lacking people, capital, and resources were not always successful. This book aims at explaining how the army utilized civilians – burghers, peasants, entrepreneurs – to provision itself, and how the civil population managed to benefit from the cooperation. The chapters of the book illustrate the different ways in which Finnish civilians took part in supplying war efforts, e.g. how the army made deals with businessmen to finance its military campaigns and how town and country people were obliged to lodge and feed soldiers. The European armies’ dependence on civilian maintenance has received growing scholarly attention in recent years, and Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland brings a Nordic perspective to the debate.

The Sixteenth-Century World War and the Roots of the Modern World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Burke
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Northwest Africa ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The Military

This essay examines several world historical events from an unfamiliar perspective, that of sixteenth-century Morocco. It seeks to provide a new way of conceptualizing empires, one that builds upon recent work, while imagining them differently. As a key player in the struggle over the western Mediterranean, Morocco’s neglected history has much to tell us about both the power and the limits of the military revolution of early modern times. Moreover, Morocco’s success in withstanding Iberian efforts to extend the reconquista to Northwest Africa served to deflect the expansionary energies across the Atlantic and around Africa. More generally, Morocco provides a useful vantage point for thinking about the emergence of the international structures of power that define the early modern world.

The Consequences of the Military Revolution in Muscovy in Comparative Perspective

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall Poe
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
World History ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Revolution

What has been called the early modern military revolution may be described most simply as the replacement of small cavalry forces by huge gunpowder infantry armies. The revolution was a diffusionary process with a relatively well-understood chronology and geography. The innovations at its core began in northern Italy in the later fifteenth century and spread throughout central, northern, and eastern Europe in the three centuries that followed. Seen in this way, it was a unique and unitary phenomenon. Thus we speak of the military revolution, an episode in world history, instead of several different revolutions in the constituent parts of Europe. Nonetheless, the course and impact of the revolution were different in the regions it eventually affected.

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