Download PDF | Gábor Ágoston - Guns for the Sultan_ Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire-Cambridge University Press (2008).
301 Pages
Guns for the Sultan Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire Gábor Ágoston's book contributes to an emerging strand of military history, which examines organized violence as a challenge to early modern states, their societies and economies. His is the first to examine the weapons technology and armaments industries of the Ottoman Empire, the only Islamic empire that threatened Europe on its own territory in the age of the Gunpowder Revolution.
Based on extensive research in the Turkish archives, the book affords new insights regarding the early success and subsequent failure of an Islamic empire against European adversaries. It demonstrates Ottoman flexibility and the existence of an early modern arms market and information exchange across the cultural divide, as well as Ottoman self-sufficiency in weapons and arms production well into the eighteenth century.
Challenging the sweeping statements of Eurocentric and Orientalist scholarship, the book disputes the notion of Islamic conservatism, the Ottomans' supposed tech- nological inferiority and the alleged insufficiencies in production capacity. This is a provocative, intelligent and penetrating analysis which successfully contends traditional perceptions of Ottoman and Islamic history. It is certain to become a classic in the field. Gábor Ágoston is Associate Professor in the Department of History, Georgetown University. His previous publications include Hungary in the Seventeenth Century (with Teréz Oborni, 2000).
Introduction:
firearms and armaments industries The "discovery" of gunpowder, the appearance of firearms, and especially their mass employment in warfare was one of the most significant developments of the late Middle Ages. Gunpowder - a mixture of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal - was first made in China in the seventh or eighth century AD and the first proper firearms were manufactured there from the 1280s onward.
The first firearm "had three basic features: its barrel was of metal; the gunpowder used in it was rather high in nitrate; and the projectile totally occluded the muzzle so that the powder charge could exert its full propellant effect." Within decades, gunpowder weapons had reached both Islamdom and Christian Europe, and by the first decades of the fourteenth century firearms were being used in European battlefields and sieges. By mid-century, firearms had reached Hungary and the Balkans, and by the 1380s the Ottomans were also acquainted with the new weapon. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople was but one dramatic illustration of how, by the 1450s, cannons had become a decisive weapon in siege warfare. In the early fifteenth century, cannons were frequently being used aboard European ships and towards the end of that century shipboard artillery had already proved its value on the Mediterranean war galleys.2
The appearance of firearms and their mass employment in battles, sieges and by navies significantly changed the way states and empires waged wars. In order to remain militarily competitive in the gunpowder age, states needed cannons, cannon-proof fortifications, a sizable infantry armed with handguns, as well as navies with shipboard artillery. Organized violence between states and empires,geographical exploration and overseas expansion led to an unprecedented arms race. In order to participate effectively in the attendant inter-state rivalry, mons archs had to create their indigenous weapons industries or supply the necessary weaponry and ammunition otherwise. In the long run, the adequate and steady supply of weaponry and military hardware proved to be more important than (usually temporary) technological or tactical advantages.
To be sure, superior- ity in weapons technology and tactics could occasionally have determined the outcome of individual battles or sieges, although weaponry in itself was hardly sufficient to win the day. However, states and empires that wanted to achieve long- standing military prominence and maintain military pressure for decades had to possess weaponry and military hardware in substantial quantities and of acceptable quality.
Arms and ammunition production required investment in capital, manpower, organizational skills and so forth. Apart from paying and feeding the troops, arms production and shipbuilding constituted the most burdensome challenge for early modern states, for "gunpowder weapons and their services may have added a third to the costs of a campaign." Thus, the examination of the supply of weapons can significantly enhance our understanding regarding the military capabilities of states and empires. Comparative data and analyses concerning the supply of weaponry and ammunition of competing empires in the gunpowder age might illuminate issues pertaining to larger questions, such as the shifts in the balance of power. The aim of this book is to understand the Ottoman weapons industry, the systems and methods by which the Sultans procured their armaments.
The bulk of the content examines the Ottoman armaments industry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was not only a crucial period of Ottoman conquests and of subsequent setback, but also an age which at least in the major European theaters of war where the Empire was drawn into conflict - was characterized by siege warfare rather than by pitched battles. In these sieges the supply of artillery and gunpowder was a crucial element of success, as was the defense of the Ottoman frontiers against the Sultans' Hungarian, Habsburg, Venetian and Safavid adversaries.7 Gunpowder technology, the Military Revolution thesis and the Ottomans As can be seen from the two quotations that open this book, contemporary politi- cians, Europeans and Ottomans alike, were well aware of the significance of firearms.
The spread of gunpowder weapons stirred passionate debate among intel- lectuals of the Renaissance. Although no comparable debate in the contemporane- ous Ottoman literature is detectable, it is noteworthy that the seventeenth-century Ottoman historian Ibrahim Peçevi included a small section about the manufactur- ing of black powder in his chronicle. Writing around 1640, Peçevi repeated the well-known European myth about Berthold Schwarz, perhaps following one of his Hungarian sources. What is more interesting, though, is the fact that Peçevi discussed the invention of "black powder" together with that of printing."
Many European historians have considered the "discovery" of gunpowder and that of printing as the two most significant inventions of the late Middle Ages. Indeed, historians, especially in Europe, have long been fascinated with the "gun- powder epic." Many of them argued that "gunpowder blasted the feudal strongholds and the ideas of their owners," a notion that was shared by such authorities as David Hume (1711-76) and Adam Smith (1723-90).
Johan Huizinga went even further when he wrote that "the rebirth of the human spirit dates from the discovery of firearms. According to one of the most influential historical theses of the late twentieth century Geoffrey Parker's Military Revolution theory gunpowder weapons had far-reaching consequences regarding state formation and the power balance between states and civilizations. Parker substantially modified Michael Roberts's original conception of the Military Revolution. In Parker's version of the thesis, gunpowder weaponry and military technology occupy center stage. Since only monarchs possessed the necessary financial and organizational means to invest in cannon-proof fortresses (trece italienne) and to establish and main- tain artillery corps of sufficient size to besiege these fortifications successfully.
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