Global History and the Measures of Early Modern Technology: Europe, East Asia, and the Case of Smoothbore Ballistics

Abstract: Recent scholarship on the “rise of the West” has expanded in scope to military matters. On one side, traditionalists argue that Europe experienced more sustained innovations in “gunpowder technologies.” On the other, revisionists refute that developed areas of Eurasia—especially East Asia—were just as capable of deploying the same technologies. Valuable as the debate is, it has been waged without properly understanding the historical context of early modern technologies. This article draws on the history of technology and recognizes the “interpretive flexibility” of guns and ballistics science. First, it challenges existing comparative, quantitative indices of technological “productivity” by showing contextual differences in firearms use and production. By understanding that difference, which highlights in East Asia the possibility of marksmanship with smoothbore muskets, it further revises existing assumptions about the limits of early modern technology, which were based on European data and anachronistic analyses of nineteenth-century ballistics science.