In Firearms: A Global History to 1700, Kenneth Chase investigates why Europe perfected firearms when the Chinese invented them. Kenneth Chase is an attorney at law who received his PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University. He uses primary sources in the form of texts and paintings as well as secondary sources in this monograph to trace the origin and spread of firearms. He also uses these sources to characterize militaries and determine why they used or did not use firearms. Chase dismisses the notion that the discrepancy between Eastern and Western firearms development was the result of cultural aversion. If anything, he argues that Europeans were more averse to firearms due to its association to Satan and a general …show more content…
Some errors that could arise from this type of source include biases and limited points of views that lead to misinformation. However, using secondary sources does not detract from Chase’s ability to construct a general theory about firearms development, because a general theory does not require absolute accuracy. Chase also uses many paintings to show military formations in past societies and what weapons they possessed. The conclusions he makes are rational and the inclusion of the paintings provides visually engaging primary sources that further justify Chase’s thesis. Using more primary sources would strengthen the credibility of his descriptions of firearms development in the world, but his construction of a rational theory based on known facts is enough to give this work acceptable credibility. Firearms: A Global History to 1700 provides a knowledgeable narrative on why there were such stark differences between the militaries of Europe and Asia, as well as other societies in and around the Oikoumene. This monograph will appeal to anyone interested in learning about the development of firearms and its close relationship with
During the years leading up to and during the American Civil War there were a number of advancements in firearms technology. This paper will focus on a few of those advancements, namely the inventions of the Minié ball, the Spencer and Henry repeating rifles, and of the Gatling gun.
I first read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel in the Fall 2003 based on a recommendation from a friend. Many chapters of the book are truly fascinating, but I had criticisms of the book back then and hold even more now. Chief among these is the preponderance of analysis devoted to Papua New Guinea, as opposed to, say, an explanation of the greatly disparate levels of wealth and development among Eurasian nations. I will therefore attempt to confine this review on the "meat and potatoes" of his book: the dramatic Spanish conquest of the Incas; the impact of continental geography on food production; and finally, the origins of the Eurasian development of guns, germs, and steel. In terms of structure, I will first summarize the book's arguments, then critically assess the book's evidentiary base, and conclude with an analysis of how Guns, Germs, and Steel ultimately helps to address the wealth question.
Cornell, Saul. A Well-regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.
USA has divided into two separated nations because of gun ownership. This issue has been questioned in terms of people’s freedom to buy guns and an indiscriminate use of them. In addition, Americans have claimed that they’ve got strong reasons, which allow them be armed as a matter of civic duty. For ...
As previously stated, nations often base themselves and thusly their common laws off the chosen philosophy of the country. For instance, in the United States of America, police officers carry guns. In Great Britain, however, officers are banned from carrying extremely harmful weapons such as firearms and instead carry the classic truncheon. To the average citizen of each of these countries, the policy that their law enforcement adheres to makes perfect and logical sense, while the opposite country’s policy seems to be either dangerous and overly violent or as overly merciful. However, the reason as to why these two sibling nations differ so greatly comes down to one simple thing: the gun policy imposed on American officers are different from those used in Britain because of conflicting common philosophic beliefs found in both of the countries, where America takes on a naturalistic, believing that humans are inherently evil, viewpoint and Britain sports a rather rationalistic, where in which hum...
history with a right to bear arms. Finally one can see the conflict of views
Cornell, Saul. A Well-regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.
As long as there have been men and women on this planet there has been violence. This is an immutable fact. In all likelihood, there will always be violence within the human race. Robert Heinlein said, "Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms." Indeed this is plausible. The premise of these arguments is that giving a creature with a proven track record of violence a phenomenally powerful tool of destruction is less than wise. As an alternative, this paper proposes to limit access to such powerful devices (semi-automatic firearms) through the use of tracking methods, restricted sales, and heavier penalties for illegal possession of firearms. The firearms most specifically addressed are semi-automatic weapons including repeating rifles and handguns.
Long distance weapons were essential to European combat. The main long distance weapons used by Europeans during that time were the longbow and the crossbow. Each form of weaponry had its unique advantages and their pejorative. The long bow (shown in figure 1) was the original form of distance weapons. The term ‘bow’ means to be made from wood, iron or steel. The Welsh, who inhabited England, were the first people to use longbows. Longbows were 6-7 feet long and had a range of 250 yards, and still had the ability to pierce a knight’s armor (Byam 12). A well trained archer could shot 10- 12 arrows in a single minute. Despite these pro’s the longbow had a lot of disadvantages as well. One draw back was only skilled archers, who were costly to train, could use a longbow. Another disadvantage was it didn’t have a ready loaded arrow (Edge 34). The crossbow (shown in figure 2) on the other had been emphatically different. The crossbow had a span of 2-3 feet and could kill a knight on horseback with one shot, because of good aim (Byam 30). Crossbows had ready loaded projectiles, while the longbow didn’t and the crossbow could be used by anyone since it didn’t require any skill. The crossbow did have a down side though, it had slow reloaded because of a crank and it was expensive. Crossbows were also used for other thi...
Guns are viewed as sacred symbol, as it should be, as they took a significant role in America gaining its independence. Gun ownership is very common in the United States. According to recent reports, there is enough nonmilitary guns in the country to arm every man, woman, and child, with a few million weapons left over (Keidan, 2014). With so many guns in our nation, they affect many different aspects of our lives. Some think they affect life in a positive way and that we should have the right but at the same time, the other side of the debate, they say that we need more gun control. So what is more correct, gun rights or gun control? In this paper I will discuss the history of the gun law, if citizens have the right to own guns, how guns are
“Gun Law European Style.” Time Europe Vol. 159 No. 19. 13 May 2002. Web. 9 Feb.
In this article the author Fawn Johnson gives us a brief look of what goes on during the great gun control debate. This article gives us a look at the gun control proposals, from American’s not bein...
America has always been about guns, you see it on TV, in movies, video games, everywhere one looks they see a gun. It makes one wonder what it would have been like to live back then to see what it was like to live in a world with few weapons. One would think that gun violence would have been non-existent unlike now when it is everywhere. The author also discusses how during the period of the revolution through the war of 1812, all state governments demanded that all militia members give detailed reports on their military readiness. These reports were know more accurately a...
The story of European small arms begins with the cannon. The cannon, first used in the 1346 Battle of Cressey, was gradually reduced in size over the next three centuries until a cannon small enough to attach to the end of a stick emerged (Ferris, 3). This innovation gave birth to the gun, an invention that revolutionalized European warfare. Because the gun was invented for primarily military purposes, Europeans used it more in battlefields than on hunting grounds, where bows and arrows still dominated (Ferris, 3). When the Europeans introduced small arms into Inuit culture, however, they became instruments of seal hunting. The Inuit’s original seal hunting methods involved harpooning the animals through a hole in the ice. Seal carcass retrieval was difficult, so the Inuit designed their harpoons specifically for efficient recovery of seal bodies. Their engineering was so successful that only one seal body sunk out of every twenty (Ehrlich, 216).
The invention and innovation of small firearms spans throughout the world and throughout multiple centuries. The main inventions during the early phases of small arms development quickly gave way to the next innovation, although they were slow to be adapted to military use due to the cost of their production. As time went on these innovations became more and more stagnant to the point of there being no major innovations in the field for close to two hundred years. However, after this stagnant period, there began another period of advanced innovation in the area of small arms technology. The goal of this essay is to understand and dissect the innovations that occurred during these two periods of advanced innovation and the cultural and historical factors that lead to them.