Benjamin Redding
HI203 – The European World
Armies, Navies and Statebuilding
10th March 2016
The Military Revolution Debate
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Michael Roberts, ‘The Military Revolution, 1560-1660’, January 1955.
o Focus is largely on Sweden and the Dutch Republic and changes
in military size, tactics and strategy that unfolded there. First to
illustrate the relationship between these developments and state
formation.
Geoffrey Parker, ‘The “Military Revolution”, 1560-1660-a Myth?’,
1976.
o First scholar to truly question Roberts’s thesis; opens plethora of
academic discussion. Although agreeing to the principle of
Roberts’s idea.
David Parrott, The Business of War, 2012.
o States were over-reliant upon mercenaries until at least 1650,
preventing any major need for state infrastructural advancement.
Infantry revolution?
- Beginning as early as the Hundred Years War? Mass increase in size of
armies during early modern period, causes new ideas of military
thinking that consider both tactics and strategy. The demand of these
forces triggers advancement of political infrastructure in order to
accommodate them.
The trace italienne?
- Developments in artillery forced transformations in defensive
fortifications. These fortifications became so superior, that it became
almost futile to lead an offensive against them.
Gunpowder revolution?
- Increasing use of gunpowder based weapons in fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries alters how European warfare is operated. New industries based
around gunfounding, new professions, and increased importance in
royal arms houses. Importance in the development of armed navies.
Bureaucratic/financial revolution?
- Military developments result in creation of reformed or completely new
state infrastructure to accommodate military. Some allegedly even
‘bureaucratic’. These bodies would influence future political
frameworks to adopt similar structures. Cost of warfare causes
considerable national debts in the sixteenth century. Does the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witness the birth of state financial
institutions to cater for the demand of warfare? See Bank of England,
1694.
Benjamin Redding
HI203 – The European World
Clifford J. Rogers, instead of a revolution, an evolution of “punctuated
equilibrium” = ‘Evolution consisted of short bursts of rapid change
interspersed with long periods of near stasis.’
Life of the Mary Rose
1510 – Construction began in Portsmouth.
1512 – Completed, and in April, Admiral Edward Howard declared her as
flagship.
1512-14 –Fought in first major campaign against France.
1522-4 –Fought in 2nd French War.
1536 – Ship undergoes a major rebuild.
1543 – Henry VIII declared war on Francis I.
19 July 1545 – The Mary Rose sinks during the French invasion attempt
known as the Battle of the Solent.
1546 [?] – Creation of the Council of Marine Causes. A ‘bureaucratic’ strand
of government.
1982 – Wreck is salvaged.
Short Bibliography
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Jeremy Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European
Society 1550-1800 (Basingstoke, 1991).
Michael J. Braddick, ‘An English Military Revolution?’, The Historical
Journal, 36 (1993), p. 965-75.
Clifford S. L. Davies, ‘The Administration of the Royal Navy under
Henry VIII: The Origins of the Navy Board’, The English Historical
Review, 80:315 (1965), pp. 268-288.
Jan Glete, Navies and Nations: Warships, Navies and State Building in
Europe and America, 1500-1860, 2 Volumes (Stockholm, 1993).
Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch
Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500-1660 (London,
2002).
Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the
Rise of the West, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 1996).
Geoffrey Parker, ‘The “Military Revolution,” 1560-1660 – a Myth?’,
The Journal of Modern History, 48:2 (1976), pp. 195-214.
David Parrott, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military
Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2012).
Clifford J. Rodgers (ed.), The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on
the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1995).