{"id":886,"date":"2016-02-03T18:06:48","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T18:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emoryhistorynews.wordpress.com\/?p=886"},"modified":"2016-02-03T18:06:48","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T18:06:48","slug":"andrades-the-gunpowder-age-reviewed-in-the-wall-street-journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/2016\/02\/03\/andrades-the-gunpowder-age-reviewed-in-the-wall-street-journal\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrade’s ‘The Gunpowder Age’ Reviewed in The Wall Street Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonio Andrade<\/a>‘s\u00a0The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History<\/a><\/em> (Princeton 2016) was reviewed by Jeffrey Wasserstrom in\u00a0The Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/em>on January 29, 2016. The article, available here<\/a>, is titled “Flying Rats and Festive Fireworks.” Wasserstrom’s appreciative review\u00a0describes the\u00a0The Gunpowder Age\u00a0<\/em>as marking\u00a0“a major contribution to a significant area of academic concern while opening the eyes of non-specialists.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The description<\/a>\u00a0of The Gunpowder Age\u00a0<\/em>from\u00a0Princeton University Press follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839\u201342. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age<\/i>, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind?<\/p>\n

Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, as Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s\u2014much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China\u2014like Europe\u2014was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world\u2019s great military powers.<\/p>\n

By showing that China\u2019s military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age<\/i> challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonio Andrade‘s\u00a0The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History (Princeton 2016) was reviewed by Jeffrey Wasserstrom in\u00a0The Wall Street Journal\u00a0on January 29, 2016. The article, available here, is titled “Flying Rats and Festive Fireworks.” Wasserstrom’s appreciative review\u00a0describes the\u00a0The Gunpowder Age\u00a0as marking\u00a0“a major contribution to a significant area of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1282,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18,19,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty","category-publications","category-research","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}