Sites of Military Science and Technology

Abstract

It is a sad historical fact that during the Renaissance, one of the richest and most dynamic intellectual periods in Europe’s history, there was also almost continuous warfare across the entire continent. The English and the Scots fought, the English and the French fought, the English fought with the Burgundians and the Spanish, and the English fought among themselves (the War of the Roses); the French also fought among themselves, the French and the Burgundians fought, the French and the Italians fought, the French and the Germans fought, and the French even fought with the Portuguese; the Burgundians and the Swiss fought, the Burgundians fought with the Germans, and the Burgundians fought on numerous occasions with their Low Country subjects; the Germans fought with the Italians, and the Germans fought among themselves; the Italians fought among themselves; the various Iberian kingdoms fought among themselves and against Spanish Muslims; the Danes fought with the Swedes, and both fought with the Norwegians; the Teutonic Knights fought with the Livonians and the Russians; and everyone tried (in vain) to fight against the Ottoman Turks. These wars would continue sporadically throughout the early modern period until they culminated in another period of continuous European warfare from 1688 to 1815, dates that correspond to another rich and dynamic intellectual period, the Enlightenment. Unsurprisingly, this state of almost continuous warfare bore important fruits in the theory and the practice of the military arts, encouraged by both political and military leaders. Indeed, the cultivation of these fields was necessary for the survival of these leaders in an age some historians have called “The Military Revolution.”

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