Gunpowder empires

The Gunpowder Empires is a term used to describe the Ottoman , Safavid and Mughal empires. Each of these three empires had considerable military success using the newly developed firearms , especially cannon and small arms, in the course of their empires.

Gunpowder Empires is a term used by some historians to describe the rise of early modern empires that were built or maintained by the use of gunpowder weapons through a central authority. McNeill noted that by about the mid-15th century the advent of new, powerful guns upset the traditional balance of power between attackers and defenders "first in Western Europe , where these guns were developed, and then in the other parts of the civilized world". Wherever rulers were able to "monopolize the new artillery , they were able to unite large territories into new, or consolidated, empires." This hegemonic process occurred at the European periphery, including the oversea colonies, and across much of the Islamic world and Asia . In Western Europe itself military and political rivalry, driven by continuous improvements in warfare, was too intense to allow one power to dominate the others. Hodgson labelled three Islamic polities, the Ottoman , Safavid and Mughal empires as "gunpowder empires" because they supposedly monopolized the manufacture of guns and artillery in their areas which aided in centralizing and consolidating their empires. However the concept of "gunpowder empires" as "empires created by gunpowder weapons" has been criticized by Douglas E. Streusand as neither accurate or appropriate explanation for the political success of the Islamic empires. According to Streusand, the gunpowder-empires hypothesis wrongly implies a fundamental similarity between the three empires.

Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires from the 16th to 18th centuries This article is about the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires. The gunpowder empires , or Islamic gunpowder empires , is a collective term coined by Marshall G. McNeill at the University of Chicago, referring to three early modern Muslim empires: the Ottoman Empire , Safavid Empire and the Mughal Empire , which flourished between the mid-16th and early 18th centuries. These three empires were among the most stable empires of the early modern period , leading to commercial expansion, and patronage of culture, while their political and legal institutions were consolidated with an increasing degree of centralization. They stretched from Central Europe and North Africa in the west to Bengal and Arakan in the east. McNeill expanded on the history of gunpowder use across multiple civilizations including East Asian, European, and South Asian powers in his 1993 work The Age of Gunpowder Empires . Vast amounts of territory were conquered by the gunpowder empires with the use and development of the newly invented firearms , especially cannon and small arms, in the course of imperial expansion. Like in Europe , the introduction of gunpowder weapons prompted changes such as the rise of centralized monarchical states. A mufti sprinkling a cannon with rosewater According to G. Hodgson , in the gunpowder empires these changes went well beyond military organisation. The Mughals, based in the Indian subcontinent , inherited in part the Timurid Renaissance , and are recognised for their lavish architecture and for having heralded in Bengal an era of what some describe as proto-industrialization . The Safavids created an efficient and modern state administration for Iran and sponsored major developments in the fine arts. The sultans of the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Kaysar-i Rûm , controlled the holy cities of Mecca and Medina , and hence were the recognised Caliphs of Islam; their powers, wealth, architecture, and various contributions significantly influenced the course of Islamic world history. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art . Modern world system and Indian proto-industrialization: Bengal 1650-1800 .