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The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe. Edited by Clifford J. Rogers. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8133-2053-4. Index. Pp. xi, 387. $24.95.
The "Military Revolution" as a term for the changes in the early modern world brought about by the advent and proliferation of gunpowder weapons has become so widely used among historians, military or otherwise, that even I, an opponent to the thesis, must now accept it as common parlance. This collection of articles is, if nothing else, evidence of its continuing popularity.
Introduced by Michael Roberts in a lecture which was later published as a pamphlet, the "Military Revolution" was little heeded as a historical concept until the publication of The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 by Geoffrey Parker in 1988. Parker's work, which both drew on and disagreed with his article written in 1976, "The `Military Revolution,' 1560-166-a Myth?" both introduced Roberts's thesis to a new generation of military historians and popularized it among all historians. The result is that it is now mentioned as much in World/Western Civilization...