Introduction The supposed deathbed lament of John Napier, who protested that "for the ruin and overthrow of man, there were too many devices already framed," articulates a common distaste for the application of technological and scientific genius to the business of killing. (Napier's protestations ring hollow for the man himself, who was driven by sectarian antipathy to contrive a host of strange and terrible "devices for the ruin and overthrow of man," including "devices of sailing under the water. . . a closed and fortified carriage to bring arquebusiers into the midst of an enemy. . . [and] a kind of shot for artillery. . . calculated to clear a field of four miles' circumference of all living things above a foot in height: by it, he said, the inventor could destroy 30,000 Turks, without the hazard of a single Christian." From Domestic Annals of Scotland , Robert Chambers) Although this book is not intended as a glorification of warfare and killing, it celebrates the art and technology of weapons, and admires the creativity and ingenuity of weapon makers, ancient and modern, renowned and anonymous. Through an examination of 50 of the most significant weapons in history, it explores how technology has changed warfare, and by extension the rest of human history. War may not be the most important determinant of the course of history -- its degree of influence compared to, say, economy, geography, or individual actors, is subject to debate -- but clearly it is one of the primary factors, and perhaps the one with the most apparent and easily traceable impact. It thus follows that the tools of warfare are important factors in history, especially when developments in these tools, whether incremental or revolutionary, have a material impact on the outcome of battle. So although this book looks at specific weapons in detail, exploring technical aspects of their development, mechanisms, and effects, its purview extends much farther, to encompass grand themes of history, epochal changes, and underlying currents. Through the history of the spear, for instance, we can glimpse the history of human colonization of the planet (see page 12), while the technical details of the stirrup may have had profound consequences for the course of Western civilization (see page 44). The choice of topics covered must, inevitably, be contentious and, to a degree, arbitrary: history has not been altered by exactly 50 weapons, no more or fewer. In particular the list has been composed within some fuzzy constraints, based on my personal and not always consistent interpretation of the term "weapon." I have excluded most vehicles, especially ships and planes, on the basis that these are less weapons and more platforms for weapons; but on the other hand I have included tanks and the horse. I have tried to include only specific devices or implements, excluding more general concepts such as iron, money, or railroads, all of which can claim to have been the primary determinants of military success at one time or another; on the other hand, I have included smallpox and stirrups. Each entry is dated and categorized. The dates given do not necessarily reflect the invention/origins of the weapon, but refer to its heyday -- the start of the time or period when it had its greatest impact. Sometimes this comes long after the weapon first came into being: hand grenades, for instance, date back to the earliest beginnings of gunpowder technology, but arguably became most influential as a military technology from the First World War onwards. The pike -- a long-hafted blade weapon -- is essentially a spear, and hence its origins date back to earliest prehistory, but its glory days as a weapon did not come until the Renaissance "pike and shot" era of the 16th-17th centuries. The categories used to describe each weapon -- social, technical, political, and tactical -- are likely to be as contentious as the contents list itself. Broadly speaking they describe the main ways in which the weapon impacted on history. Any battlefield weapon can be argued to have tactical significance, but some weapons have impacts beyond the battlefield; the horse and stirrup, for instance, had transformative effects on society and the economy, while the importance of ballistic missiles is probably more political than military. Excerpted from Fifty Weapons That Changed the Course of History by Joel Levy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
