Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovations and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400-1700

Carlo M. Cipolla

3.9/5 ( ratings)

So thoroughly do we assume the military and political superiority of the Western world that we forget that throughout the Middle Ages Europe was weak, vulnerable, besieged, and almost always on the defensive. This original work explains how Europe managed to become the dominant player on the world stage for four glorious centuries, effecting one of the most enormous turnarounds in history.
Professor Cipolla argues that the force that effected this enormous change was the simultaneous development of guns and sailing ships, and the fusion of the two into a weapon that swept all before it--the gun-carrying ocean-going sailing ship. Ranging in subject from bell-casting to Jesuit missions, and in area from the uncultivated woods of Sussex to the imperial court of China, this book shows how the resources of capital and labor were used to make the most of technological advances that would shape history and the world we know today.

Language: English

Pages: 192

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Sunflower University Press

Release: May 10, 1988

ISBN: 089745071X

ISBN 13: 9780897450713

Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovations and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400-1700

Carlo M. Cipolla

3.9/5 ( ratings)

So thoroughly do we assume the military and political superiority of the Western world that we forget that throughout the Middle Ages Europe was weak, vulnerable, besieged, and almost always on the defensive. This original work explains how Europe managed to become the dominant player on the world stage for four glorious centuries, effecting one of the most enormous turnarounds in history.
Professor Cipolla argues that the force that effected this enormous change was the simultaneous development of guns and sailing ships, and the fusion of the two into a weapon that swept all before it--the gun-carrying ocean-going sailing ship. Ranging in subject from bell-casting to Jesuit missions, and in area from the uncultivated woods of Sussex to the imperial court of China, this book shows how the resources of capital and labor were used to make the most of technological advances that would shape history and the world we know today.

Language: English

Pages: 192

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Sunflower University Press

Release: May 10, 1988

ISBN: 089745071X

ISBN 13: 9780897450713

More books from Carlo M. Cipolla

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000-1700

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Faith, Reason, and the Plague in Seventeenth Century Tuscany

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Clocks and Culture: 1300-1700

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Tre storie extravaganti

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Il pestifero e contagioso morbo. Combattere la peste nell'Italia del Seicento

3.5/5 ( ratings)

The Economic history of world population

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Conquistadores, pirati, mercatanti. La saga dell'argento spagnolo

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Pepper, Wine (and Wool): As the Dynamic Factors of the Social and Economic Development of the Middle Ages

Storia facile dell'economia italiana dal Medioevo a oggi

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Piccole cronache

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Miasmi e umori. Ecologia e condizioni sanitarie in Toscana nel Seicento

3.6/5 ( ratings)

The Fontana Economic History of Europe: The Middle Ages

Cristofano e la peste

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Literacy and Development in the West

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Banchieri e mercanti di Siena

Moneta e civiltà mediterranea

As leis fundamentais da estupidez humana

Il fiorino e il quattrino

Between Two Cultures: An Introduction to Economic History

Rate this book!

Write a review?