Gunpowder and firearms : warfare in medieval India
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Gunpowder and firearms : warfare in medieval India
(Aligarh historians society series)
Oxford University Press, c2004
Available at 5 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
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Note
Bibliography: p. [227]-246
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Gunpowder is widely recognized as an important technological factor behind political and even social change. This book surveys the history of gunpowder and firearms in India, tracing their arrival in the thirteenth century from China and in the late fifteenth century from Europe and examining the role played by the Mongols and the Portuguese in this transmission. Alongside this narraive of the diffusion of firearms, the book looks at their impact on the nature of the regional states in the fifteenth century and on the Mughal empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The hypothesis of "gunpowder empires" advanced by Hodgson is tested by a study of the development of muskets and the increasing potency of musketry. The book goes on to consider the growing obsolescence of the Mughal firearms from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards, as seen in the failure of Mughal artilery against the Persians at Qandahar (1652-3) and Karnal (1739).
Simultaneaously, it examines the extent of the dissemination of muskets among peasant communities and relates this development to the growing militancy of certain sections of the rural population and the subsequent decline of the Mughal empire.
Table of Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- INTRODUCTION
- 1. Introdution of Gunpowder and Early Firearms in Inida During the Thirteenth Century
- 2. Gunpowder Artilery in India During the Fifteenth Century
- 3. Indian Response to European Gunnery: 1498-1556
- 4. Artilery in Mughal India: 1556-1739
- 5. The Nature of Handguns in Mughal India: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- 6. The Matchlock as an Instrument of Centralization
- 7. Muskets and Peasant Resistance
- CONCLUSION
- APPENDIX A: USE OF FIREARMS BY THE MONGOLS IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD DURING THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
- APPENDIX B: MUHAMMAD QASIM FIRISHTA ON THE INTRODUCTION OF FIREARMS IN THE BAHAMANI KINGDON
- APPENDIX C: THE ALLEGED PRESENCE OF CANNON IN THE DELHI SULTANATE DURING THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES: AKRAM MAKHDOMMEE'S AND ADU ZAFAR NADVI'S THESES
- APPENDIX D: RE-EXAMINING THE ORIGIN AND THE GROUP IDENTITY OF THE SO-CALLED IPURIBAS, 1500-1800
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- INDEX
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