12 October: The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation and the Rise of the West in World History

12 October 2015 - Cosmopolis & AMT Seminar

Time
15.00-17.00 hrs 

Venue
Green Room 
East Asian Library 
Arsenaalstraat 1 
Leiden

The Netherlands 

Followed by drinks at the Faculty Club. All welcome! 


More information on the events (co)organized by Cosmopolis in the academic year 2015-2016.   

On Monday 12 October 2015, from 15.00-17.00 a joint Cosmopolis & AMT Seminar will take place in the Green Room in de East Asian Library and will be followed by drinks in the Faculty Club. We have the pleasure to welcome Professor Tonio Andrade as speaker. He will give a lecture entitled ‘The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation and the Rise of the West in World History’

About the talk: Gunpowder was invented around 800 C.E., and for more than five hundred years, the Chinese and their nearest neighbors led the word in gunpowder warfare. Yet historians have long argued that it was Europeans who eventually brought guns to their most lethal potential. To what extent was this true? And if it was true, what accounts for the military Great Divergence? Many explanations have been put forward, focusing on economics, agriculture, social structure, political philosophy, etc., and in recent years debate about the so-called Great Divergence has been vehement and voluminous. I believe that warfare—and the gun in particular—may help us untangle the controversy and come to a clearer understanding of when and why China and Europe diverged.

About the speaker: Tonio Andrade is a professor of history at Emory University, and he and his family live in Decatur, Georgia. His books include The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History (2015), Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China’s First Great Victory over the West (2011), and How Taiwan became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century (2008). His articles have appeared in The Journal of Asian Studies, The Journal of World History, Late Imperial China, Itinerario, The Journal of Chinese Military History, The Journal of Medieval Military History, The Journal of Early Modern History, and other journals.