To anyone versed in the “Great Divergence” debate, the framing question of Tonio Andrade's new book rings familiar—“how did the once marginal states of Europe surge to global power and predominance after 1500?” (p. 1). But whereas approaches to this well-worn question have hitherto focused principally on economic dynamics, Andrade offers a new analytical framework: global military history—or what he calls “a global warring states perspective” (p. 10). In particular, Andrade trains his analytical lens on the evolution of gunpowder warfare, a topic that has long garnered scattered attention but has yet to be systematically integrated into global history.
By tracing “the full sweep” of the gunpowder age—from its inception in China in the ninth century through the industrialization of warfare in the nineteenth—Andrade seeks to “bring Asian and European military history into conversation, asking not just how China diverged from the West but also how the West diverged from...