Warfare in the east and the west over the last thousand years

Abstract

Standing in front of an old castle, Simon Schaffer explains in ten short sequences some of the major causes and consequences for the differences between the development of military technologies in eastern Asia and western Europe. The rationalized violence of the west led down one path, the centralized control of places like China in another direction. The mechanization of the world, and the possibility of building steam engines, lay along the western path.