The Main Approaches to Chronological Problems of the Military Revolution Theory in Modern English-Language and Russian Studies

The article deals with the main approaches to the dating of “military revolution” adopted in the English-language and Russian historical science. This theory considers the most important transformations that took place in the military affairs of European states, such as: the transition from a feudal-type militia to a professional regular army, the widespread introduction of handguns and artillery, the emergence of a special system of soldier training and strict military discipline, the emergence of mass armies. Taking together, these changes led to a very rapid development of European military affairs and, ultimately, to the beginning of the dominance of European powers on the world stage about a century later. The article provides an overview of the main scientific areas connected with the study of the “military revolution” theory chronology, characteristic of modern English-language historical science. English-language historiography refers to the achievements of scholars not only from the UK and the USA, but also to works of any other historians published in English. For almost two decades, the main points of the theory and its chronology from the 1550s to the 1650s did not cause any special questions or doubts. Only in the late 1970s after the deepening and development of the military revolution theory, did the historian Jeffrey Parker begin to show other approaches to both its territorial and chronological questions. As a specialist in the history of Spain, Parker himself proposed to include the Italian Wars and a number of other wars and conflicts into the military revolution chronology, gradually expanding its chronology to a two centuries period. The followers of Michael Roberts' ideas began to attribute a number of new factors to the revolutionary events: the emergence and development of fundamentally new fortification systems, which were low-vulnerable for artillery fire; the dominance of dense masses of infantry on the battlefield; an increase in state military budgets. Other historians began to apply Roberts' theory to other countries and eras. The result was the emergence of a number of original studies that spread the military revolution theory to France, England, Germany, Eastern European countries (primarily Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), Eastern countries (Ottoman Empire, India, Persia). The development of the theory that continues even these days has led to a great lengthening of the process of revolution, reaching two hundred or even more than three hundred years. The substantiation of such colossal time intervals caused a major split among military historians into supporters of the military revolution and their critics, who started writing not about “military revolution”, but about “military evolution” (this direction is not considered in this article).

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