ABSTRACT
Beginning the chronological treatment at this period in time brings together the related issues of modernity, the nature and impact of Western expansion, the global role of firearms, and the consequences of printing. The latter is of particular relevance as it transformed the writing about war in Europe, though not in China where printing was invented. On the world scale, printing powerfully accentuated the contrast between the military memory in the European world, where printing developed most rapidly and comprehensively, and elsewhere – although the oldest extant fully-fledged drill manual for firearms was Japanese, Inatomi teppô densho, appearing in 1595.
