ABSTRACT
The bells that rung out across Christendom to celebrate the total defeat of the Turks outside Vienna by German, Austrian and Polish forces in 1683, proclaimed relief, asserted the importance of the struggle between Christendom and Islam and truly marked one of the most overused of terms, a turning point. As such, this battle is an important aspect of another overused concept, an early modern military revolution, with specific reference to conflict between Westerners and non-Westerners. Although the general application of the concept is questionable, there is, however, no doubt of the importance of this warfare both for the societies directly involved and, indirectly, for states at a distance. Employing a geographical typology, this conflict can be divided between warfare around the margins of Western power in Eurasia and that involving Western forces at a distance from these margins. The first ranged from the vulnerable Western bases in north-west Africa, such as Tangier1 and Oran, both of which were lost, through the Mediterranean, where Candia, the last Venetian position in Crete, finally fell to the Turks in 1669, along the land frontiers between the Ottoman (Turkish) empire and its Christian neighbours – Venice, Austria, Poland and Russia, and, albeit more marginally, between Russia and its Asian neighbours, particularly Persia and China.
