ABSTRACT
The move away from Eurocentricity discussed in the last chapter necessarily leads to a downplaying of the role of Western military technology in military history, which very much qualifies the dominant tendency of scholarship in recent decades.3 Downplaying, however, is not the same as denial, and it would be naïve to neglect the value of military matériel, both in quality and in quantity, and thus of changes in both. The technological perspective entails work on how weapons actually worked, a subject that is more obscure than is generally appreciated,4 and were produced and improved, as well as assessing their impact within the context of a situation in which human beings develop and use technology for some purpose. This is related to the organization of resources for war and how innovations in organization are achieved. Technology was often very important in human efforts to organize resources more efficiently, but the driving force behind it was not
technology appearing from nowhere, but human needs and desires that focused minds on some kind of change where technology was a part. The role of technology in helping to create capability gaps in force projection and battlefield effectiveness is greater in naval5 and air than in land warfare, and underlines the importance of the force structures and goals stemming from policies and strategic cultures.
