ABSTRACT
The chronological overlap between this chapter and the previous one is instructive for a number of reasons. First, it serves as an important reminder that chronological divides are artificial constructions, produced for analytical purpose, and that there is a danger that these divides will be used in pursuit of a misleading degree of abstraction. Second, the divides relate in part to the analytical practice and problem of modernity. The standard narrative of military history assumes the dual analytical strands of a move toward the modern, and modernization: goal and process being interrelated. Thus, chronological divisions are employed in order to record this process. The Middle Ages, which are seen in terms of limited progress, are divided from the modern by discussion of the major changes that are held to have ushered in the latter, establishing, as they did, what has subsequently been separated out as the early modern period.
