ABSTRACT
There are many unaddressed questions regarding the history of gunpowder and firearms in South Asia. When and from where came the first firearms to the sub-continent? Were they already present in India during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and, if so, how did these differ from those introduced from the West around the beginning of the sixteenth century? Why was the military performance of the Indian powers in their struggle against the English and French during the second half of the eighteenth century so abysmal? This brings us to the central question: What prevented the Indians from adopting the latest European technology of firearms represented by the cast-iron field-guns and the firelocks or muskets fitted with flintlocks, which were, in all probability, familiar to them since the middle of the seventeenth century?
