ABSTRACT
Gunpowder played an important role along with other interrelated factors in the rise of Muscovy as a military power during the early modern period. Kaushik Roy’s chapter shows the transition of Russia under the tsars from a minor power to a major power in Eastern Europe. In the fourteenth century, Muscovy was threatened by the steppe nomads in the south and by Poland–Lithuania in the north. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Muscovite ground force experienced a transition. From a cavalry-centric army, it became a Western-modelled infantry heavy force. The infantry’s staying power was supplemented by field artillery. Nevertheless, for campaigning in South Russia, cavalry remained important. More importantly, the construction of an authoritarian militaristic polity by the successive tsars enabled the resource-poor Muscovy to maintain its ever-expanding costly military machine.
