ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the impact of firearms in warfare among the gunpowder states of maritime Asia in three parts: first, firearms played a crucial role in the rise of new states from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries; second, foreigners with social skills in handling firearms became more important military resources as firearms became a more significant part of warfare; third, the role of firearms in state consolidation and the rise of new empires from the seventeenth century. Even so, there were institutional and cultural obstacles to the efficacious adoption of gunpowder technology. In particular, the effort by Asian courts to attempt to tightly control arsenals of firearms to avoid domestic threats meant that firearms were never as important in waging interstate warfare there as they would be in the various wars between early modern European states. Nor did Asian states develop the same strong bureaucracies as Western states to support gunpowder warfare, although the control mechanisms set up to limit access to firearms in the kingdom helped to make them more authoritarian.
