Technologies as an accelerator of war, or war as a booster of technological innovations? Possible analogy between the Thirty Years' War and the Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592-1598
Abstract
Three decades before the Estates' Uprising in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, a conflict called Imjin War has taken place in the Far East. Significant feature of this seven-year-long conflict became a mass employment of tanegashima weapons - matchlock configured arquebus firearms with smooth-drilled barrel.
The employment of these weapons by Japanese forces first shocked the Korean-Chinese coalition but the adaptation to a new type and dynamics of combat was then very fast. Similarly as in Europe, this change of mechanism of the fighting dynamics eventually resulted in a sort of military revolution, which was determined by the specifics of the East Asian region.
The aim of this contribution is to introduce in a parallel two seemingly different military conflicts and to show how the adaptation of a new technology can determine and very quickly change the tactic concept and creation of training manuals, and in a broader sense of the word also the military thought.