70 Chapter Threeof war began to evolve among Europeans with a rapidity that soon
raised it to unexampled heights. The history of the globe between
1500 and 1900 testified to Europe’s uniqueness in these matters, and
the arms race that continues to strain world balances in our own time
descends directly from the intense interaction in matters military that
European states and private entrepreneurs inaugurated during the
fourteenth century. What happened, and how it happened, therefore,
deserve careful analysis.
First the general background. In many parts of Europe, hard times
set in slightly before the end of the thirteenth century. Population
pressed hard against available resources in Italy and the Low Coun
tries. Wood supplies began to run short. Climate became distinctly
colder, provoking widespread famines. Harsh divergence of interest
between rich and poor, employer and employed, troubled European
society. Urban uprisings and peasants’ revolts registered some of these
difficulties, but all were eclipsed by the demographic disaster that set
in after 1346 when the Black Death first began to ravage western
Europe. Within a generation, a quarter to a third of the entire popula
tion of Europe died of bubonic infection. Recovery to pre-plague
levels did not occur until after 1480.
With such a record it is obvious that the fourteenth century was not
a very comfortable time for most Europeans. Yet there were counter
trends that in the long run proved more significant than the century’s
long catalog of disasters. A fundamental advance in naval architecture
took place between 1280 and 1330,^5 as a result of which larger, stout
er, and more maneuverable ships could for the first time sail the seas
safely in winter as well as in summer. All-weather ships were soon able
to spin a more coherent commercial web around Europe’s coastline
than had previously been possible. The price of wool in Southampton,
of cloth in Bruges, of alum in Chios, of slaves in Caffa, of spices in
Venice, and of metal in Augsburg all began to interact in a Europe-
principle of mobilizing resources for war ensued, and became applicable to peaceable as
well as to military affairs after depopulation set in during the third century A.D. It was
no accident that the major period of weapons development in the ancient Mediterra
nean world occurred in the centuries when competing rulers applied commercial prin
ciples to the tasks of military mobilization. On the remarkable development of artillery
in the Hellenistic age, see E. W. Marsden, Greek and Roman Artillery: Historical Develop
ment (Oxford, 1969); Barton C. Hacker, “Greek Catapults and Catapult Technology:
Science, Technology, and War in the Ancient World,” Technology and Culture 9 (1968):
34–50; W. W. Tarn, Hellenistic Military and Naval Development (Cambridge, 1930).
- Cf. William H. McNeill, Venice: The Hinge of Europe (Chicago, 1974), pp. 48–51.
The new ships relied mainly on crossbows for defense—probably a critical factor in
increasing the prevalence and importance of that weapon in Mediterranean warfare
from the eleventh century onwards.