Asian potentates and European artillery in the 16th–18th centuries: a footnote to Gibson-Hill
C.R. Boxer, writing in 1965, surveys the demand for European cannon and gunners across Monsoon Asia—from Persia to Japan—over the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, arguing that while Asian rulers eagerly acquired European artillery for defence, prestige, and sacro-magical purposes, they largely failed to convert this access into sustained military effectiveness. The article is explicitly framed as a “footnote” to C.A. Gibson-Hill’s 1953 study of Dutch cannon in Malaya, broadening that localised inquiry into a comparative pan-Asian context.
Summary
Boxer’s central concern is to explain why, despite three centuries of access to European cannon and the services of European gunners, the rulers of Asia rarely developed artillery into a decisive military arm. He traces the flow of guns and gunners through Persia, the Deccan and Mughal India, the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, Indochina, China, and Japan, drawing on Portuguese viceroy correspondence, Dutch VOC records, English East India Company papers, and the published accounts of travellers such as Tavernier, Thevenot, Borri, Cocks, and Thunberg. A recurring theme is the consistent Asian preference for European-cast bronze over locally produced iron, a preference Boxer attributes both to metallurgical quality and to the prestige value attached to “Frank” manufacture.
The article also addresses the institutional and cultural barriers to effective adoption. Boxer notes that both Portuguese and Dutch authorities were reluctant to transfer military knowledge to Asian rulers who might turn against them, and that papal prohibitions on the sale of munitions to infidels—though largely a dead letter in practice—shaped official policy. Yet desertion, shipwreck, and the simple covetousness of local sultans ensured a steady trickle of European hardware into Asian hands regardless of official intent. The most instructive case Boxer develops is that of Annam, where the Nguyen rulers systematically exploited the Macao gun-foundry and the presence of Jesuit missionaries to build an artillery capability that allowed them to resist the more numerous Trinh armies for generations.
Finally, Boxer confronts the broader question of why technology transfer so often failed to produce lasting military parity. He points to the medieval contempt for gunnery shared by both Portuguese and Persian elites, the absence of gun-carriages in much of Southeast Asia, and the sacro-magical revaluation of cannon as prestige objects rather than instruments of war. He closes by recommending C.M. Cipolla’s Guns and Sails (1965) for a fuller treatment of the socio-cultural factors that opposed the diffusion of Western military technology in Asia.
Key Findings
- The Bocarro gun-foundry at Macao (c. 1627–1680) produced what were acknowledged to be the finest bronze cannon in the East; a gun cast there in 1627 was captured by the English in Kwangtung in 1841 and is preserved in the Tower of London (pp. 168–169).
- The Count of Linhares, Viceroy of India (1629–35), erected the gunpowder-mill at Panelim, Goa, which by 1631 was producing over 700 lbs of gunpowder per day (p. 159, n. 11).
- Sultan Bahadur of Gujarat’s bronze “basilisco,” firing an 110 lb shot, was captured by the Portuguese at Diu in 1537 and remains a show-piece in the Military Museum at Lisbon (pp. 158–159).
- A cannon cast at Macao by the Macaonese gun-founder Joao da Cruz in 1664 bears the inscription “De Cochinchina Champa i Camboia Ioao da Crus a fes em 1664” and was preserved alongside an English piece dated 1601 (p. 167).
- The English factor at Kedah reported to Madras in 1772 that the King of Quedah and all the Malay kings “have got guns enough to drive all the Europeans out of India if they knew how to use them, and yet they want more” (p. 171).
- Carl Thunberg observed in 1776 that Japanese cannon at Nagasaki were discharged only once every seven years “in order to cleanse and prove them,” with the adjutant of artillery using a long pole to fix the match and firing “with averted eyes” (p. 170).
Conclusion
Boxer’s definitive historical takeaway is that the failure of Asian powers to make effective, sustained use of European cannon over three centuries was not due to a simple lack of access to the technology but to powerful socio-cultural factors—medieval contempt for the gunner’s craft, the sacro-magical revaluation of cannon as prestige objects, and the absence of institutional frameworks for artillery training and maintenance. He identifies the Omani Arabs (1650–1730) and the Annamite Nguyen as the principal exceptions, and suggests that the Chinese repulse of the British at the Taku forts in 1859 may represent the first truly effective Asian use of European cannon against a major European attack.
Context
- Primary archival collections consulted include the Portuguese archives at Goa, Macau, and Lisbon (notably the Assentos do Conselho do Estado da India and the Arquivos de Macau), Dutch VOC records, and English East India Company correspondence, supplemented by published traveller accounts and Jesuit mission records.
- Historiographically, the article extends the localised studies of Gibson-Hill (Dutch cannon in Malaya) and Crucq (sacro-magical dimensions of Indonesian cannon) into a comparative framework spanning the entire Indian Ocean and Western Pacific world, anticipating later scholarship on technology transfer and the military dimensions of the “Great Divergence.”