Book Reviews : J.L. GOMMANS and D.H.A. KOLFF, eds, Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia: 1000-1800, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 395

Abstract

This is a volume that extends Prof. Kolff’s interest in the military labour market to wider horizons through a collection of several articles. The introduction by .Gommans and Kolff offers a competent survey of all the major writing on military revolutions in the West, as well as in the East, put out over the last 80 years or so. The editors feel perhaps a little apologetic about sounding Eurocentric when setting south Asian history against the Western experiences described and developed so rigorously by Geoffery Parker, Lynn-White Jr., Carlo Cipolla, John Gilmartin, Michael Roberts et al. Comparative history is, however, a fairly acceptable proposition. What is often crucial is the lack of the kind of evidence that is available to the researchers in European history. Moreover, more technical studies are needed on the chemistry of the explosives, the metallurgy of the weaponry, the architecture of fortifications, systems of transport before we branch into linkages with anthropology, etc. The era covered by this book, i.e., 1000-1800 AD is chosen because the first