A Korean military Revolution? Parallel military innovations in East Asia and Europe

This article argues that advances in drilling techniques and the use of muskets-essential ingredients of the famous Military Revolution paradigm-were central to Korean military reforms following the Imjin War of 1592-1598. Drawing on recent work in East Asian military history that argues that guns also wrought deep changes in non-European ways of war, we use the Korean military of the Chosǒn dynasty, a fascinating nexus of Chinese, Japanese, and Dutch influences, as a case study to compare East Asian tactics with European ones. Using military manuals from the seventeenth century, we show that European drilling regimes-centered around musketry units-had striking analogues in Korea (as they also did in China and Japan). The very fact of these similarities in such far-removed societies should point us toward caution in making pronouncements about a "Western way of war," making clear that there is a need for a truly global military history.