Blog Prompt 2: Evolution Of War

In your opinion, how has war evolved from the past to the present? Please use examples to justify your opinions.

I think that war has evolved from the past to the present in a few ways, and the most obvious change would be in technology. Technological breakthroughs are often made during wars, from the discovery of bromine to the infamous Enigma’s coding abilities. Everyday technology has progressed much from the past to the present, so did war technology. At the dawn of time, in the regions of present day India, the art of sword making and steel weapons were perfected, then in Roman times, the state of the art weapons were like the trebuchet and the crossbow, until the Chinese started playing with three chemicals that would revolutionize the way wars were fought. These three chemicals were potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur, when mixed in a ratio of about 70: 14: 16 form gunpowder. Gunpowder sprung many technological breakthroughs in wars. Gunpowder’s first usage was for entertaining purposes in fireworks, but gradually found itself into being the propellant for lethal projectiles. The first weapon that involved gunpowder was small handheld gourds filled with gunpowder that when ignited would produce a huge burst of flames. Then gunpowder started being used in gradually more and more scary weapons. The first effective use of gunpowder in wars was in rockets. Ancient day rockets were more like firecrackers than anything else, but it made a huge impact in war. Those rockets were used as psychological weapons to scare soldiers, but mostly cavalry to scatter their formations. Then gunpowder gave rise to inventions like the cannon and the handheld version of the cannon, the gun. Guns were widely used only in the 14th century, and soon evolved into many forms of devastating weapons that become symbolic with war. First there were “hand cannons” that shot round rocks down range, and then there were muskets and handguns, and then rifles and shotguns. These weapons came a long way from throwing stones and shooting arrows, and they revolutionized warfare in the process.

Another visible evolution in war is in the war tactics. The first wars were fought much like what you would see in a gang fight, no tactics, and just wild crashes between men. War tactics progressively got more advanced and sophisticated. Rome was the ancient superpowers of the past, and war tactics were the trademarks of Rome. Rome devised a formation of lines upon lines of men, forming a big square, which charged into enemy forces, cutting them down. Cavalry started to make its mark in Rome too, and the use of cavalry as a force in war cannot be seen more evidently in the Punic Wars. Hannibal used cavalry in a very clever way by putting them at the flanks of his “C” shaped formation, harassing the enemy forces with their speed. The cavalry charge remained unchanged for about a century until the invention of the musket. In Japan, 1575, the Battle of Nagashino changed war tactics once and forever. General Oda Nobunaga cleverly came up with a strategy that would solve the problem of slow reloading of the musket. He made his man stand in three rows, with the front row shooting, and after he shot his round, he would run to the back of the line to reload his rifle, letting the second person step forward to fire his loaded rifle. Tactics changed dramatically more recently after the American Revolution when people still charged in lines, which brought massive casualties. Modern wars are fought strategically with small specialized forces being deployed to either encircle or wipe out the enemy forces all at once. Just like how weapons have evolved dramatically from past to present, the tactics in war also evolved in a similar magnitude.