1 Firearms and Fieldworks: Military Transformation and the End of Gaelic Ireland James O’Neill In Mark Charles Fissel (ed) The Military Revolution and Revolutions in Military Affairs (Berlin/Boston, 2023) The modern contention over the extent or even existence of the military revolution has been fractious. Michael Roberts instigated the debate in a lecture given at Queen’s University Belfast in 1955. 1 Roberts stated that in the century after 1560, European warfare was transformed by a revolution in tactics, army size and operational strategy, with a corresponding accentuation of the impact of warfare on society. 2 Since then the discussion that grew around these assertions became vigorous and contentious. 3 Geoffrey Parker contended the revolution stemmed from the fifteenth century, when the angular trace italienne structures supplanted medieval masonry in response to the threat of mobile artillery. 4 The “revolution” of the sixteenth century with its bastioned fortresses, disciplined firepower-centric armies, and ocean-going broadside sailing ships, was the beginning of military dominance of Europeans over non-Europeans. 5 Clifford Rogers countered with his punctuated equilibrium model with the origins of the changes set in the early fourteenth century, whereas Jeremy Black argued for transformation concentrated the fifteenth century, but more emphatically in the late seventeenth century. 6 A new facet of the argument has opened up with work on the gunpowder revolution in Asia by Tonio Andrade, Hyeok Hweon Kang and Kirsten Cooper. 7 Despite Bert Hall’s request for the debate to move beyond the concept of a distinct revolutionary event occupying a singular moment in historical time, claim, counter-claim and reworkings of opinion and chronology are likely to rumble on for some time yet. 8 1 Clifford Rogers demonstrated that the idea of a military revolution associated with the introduction of gunpowder long predated Roberts, but Roberts certainly ignited the current debate. See Rogers, “The Idea of Military Revolutions in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century Texts,” 395–415. Many thanks to Mark Fissel for bringing this to my attention. 2 Roberts, “The Military Revolution,” 13–35, Parker, “The ‘military revolution’ 1955-2005,” 205–206. 3 Thoroughly summarized by Rogers, “The Military Revolution in History and Historiography,” 1–10. 4 Later published as Parker, “The ‘military revolution’1560-1660-a myth?,” 196–214. 5 Parker, The Military Revolution. 6 Rogers, “The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years’ War,” 94. 7 Andrade, Kang and Cooper, “A Korean Military Revolution?,” 51–84; Andrade, The Gunpowder Age. 8 Hall, Weapons and Warfare, 210.