Abstract
In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the Great Divergence in innovation rates between East and West after 1700 finally caught up with the principal Asian civilizations. During the Crimean War , the creditable performance of Turkish units equipped with European weapons combined with the calamitous defeats of traditional Ottoman formations without this advantage forced the regime to realize the extent of its dependence on Western technology. Farther east, in 1857 the rebelling Indian troops of the East India Company failed to recognize the importance of adopting the latest mass-produced rifles until it was too late. As for the Chinese, they had little idea of the quality gap separating their equipment from that of the West until their armies were crushed by British and French troops on battlefields outside Beijing. The effectiveness of the new military technologies combined with the rapidity of their development and deployment left Asian armies unable to defend themselves, dependent on the good graces of the Western powers.
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