The term “gunpowder empires” probably makes you think of soldiers firing guns and cannon. This firepower allows rulers to conquer small kingdoms and build large empires. Through force and firearms, these rulers can keep their power.

Two historians, William H. McNeill and Marshall G.S. Hodgson, created the term “gunpowder empires.” They noticed three vast empires emerged around the same time in central Asia—the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire, and the Mughal Empire. McNeill and Hodgson wanted to understand why these empires all arose at the same time. They concluded weapons that used gunpowder allowed the three empires to become so large and powerful.

But gunpowder technology wasn’t the only factor that enabled their success. Rather, these three powerful Islamic empires also developed some really powerful political technologies. Indeed, they also could be called “bureaucratic empires.” (The word “bureaucratic” refers to the processes involved in running a government.) In this essay, we will discuss both the firearm technology and the political factors that made these empires great.

Gunpowder and authority in the three Islamic empires

Gunpowder solved a big problem for rulers. In the fifteenth century, it was difficult to govern a large area, as most land travel relied on horses and camels. That made it difficult for rulers to travel long distances or govern large empires effectively. To combat this challenge, most Eurasian kings or would-be emperors forged agreements with local nobles. The nobles were allowed to govern parts of the kingdom in their ruler’s name. In exchange, the nobles agreed to serve and protect the ruler.

Now, here’s the problem: When you give people power, they often want to keep it. Those local nobles built castles and trained skilled soldiers. Protected by their soldiers and safe behind their walls, the nobles could do what they wanted. For a while, the rulers didn’t have a way to deal with this problem.

Then, gunpowder changed the situation. First, gunpowder weapons were expensive. So expensive that local nobles usually could not afford to buy them. Only sultans, kings, and emperors could pay for large numbers of musket guns and cannon. Second, cannon could reduce the walls of a noble’s castle to rubble. Finally, even poorly-trained peasants with firearms had a major advantage over the nobles’ highly-trained soldiers with swords.

The result was a huge increase in power for the rulers of the three large Islamic states of the era. Ottoman Sultan Murad I (ruled from 1362–1389) built the janissary corps, a musket-armed force of enslaved soldiers loyal only to him. His successors used cannon to conquer major cities like Constantinople. The Mughal Empire’s founder, Babur (r. 1526–1530), used muskets and cannon to expand his empire into central India in 1526. The Safavid Emperor Abbas the Great (r. 1588–1629) assembled a force of 12,000 musketeers and 500 cannon. These rulers also strictly controlled these powerful new weapons. For example, the Mughal Sultan Akbar (r. 1556–1605) forbade anyone but the emperor from owning cannon.

Political technologies and historical events

So, gunpowder was clearly significant. Yet, recent historians have argued that the rulers’ ability to reign over vast empires may have relied less on gunpowder than on advances in governance. These new “political technologies” weren’t physical things. Instead, they were ideas and ways of organizing the empire that allowed a central government to rule a big area.

These empires—along with the Russian Empire and Qing (Manchu) Dynasty in China—developed following the collapse of the Mongol Empire in the fourteenth century. These empires also used tools of governance created by the Mongols. These included the first of our political technologies: bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are large groups of officials who are paid by the central government. They are likely to be more loyal to the central government than to local authorities, such as nobles. We call the rise of bureaucratic governance rationalization. It involved the development of a permanent, organized set of government agencies that observed, tracked, and made policies to govern vast empires. Government officials built and maintained roads, policed communities, and distributed food. Each of the gunpowder empires developed these bureaucracies, which made them stronger and better equipped to rule larger areas.

The second political development allowing gunpowder empires to rule vast areas was alliances between rulers and religious officials. The Ottoman sultans relied on religious Muslim judges called qadi. The Safavid rulers, meanwhile, worked closely with Shi’ite Muslim clergy to push one version of Islam on the people of Persia. In the case of these two states, their religious identities helped lead to generations of conflict. The two states weren’t just political rivals for territory. They were also each tied to different Islamic sects—and they both had gunpowder weapons! It’s no surprise that this led to numerous clashes.

Ottoman and Safavid rulers made most of their subjects follow one religion. But gunpowder empires also ruled religiously diverse populations. The Muslim Mughal rulers are one example. They ruled a majority Hindu population in addition to large Buddhist and Muslim communities and several smaller religious minorities. Sultans sponsored Muslim mosques and relied on Muslim judges. However, some Mughal rulers were very tolerant of other faiths.

Although the gunpowder emperors continued to rely on local nobles, they took steps to control them. The Mughal sultans, for example, created a set of military commanders known as the mansabdari. They made sure these commanders frequently visited court to prove their loyalty and pay respect to the sultan. The Ottoman rulers also kept their nobles, or sipahi, reliant on the sultan through military service. Nobles had to give military service for the right to tax communities and control an area.

Beyond the three main gunpowder empires

Historians who came after McNeill and Hodgson noted that other parts of Eurasia experienced changes similar to those of the three gunpowder empires. Furthermore, these changes occurred around the same time. The governments of Russia and Qing Dynasty China began using gunpowder weapons to ensure the power of the central government. In Russia, the state also forged an alliance with the Orthodox Church. Meanwhile, China developed and enacted the most advanced bureaucracy of the age. Further east, guns were making an impact in Japan. To the south, guns were being used by the armies of Moroccan rulers and other North African states.

Dramatic changes were also taking place in Europe. While there may not have been a single vast empire there, many of the same trends can be seen. European kings and queens were centralizing power in their own hands. They used cannon and muskets to fight each other and to weaken the power of their landholding nobles. In places like France and England, real and permanent systems of government with bureaucratic professionals at their core were taking shape. Their rulers were also making alliances with Christian bishops and officials.

The invention of firearms played a role in the expansion and consolidation of imperial power, as in the case of the huge Islamic gunpowder empires. However, that wasn’t the whole story. Behind the scenes, monumental changes were the alliances forged between rulers and religion and the development of bureaucracy. These developments would become two of the central features of the period.