The Hundred Years War for Morocco. Gunpowder and the Military Revolution in the EarlyModern Muslim World. by W. F. CookReview by: Jeremy BlackThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), p. 714Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2542673 .

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714 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXV / 3 (1994)

The Hundred Years War for Morocco. Gunpowder and the Military Rev- olution in the Early Modern Muslim World. W. F. Cook. Boulder: West- view, 1994. xix + 332 pp. $33.50

This scholarly and important book extends the study of "Military Revolution" from

Europe to North Africa. In a thoughtful analysis Professor Cook examines the impact of mil-

itary change in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Morocco and concludes that the ability to use gunpowder weaponry effectively was crucial both to the ending of the Iberian Recon- quista with the decisive defeat of Portuguese expansionism and intervention and to the pro- cess of state formation within Morocco. The years 1536-49 were crucial: firearms forces and

artillery arsenals grew with a multiplier effect as the dynasty added more territory, widened contacts with European sources of munitions, and won victories. The Sharifs worked dili-

gently to integrate arquebusiers, field artillery, and combined infantry-cavalry tactics into their battles. By 1549 Muhammad ash-Shaykh brought Morocco closer to unity than it had been in generations. The capture of Santa Cruz from Portugal was Morocco's first artillery victory in offensive operations and indicated that the technological gap in land warfare had been closed. Morocco ceased to be an arena of contest and instead became a potential con- testant in Mediterranean warfare. Moroccan capability increased as campaigns shifted from static sieges against Portuguese fortifications to the rapid maneuvers of infantry-cavalry armies against Islamic foes, particularly the advancing Ottomans in the 1550s. Morocco gained internal stability and freedom from foreign interference. This was challenged in 1578 by Sebastian of Portugal. He led a poorly prepared army, crucially short of cavalry. Cook offers a new reading of the decisive engagement, arguing that Portuguese defeat was not in- evitable: "at least two key intervals when Sebastian's forces might have grabbed the initiative and shattered the Sharif's army instead. These opportunities, lost though they were, turned not only on European strengths and Moroccan weaknesses, but [on] events themselves." Cook demonstrates that the Moroccans did not win by numbers, but by superior leadership and discipline and more flexible tactics. Their army had matured as an early-modern gun- powder force and made particularly effective use of arquebusiers trained to fire from horse- back. In 1591 it was again the use of superior firepower that led to victory over Songhay.A powerful state had been created, but, as Cook demonstrates, this collapsed in the early seven- teenth century in the face of dynastic division, army revolts, and the growing diffusion of

gunpowder weaponry in Moroccan society, which permitted the successful challenge of state

authority. Cook's account of the convergence of"the gunpowder revolution, the military revolu-

tion, and the state-building revolution of the early-modern era," is most valuable not only for the light it throws on developments in Morocco, but also because it offers a valuable

comparative context within which European developments can be considered.

Jeremy Black .................................................... University of Durham

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