Today, I would be blogging about the evolution of war from the past to the present. The history of war can be classified into 5 different sections, ancient warfare, medieval warfare, gunpowder warfare, industrial warfare and modern warfare.

There were many instances of war in ancient times. Diplomacy was uncommon, thus the differences between different communities were resolved using war. Due to limited agriculture ability, there were few areas that can support large communities, leading to fighting and eventually war. War in those times made use of primitive weaponry. For example, Romans, whose armies consisted mainly of heavy infantry and only smaller cavalry contingents.

During the period of medieval warfare, militaries were forever changed. There were technological, cultural, and social developments had forced a dramatic transformation in the character of warfare from antiquity, changing military tactics and the role of cavalry and artillery. Similar patterns of warfare existed in other parts of the world. In China around the fifth century armies moved from massed infantry to cavalry based forces, copying the steppe nomads. The Middle East and North Africa used similar, if often more advanced, technologies than Europe.

After Gunpowder weapons were first developed in Song Dynasty China, the technology later spread west to the Ottoman Empire, from where it spread to the Safavid Empire of Persia and the Mughal Empire of India. This all brought an end to the dominance of armored cavalry on the battlefield. The simultaneous decline of the feudal system — and the absorption of the medieval city-states into larger states — allowed the creation of professional standing armies to replace the feudal levies and mercenaries that had been the standard military component of the Middle Ages.

As weapons—particularly small arms—became easier to use, countries began to abandon a complete reliance on professional soldiers in favor of conscription. Technological advances became increasingly important; while the armies of the previous period had usually had similar weapons, the industrial age saw encounters such as the Battle of Sadowa, in which possession of a more advanced technology played a decisive role in the outcome.

In modern times, war has evolved from an activity steeped in tradition to a scientific enterprise where success is valued above methods. The notion of total war is the extreme of this trend. Militaries have developed technological advances rivalling the scientific accomplishments of any other field of study. What distinguishes modern military organizations from those previous is not their willingness to prevail in conflict by any method, but rather the technological variety of tools and methods available to modern battlefield commanders, from submarines to satellites, from knives to nuclear warheads.

In conclusion, war has evolved a lot from the battle horses we see in ancient times, to the nuclear bombs that we experience in today’s modern warfare.