The Mongol Empire a product of Circumstance?

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You are however missing the main point of the impact of gunpowder, at least in the European context, which as others have already mentioned are presumably what John was referring to. The adoption of guns ushered in an entirely new way of mass warfare and an organisational infrastructure to support it, and the steppe nomads really had very little to pit against that.

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I wasn't talking about that, actually. Rather, I was referring to the Ottoman imperial military's (hardly a steppe force) heavy reliance on the composite recurved bow, and how this weapon's eventual eclipsing by the gun meant the effective demise of the Muslim superpower's ability to defend its borders against aggressive Western armies (and also how the Ottomans' original advantage in the area of firearms eventually turned into a state of perpetually lagging behind the latest developments).

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

Yes I think the Chinese were reasonably advanced in terms of gunpowder warfare and developed the arquebus sometime in the 14th century and the bayonet shortly thereafter, but their military organisation didn't change fundamentally as a result.

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Bayonet ?
:inquisitive:
First time I ever hear that claimed, and I've never ever seen it mentioned in any sources before the gradual adoption of Western methods in the late 1800s. You sure you're not confusing it with the fire-lance, the precursor of a true gun ? You know, those "roman candles" strapped to spears, which Mongol troops among others apparently found very unpleasant to assault against ?

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Originally Posted by Baba Ga'on

I wasn't talking about that, actually. Rather, I was referring to the Ottoman imperial military's (hardly a steppe force) heavy reliance on the composite recurved bow, and how this weapon's eventual eclipsing by the gun meant the effective demise of the Muslim superpower's ability to defend its borders against aggressive Western armies (and also how the Ottomans' original advantage in the area of firearms eventually turned into a state of perpetually lagging behind the latest developments).

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The Ottoman Janissaries eventually became almost purely musketeers capable of acting as close-combat infantry, and were for a while famous for the speed and accuracy of their fire (it sort of helped they actually trained, unlike most of their opponents' musketeers). The composite bow remained in use alongside the firearms as an auxiliary support weapon useful for its comparatively very rapid rate of fire, and for example in naval battles it could inflict nasty damage.

But the only parts of the Ottoman military that actually relied on the bow were irregular auxiliary nomadic light cavalry; pretty much everyone else who now used a ranged weapon in the first place soon switched over to a gun.

The reasons for the Ottoman decline were primarily structural and stemming from certain unfortunate inherent flaws in the empire's adminstrative and economic systems - although in all fairness similar patterns of decay hobbled pretty much the entire Mediterranean area plus much of East and Central Europe to boot. They were, however, in fact surprisingly well able to fend off the predations of their neighbours - as badly as their military tended to lag behind in many respects, they were pretty good at building and defending fortresses and the assorted tribal irregular forces that largely made up their frontier garrisons were actually pretty good at their job.

And their military backwardness by and large was directly the fault of the Janissaries, who were (literally) violently opposed to anything which even looked like infringing on their accumulated class privileges... such as military reforms. The Sultan who finally managed to get some progress going started off by first obliterating the Janissary corps in a day-long fight right in the capital, so he could actually get to work.

There are illustrations from Ming dynasty China of blades on the ends of arquebuses and muskets. That is a bayonet. It's not surprising- after all Chinese guns trace their ancestry back to spears. I don't think it ever occurred to them to then make guns with bayonets universal though.

I think I know the ones you mean, but IIRC the guns involved tend to be those rotary-barrel mostrosities the Ming seem to have had a thing for. Given the weight and bulk of such arrangements, the central shaft terminating in a spearhead strikes me as more comparable to the points and blades affixed to the front of various short-range light artillery pieces like organ guns also in Europe, rather than bayonets whose purpose is to convert the gun into a battleworthy enough spear.

I'm talking about a matchlock arquebus or musket (notable only in that the particular gun which is illustrated was breech-loading), with what looks like a knife to be attached to it. For all intents and purposes the same as a European bayonet. It looks to have been detachable but I don't know it was attached.

A different one from the ones I've seen then. (I must say a breeach-loading arquebus seems like a rather peculiar contraption, not that the Chinese didn't show a remarkable willingness to experiment with such, given the limitations of the seal that could be achieved.) I must admit I cannot then out of hand think of any logically tenable explanation as to why such an obviously useful device as a pointy object attached to a gun's barrel was not pursued further - as the Ming certainly used diverse handheld firearms commonly enough, and simple-and-effective developements normally have a habit of proliferating rather rapidly once stumbled upon.

Well, the Manchus and their hots for mounted archery spring to mind as a possibility, but that would require the proto-bayonet to have turned up only relatively shortly before they took over. You wouldn't happen to know from when the illustrations concerned date from ?

Sometime in the Ming dynasty, but they were pictures in some sort of manual. I've never seen a depiction of a battle or a parade with lots of soldiers carrying bayonets, so I assume they didn't realise what a great idea it was.