Published on April 9, 2026 (Episode 449)
Introduction
“Over the course of the sixteenth century,” writes Catherine Fletcher, “the handgun made a transition from a novel and decisive military technology to become an everyday object, in use across society and carrying a new set of cultural associations that would persist through the coming centuries.”
This was the firearm revolution.
In this conversation, Fletcher explores how an evolving technology became a transformative one—not simply changing warfare, but altering the structure of society itself. Guns moved from battlefields into cities, homes, and daily life. In doing so, they reshaped how states exercised power, how individuals understood violence, and how social order was enforced.
Fletcher brings together three major frameworks for understanding early modern Europe—the rise of the state, the enforcement of social discipline, and the so-called civilizing process. Where these overlap, she argues, “In the space where they overlap,” she argues, “we find—and the people of early modern Europe found—a gun.”
About the Guest
Catherine Fletcher is a historian of the Renaissance and early modern Europe, and is Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the author of numerous books, including The Roads to Rome and The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance. This is her third appearance on Historically Thinking.
Reflection Questions
What does it mean for a technology to become “everyday”? And how does that shift its social and political significance? Does the technology have to change for this to happen, or the culture that adopts and adapts the technology?
How does the spread of firearms complicate or reinforce the idea of a “civilizing process”?
What does Fletcher’s argument suggest about the relationship between state power and private violence?
Related Episodes
For Further Investigation
Catherine Fletcher, The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires (Princeton, 2026)
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (Second Edition)— one of the books that when I read it lit a fire inside my mind
Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 — the classic argument on early modern military change
Tonio Andrade, The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History — for a broader, comparative perspective on firearms and state power
Tags
early modern history, firearms, state formation, Renaissance, military history, political history, Catherine Fletcher
