Western European Military Practices and Technologies in Ukraine in XVIII Century

Abstract

The “Military Revolution”, which became a concentrated manifestation of Europe’s political leadership during the XVIIth – XVIIIth centuries, produced new realities in the military sphere: regular armies, subordinated and held by centralized states, unified arms and clothing, division into types of military forces, special drill and education for soldiers and officers. Leadership in military technology consisted of fortifications and artillery that developed in the direction of increasing technical capacity, unification and standardization of new weapons. New approaches to the organization of the armed forces changed the character of wars. If in the XVIIth century East and West of Europe had a kind of parity in their military achievements and technologies, then in the XVIIIth century it finally moved to the West. In this context, an important issue is how Western European achievements were spread in Ukraine, in particular the Cossack Hetmanate, whose military-political model was clearly structured for military purposes. The analysis of these influences and borrowings shows that they were heterogeneous in nature. In the Cossack army, elements of the regular troop duty and sentry service and even drill instructions were gradually being appeared. The Cossack starshyna (officials) faced with the practice of the regular army during the Russian imperial wars. However, all these influences were episodic and spontaneous, without changing the essence of the military institutions of the Hetmanate. In artillery, technical innovations were implemented more actively, but were hampered by lack of funding. In the fortification area, the control of which was completely transferred to imperial power, Western technologies and specialists, were used by metropolitan power in their own defensive projects. It is significant that the acquaintance and borrowing of any military innovations in the XVIIIth century occurred almost exclusively through Russian mediation. This tendency was fully in line with the gradual loss of the Hetmanate’s sovereignty, the destruction of its army.

Keywords

• Cossack Hetmanate
• Cossack troops
• starshyna (cossack officials) “military revolution”
• Russian Empire
• regular army
• warfare