The Origins of "Volley Fire": An Object-­Focused Approach

Abstract

The paper starts with a definition of the system of shooting known as ‘volley fire'. It was a remarkable tactical innovation of early modern warfare, which until now has generally been considered a late-sixteenth-century Dutch "invention" or "discovery". This notwithstanding, a plurality of scholars found occurrences of similar fighting techniques both in Europe and Asia. Such an outcome seems problematic and even contradictory. For this reason, the paper adopts a different approach, resorting to the anthropology of technology and adhering to the concept of «technical tendency» conceived by André Leroi-Gourhan (1911-1936). A new perspective emerges, shedding light on the sources, some of which are mentioned here for the first time. Muzzle-loading firearms already had a deterministically oriented trend, based on their intrinsic nature as objects, and volley fire was merely its materialization.