This is a new edition of Geoffrey Parker's much-admired illustrated account of how the West, so small and so deficient in natural resources in 1500, had by 1800 come to control over one-third of the world. Parker argues that the rapid development of military practice in the West constituted a 'military revolution' which gave Westerners an insurmountable advantage over the peoples of other continents. This edition incorporates new material, including a substantial 'Afterword' which summarises the debate which developed after the book's first publication.

Noel Geoffrey Parker (born 25 December 1943) is a British historian specializing in Spanish and military history of the early modern era. His best known book is Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800, first published by Cambridge University Press in 1988. Born in Nottingham, England, he is a fellow of the British Academy and holds his BA, MA, Ph.D. and Litt.D. degrees from Cambridge University where he studied under the historian Sir John Huxtable Elliott. Amongst the foreign honours he holds, he is a member of the Order of Alfonso X the Wise and was granted the Great Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic by the Spanish government. He has received honorary doctorates from the Catholic University of Brussels (Belgium) and the University of Burgos (Spain). He is a fellow of the British Academy, the Spanish Real Academia de la Historia, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. In 2012 he was awarded the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for History by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for his outstanding scholarship on the social, political and military history of Europe between 1500 and 1650, in particular Spain, Philip II, and the Dutch Revolt; for his contribution to military history in general; and for his research on the role of climate in world history.

Parker has taught at the University of Illinois, the University of St. Andrews and Yale University. He is currently the Andreas Dorpalen Professor of History at The Ohio State University.