Prussian discipline redefined the army as an artificial machine

Evidence

Discipline of this sort was a new invention, adopted in most European countries only a generation or so before the nizam jadid, following the dramatic Prussian victories in the Seven Years War (1756–63). The Prussians had introduced revolutionary techniques of precise timing, rapid signalling, and rigorous conformity to discipline, out of which an army could be manufactured as what the Prussian military instructions called an ‘artificial machine’. Other armies in comparison would now seem like collections of ‘idle and inactive men’, a perception that was to change the way not just an army but any human group was viewed – as the ordinary Egyptian was to discover. Such a ‘machine’ could fire with a rapidity three times that of other armies, making it three times as destructive, and could be expanded, wheeled, and withdrawn with mechanical ease. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 137 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Discipline evolved from distributing bodies to composing forces into machines — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 247; Prussian drill achieved total control of soldiers’ sound and gesture; Prussian battlefield drill made armies an artificial machine three times more destructive. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 137 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Prussian battlefield drill made armies an artificial machine three times more destructive. #corroborates (0.93) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 137