How did the technology of the industrial revolution affect the methods of warfare?
Technology allowed the mass manufacture of everything a military needs from rifles, munitions, uniforms, ships, trains – these things could be made before but, as technology advanced, each could be made to the same specification again and again, the economy of scale (and less waste) meant they could be made cheaper, faster and in huge numbers, and the parts were interchangeable (until the grip of industrialisation parts were shaped to fit each individual weapon). This, in turn, meant that huge armies could be put in the field, possibly the earliest mass-manufacture which affected a war was at the Springfield Arsenal prior to the American Civil War.
