Nathaniel Firethorn
Member
http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/books/05/24/gunpowder/index.html
A favorable review of the book, Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive That Changed the World.
- pdmoderator
A favorable review of the book, Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive That Changed the World.
Making things go boom
History of gunpowder lively and engrossing
By Adam Dunn
Special to CNN
Tuesday, May 25, 2004 Posted: 10:27 AM EDT (1427 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- It started as a tool of Chinese alchemists, became the explosive of choice for centuries of armies, and is now best known for ... fireworks.
Gunpowder, once the most important of war materials, is now most commonly used for entertainment.
That's fitting for Jack Kelly, the author of the new popular history "Gunpowder: The History of the Explosive That Changed the World" (Basic Books). His whole point, he says, was making the story of gunpowder into an entertaining tale, instead of a scientific or didactic analysis.
"I look at popular history as a sort of synthesis for the non-expert," Kelly says in an interview. "Scholarly history goes into the primary materials and expands the limits of knowledge about a particular subject. I'm working mostly with secondary materials, for the average reader."
Moreover, the book's sources are mostly in English, he adds. But if academics might frown upon their use, Kelly makes no apologies.
"The records that we have are so vague that [the origin of gunpowder] remains something of a mystery," he says. "There are examples of records in the Arab world of people writing about gunpowder in the 13th century and the fact that the Islamic world then spread from Spain to India is a clue that it may have come down that route. ... It's not known and may never be known."
Making its way
This much is known: The origins of gunpowder -- a simple combination of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal -- were as the Chinese "fire drug" of the T'ang Dynasty, sometime in the 10th century.
Initially the substance was a mistrusted tool of alchemists. But within a few hundred years there were gunpowder-based explosives and projectile weapons, and the new technology had made its way to medieval Europe.
Not surprisingly, "Gunpowder" involves a fair amount of military history. Enthusiasts of early firearms and artillery will enjoy Kelly's depictions of key land and naval battles among eastern and western armed forces, as well as his searing recreation of what it was like to be a powder boy on a warship of the Napoleonic Era.
Yet for all the muskets, bombards, and cannon, Kelly appears more interested in the impact of gunpowder as a technological force driving deeper societal changes. For example, there is his take on gunpowder's use in military warfare as contributing to one of class: "By putting a new form of lethal power into the hands of commoners, gunpowder was among the elements that fertilized the long slow growth of feelings of rights and entitlements that would blossom into democracy," he writes.
The idea of the individual firearm as an "equalizer" was not entirely fanciful. Gunpowder, as Thomas Carlyle would write, makes 'all men tall.' "
Kelly's book goes on to draw conclusions on divergent directions of military technologies in the East and West (larger, heavier guns for the Ottomans versus smaller, more mobile guns for European armies), the instigation of the American Revolution (beginning with American militiamen raiding British gunpowder warehouses), and the dynamic growth of western industry, as illustrated by the burgeoning fortunes of the du Pont family, purveyors of high-quality gunpowder for military and commercial usage alike the world over.
Growing artillery
The old must yield to the new, and Kelly makes the rapid passing of gunpowder (basically over the course of the 19th century, thanks to the successive inventions of nitroglycerin and its progeny, dynamite and cordite) sound almost bittersweet.
"The new synthetics, in a remarkably short time, displaced gunpowder from its 900-year-old niche as the world's only effective propellant," Kelly writes. "By the 1890s nations across Europe were rushing to switch to the improved powder."
By the turn of the century, gunpowder had been relegated mainly to its original usage by the medieval Chinese, as an entertainment.
"Just as Europeans had taken advantage of their early lead in gunpowder weapons to support a wave of world conquest, they ushered out the age of gunpowder with a second and more comprehensive program of colonial domination," Kelly writes.
Repeating rifles, revolvers, and an ever-expanding array of artillery tipped the scales remarkably in favor of the Western powers, the bloody results of which form the battle-scarred history of the 20th century.
While Kelly's connection of gunpowder's progeny to the nuclear age may leave room for debate, his ability to recreate the lifetime of a technology which reshaped the world (and to present it in a manner which will not overwhelm readers) displays his talent for making even the driest of powders ignite in the imagination.
- pdmoderator
