Lindstrom 1 Nathan W.

Lindstrom Professor Trullinger World History 2, Circa 1600 - Present December 1, 2009

Different Yet Related Inventions

Few things have shaped the history and evolution of mankind like war; and nothing has shaped war more than gunpowder, albeit with the possible exception of mechanical flight. In his book Technology in World Civilization, author and historian Arnold Pacey argues that contact between civilizations often served to spread technological knowledge, and that such knowledge would grow and assume different forms from one civilization to the next. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the evolution of firearms, beginning with the creation of gunpowder and ending with radical changes wrought across the face of warfare thanks to the cannon and rifle. While it is common knowledge that the Chinese invented gunpowder, they did not do so in a vacuum. Gunpowder, or more properly, black powder, is a mixture of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter (Gunpowder). It was in 664 C.E. that a Buddhist monk, travelling from India, identified soils in China which contained large concentrations of saltpeter. Later studies of the same substance conducted by the Chinese show Indian influence, and Pacey suggests that it was thanks to the Buddhist monks carrying this knowledge from India into China that ultimately led to the Chinese creating gunpowder (Pacey 16). Necessity is said to be the mother of invention, and it was due to Chinese attempts to fight off the Mongols that spurred the development of firearms. It is no coincidence, says Pacey, that the earliest large cannon found in China date from [1356], the era of fiercest fighting between the

Lindstrom 2 Mongols and the proto-Ming Chinese empire (54). Indeed, given the Mongolian hordes' superior skills with horses and archery, it may be considered doubtful that the Chinese could have rid themselves of the Mongolian yoke without the technological advantage of firearms. It was later, again through crosscultural exchange, that the Europeans took the next step and developed large cannons (55). They also refined the concept of the musket based on the Chinese fire-lance (47-49). It was the Persians and Indians who developed higher-strength metals which soon came to be required in the further evolution of firearms. Advances in both the size of guns and the explosive strength of black powder produced a situation wherein gun barrels made of poorer metals such as iron were liable to explode in a deadly hail of shrapnel. The first muskets produced using Damascus steel for the barrels were probably made by the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th century (80). Even as late as the 1790s English metallurgists were attempting to recreate Indian wootz steel, a close cousin of Damascus steel, and it was not until the 1820s that a Russian metallurgist brought steel-making technology home from the Persions (81). This brief summary by no means represents the sum total of cross-cultural exchanges and innovations within the sphere of firearm technology, but it does serve to illustrate the incredible extent to which an invention made by one culture was carried to another, refined and then possibly further disseminated to yet more cultures. It is also interesting to note that cultures, such as the Mongols, which did not participate in this technological arms race quickly fell from the world stage and passed into obscurity.

Lindstrom 3 Works Cited Gunpowder. Encyclopdia Britannica. 2009. Pacey, Arnold. Technology in World Civilization. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1991.