Chapter energy and technology the enhancement of skin



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6.3. Gunpowder and cannons


The Chinese are thought to have been the first to discover gunpowder. They claim it as one of their “four great inventions”. Since the 9th century they used it in fireworks. But they never succeeded in casting metal gun barrels that could withstand the sudden release of energy of a gunpowder explosion. About 500 years later, in the 14th century, Roger Bacon (a monk) in England or Berthold Schwarz in Germany (also a friar), or possibly an unknown Arab, rediscovered gunpowder, possibly based on information brought back from China by the Venetian traveler, Marco Polo (1254-1324). Thereafter, metallurgical progress in bronze and iron casting enabled the Europeans and the Ottoman Turks, to build cannons that could resist the high pressure of the exploding gases.

Guns did not replace swords overnight. In Japan, the Samurai cultural tradition, based on skill and bravery, rejected the possibility of being beaten in warfare by the chemical energy of gunpowder. Two Portuguese adventurers brought iron (in the form of primitive arquebuses) to Japan in 1543. They were copied and half a century later Japan was well equipped with firearms. But the government, controlled by Samurai warriors, preferred swords and, over a period of years, guns were prohibited and eliminated in Japan. That ended in 1953 when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Tokyo Bay for a visit, with four steamships armed with cannons. At first the Japanese thought the ships were dragons puffing smoke. Perry carried a letter to the Emperor from President Millar Fillmore was there to open trade relations. But his visit also convinced Japan to resume gun manufacture.

Even so, demand for iron was growing rapidly, not only for guns and stewpots but for plows, axles for wagons, and for the steam engines produced by James Watt and his business partner (and financier) Matthew Boulton. The first substitution of wind power for muscles was by sailing ships. We know that the sailing ships from Tarsi brought “gold, silver, ivory, apes, and guinea-fowls” to King Solomon. Later, sails were employed by Phoenician, Greek, Carthaginian, and Roman ships that cruised the Mediterranean, even though much of the motive power was provided by human galley-slaves chained to oars and encouraged by whips. Sails with steering oars and rudders, of a sort, were also employed by Chinese junks and Arab dhows navigating along the shores of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

For a long time the galleys were needed because sailing ships can’t sail directly into the wind, so they must “tack” back and forth at an angle to the wind. That maneuver requires an efficient rudder attached along its length from a vertical sternpost. This invention was first introduced around 1156, but it adopted only very slowly because the engineering details were invisible to observers. The Portuguese caravels were the first ships really capable of sailing against the wind, and it was this development (plus maps) that enabled them to undertake long-distance voyages across the Atlantic and around Africa. The ships capable of sailing closest to the wind were the fastest and most maneuverable, which made ship design a very important military technology.

Galleys were still used in some parts of the world as late as the eighteenth century to provide additional power, especially when the wind was in the wrong direction. However, the “age of discovery” in the 15th century was driven by “full rigged” sailing ships capable of sailing entirely without galleys, and thus requiring a rather small crew and carrying food and water for much longer periods out of the sight of land. Full-rigged schooners, some with steel hulls and 2000 tons of displacement, operated competitively over some ocean routes (especially from Australia to Europe) well into the 20th century.)

The sailing ships, armed with bronze or cast-iron cannons, became the instrument of Europe’s rise to global military power. Europe’s global dominance between the16th and 20th century was owed (at first) to the ever more efficient maritime use of wind power by ocean-going sailing ships (starting with Portugal). Later, during the heyday of the British Empire, it was due to “gunboat diplomacy” and the military use of chemical energy in firearms.

Guns were the first weapons whose destructive impact did not depend on muscle-power. Rather, they transformed the chemical energy of gunpowder into the kinetic energy of bullets, cannon balls, and grenades. Since the end of the 14th century Venetian, Genoese, Portuguese, Spanish, English, Dutch, and French sailing ships with cannons and soldiers armed with matchlock (later flintlock) muzzle-loaders, carried the European conquerors to the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia. By the end of the 19th century much of the world was divided up into European colonies or “protectorates”, all conquered and defended by men with guns, carried on “ironclad” ships.

For example, Pope Alexander VI divided the world between Portugal and Spain by a papal bull in 1493, awarding newly discovered lands west of any of the Azores or Cape Verde islands, and to Portugal all newly discovered lands to the east (Africa, India and Indonesia.) Except for eastern Brazil (Recife) this gave South America to Spain. Needless to say the rest of Europe did not agree that the Pope had any right to make such dispositions, and by 1512 the lands around the Indian Ocean were being colonized by Dutch, French and English. Spain, on the other hand, hung on to its Papal benefice until the 19th century.

It is ironic that 15th century China, then the world leader in technology, missed the chance of beating Europe to colonize the globe. This can be traced to Chinese politics in the 15th century. In the words of Jared Diamond {Diamond, 1998 #1520} :

“In the early 15th century it [China] sent treasure fleets, each consisting of hundreds of ships up to 400 feet long and with total crews of up to 28 000, across the Indian Ocean as far as the coast of Africa, decades before Colombus’s three puny ships crossed the narrow Atlantic Ocean to the Americas’ east coast. … Seven of those fleets sailed from China between 1405 and 1433 CE. They were then suspended as a result of a typical aberration of local politics that could happen anywhere in the world: a power struggle between two factions at the Chinese court (the eunuchs and their opponents). The former faction had been identified with sending and captaining the fleets. Hence when the latter faction gained the upper hand in a power struggle, it stopped sending fleets, eventually dismantled the shipyards, and forbade ocean going shipping …”



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