Saltpeter : the mother of gunpowder

Saltpeter : the mother of gunpowder

1st ed.

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013.

xii, 237 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.

549.732 C922 2013

(OCoLC)795759762

Derived from soil enriched with dung and urine, saltpeter provided the heart of gunpowder, without which no musket or cannon could be fired. Its acquisition involved alchemical knowledge, exotic technology, intrusions into people's lives, and eventual dominance of the world's oceans. The quest for saltpeter caused widespread 'vexation' in Tudor and Stuart England, as crown agents dug in homes and barns and even churches. Governments hungry for it purchased supplies from overseas merchants, transferred skills from foreign experts, and extended patronage to ingenious schemers, while the hated 'saltpetermen' intruded on private ground. Eventually, huge saltpeter imports from India relieved this social pressure, and by the eighteenth century positioned Britain as a global imperial power; the governments of revolutionary America and ancien regime France, on the other hand, were forced to find alternative sources of this treasured substance. In the end, it was only with the development of chemical explosives in the late Victorian period that dependency on saltpeter finally declined--Publisher.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [213]-230) and index.
Contents: Mysterious saltpeter -- The gunpowder kingship of Henry VIII -- The Elizabethan quest for infinite security -- Saltpeter for a peaceable kingdom -- The inestimable treasure of Charles I -- Saltpeter revolution -- Saltpeter for a global power -- The New World and the Ancien Régime.
L2014M39

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