Book ID: CBB001201311

Saltpeter: The Mother of Gunpowder (2013)

unapi

Cressy, David (Author)


Oxford University Press


Publication Date: 2013
Physical Details: xii + 237 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

"This is the story of saltpeter, the vital but mysterious substance craved by governments from the Tudors to the Victorians as an 'inestimable treasure.' National security depended on control of this organic material - that had both mystical and mineral properties. Derived from soil enriched with dung and urine, it provided the heart or 'mother' 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's description

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Reviewed By

Review Rosenthal, Joel T. (2014) Review of "Saltpeter: The Mother of Gunpowder". Journal of Interdisciplinary History (p. 383). unapi

Review Roos, Anna Marie Eleanor (2014) Review of "Saltpeter: The Mother of Gunpowder". American Historical Review (pp. 1353-1354). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001201311/

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Authors & Contributors
Karpenko, Vladimír
Kahn, Didier
Hyeok Hweon Kang
Claudia Pancino
Mauskopf, Seymour H.
Hofmeester, Karin
Concepts
Chemistry
Alchemy
Science and war; science and the military
Science and religion
Gunpowder
Mines and mining
Time Periods
17th century
16th century
18th century
15th century
19th century
20th century
Places
Great Britain
Germany
Europe
South Africa
Latin America
Italy
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