The Gunpowder Age
The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History by Tonio Andrade
The adventures of the gun. With frequent ventures into explaining fallacies in why China fell behind. (To be sure, sometimes the fallacies seemed a bit cherry-picked.)
From the first "fire medicine" being used as an incendiary in China -- it could not explode -- through "fire bomb medicine" to the first guns. There is fuzziness about that concept, because the characteristic is "windage" -- the bullet or cannonball must be tight in the barrel so as to absorb as much of the force as possible, but there were certainly things put in in the explosion before that was achieved.
Its migration to Europe, probably through the Mongols, and oddly enough not appearing in the intervening lands. But given that Europe went straight to the gunpowder formula and cannon, it had to have been imported. Europe promptly innovated because its stone castles were far more vulnerable than China's earthwork ones, larger and long cannons, corning gunpowder to make the explosion last longer and propel the cannonball farther with a small gun. And then it innovated in castles: it turned to earthworks too, but it made artillery fortresses, set up to take advantage of crossfire and ensure there was nothing that could be stormed without undergoing fire. China adopted the innovation in cannon and other guns, not so much the fortresses.
Ballistics, with such discoveries as the air resistance increasing as you approached the speed of sound, made a major difference. It was so mathematics intensive that it was hard to imitate. And the Industrial Revolution was going ahead full blast.
Ends with some about the modernization of China, and Japan, too.
The adventures of the gun. With frequent ventures into explaining fallacies in why China fell behind. (To be sure, sometimes the fallacies seemed a bit cherry-picked.)
From the first "fire medicine" being used as an incendiary in China -- it could not explode -- through "fire bomb medicine" to the first guns. There is fuzziness about that concept, because the characteristic is "windage" -- the bullet or cannonball must be tight in the barrel so as to absorb as much of the force as possible, but there were certainly things put in in the explosion before that was achieved.
Its migration to Europe, probably through the Mongols, and oddly enough not appearing in the intervening lands. But given that Europe went straight to the gunpowder formula and cannon, it had to have been imported. Europe promptly innovated because its stone castles were far more vulnerable than China's earthwork ones, larger and long cannons, corning gunpowder to make the explosion last longer and propel the cannonball farther with a small gun. And then it innovated in castles: it turned to earthworks too, but it made artillery fortresses, set up to take advantage of crossfire and ensure there was nothing that could be stormed without undergoing fire. China adopted the innovation in cannon and other guns, not so much the fortresses.
Ballistics, with such discoveries as the air resistance increasing as you approached the speed of sound, made a major difference. It was so mathematics intensive that it was hard to imitate. And the Industrial Revolution was going ahead full blast.
Ends with some about the modernization of China, and Japan, too.