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The Gunpowder Age

China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History

Author: Tonio Andrade

Publisher: Princeton University Press

ISBN: 1400874440

Category: History

Page: 448

The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind? Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, as Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s—much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China—like Europe—was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world's great military powers. By showing that China’s military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.

The Gunpowder Age

China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History

Author: Tonio Andrade

Publisher: N.A

ISBN: 9780691178141

Category: History

Page: 448

The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839-42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind? Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, as Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s--much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China--like Europe--was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world's great military powers. By showing that China's military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.

The Gunpowder Age

China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History

Author: Tonio Andrade

Publisher: N.A

ISBN: 9780691135977

Category: History

Page: 496

The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind? Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s—much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China—like Europe—was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world’s great military powers. By showing that China’s military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.

Saltpeter

The Mother of Gunpowder

Author: David Cressy

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 019969575X

Category: History

Page: 237

The story of the science, the technology, the politics and the military applications of saltpeter - the vital but mysterious substance that governments from the Tudors to the Victorians regarded as an 'inestimable treasure'.

Gunpowder Empire

A Novel of Crosstime Traffic

Author: Harry Turtledove

Publisher: Macmillan

ISBN: 1429915056

Category: Fiction

Page: 288

In Harry Turtledove's Gunpowder Empire, Jeremy Solter is a teenager growing up in the late 21st century. During the school year, his family lives in Southern California--but during the summer the whole family lives and works on the frontier of the Roman Empire. Not the Roman Empire that fell centuries ago, but a Roman Empire that never fell: a parallel timeline, one of an infinity of possible worlds. For in our timeline, we now have the technology to move among these. Some are uninhabitable; some are ghastly, such as the one where Germany won World War II. But many are full of resources and raw materials that our world can use. So we send traders and businesspeople--but to keep the secret of crosstime traffic to ourselves, these traders are trained, in whole-family groups, to pass as natives. But when Jeremy's mother gets sick--really sick, the kind you can't cure with antibiotics. Both parents duck out through the gateway for a quick visit to the doctor. But while they're gone, the gateways stop working. So do the communications links to their home timeline. The kids are on their own, and things are looking bad. The Lietuvans are invading. The city is besieged. The kids are doing their best to carry on business and act like everything's normal, but there's only so much you can do when cannonballs are crashing through your roof. And in the meantime, the city government has gotten suspicious, and is demanding a *full* report on how their family does business, where they get their superior merchandise, why they want all that wheat ...exactly the questions they don't want to answer. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

War Made New

Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World

Author: Max Boot

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 1101216832

Category: History

Page: 640

A monumental, groundbreaking work, now in paperback, that shows how technological and strategic revolutions have transformed the battlefield Combining gripping narrative history with wide-ranging analysis, War Made New focuses on four ?revolutions? in military affairs and describes how inventions ranging from gunpowder to GPS-guided air strikes have remade the field of battle?and shaped the rise and fall of empires. War Made New begins with the Gunpowder Revolution and explains warfare?s evolution from ritualistic, drawn-out engagements to much deadlier events, precipitating the rise of the modern nation-state. He next explores the triumph of steel and steam during the Industrial Revolution, showing how it powered the spread of European colonial empires. Moving into the twentieth century and the Second Industrial Revolution, Boot examines three critical clashes of World War II to illustrate how new technology such as the tank, radio, and airplane ushered in terrifying new forms of warfare and the rise of centralized, and even totalitarian, world powers. Finally, Boot focuses on the Gulf War, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iraq War?arguing that even as cutting-edge technologies have made America the greatest military power in world history, advanced communications systems have allowed decentralized, ?irregular? forces to become an increasingly significant threat.

Gunpowder Moon

Author: David Pedreira

Publisher: HarperCollins

ISBN: 0062676091

Category: Fiction

Page: 304

“Interesting quirks and divided loyalties flesh out this first novel in which sf and mystery intersect in a well-crafted plot...Pedreira’s science thriller powerfully highlights the human politics and economics from the seemingly desolate expanse of the moon. It will attract readers who enjoyed Andy Weir’s lunar crime caper Artemis.” -- Library Journal, starred review A realistic and chilling vision of life on the Moon, where dust kills as easily as the vacuum of space…but murder is even quicker—a fast-paced, cinematic science fiction thriller, this debut novel combines the inventiveness of The Martian, the intrigue of The Expanse, and the thrills of Red Rising. The Moon smells like gunpowder. Every lunar walker since Apollo 11 has noticed it: a burnt-metal scent that reminds them of war. Caden Dechert, the chief of the U.S. mining operation on the edge of the Sea of Serenity, thinks the smell is just a trick of the mind—a reminder of his harrowing days as a Marine in the war-torn Middle East back on Earth. It’s 2072, and lunar helium-3 mining is powering the fusion reactors that are bringing Earth back from environmental disaster. But competing for the richest prize in the history of the world has destroyed the oldest rule in space: Safety for All. When a bomb kills one of Dechert’s diggers on Mare Serenitatis, the haunted veteran goes on the hunt to expose the culprit before more blood is spilled. But as Dechert races to solve the first murder in the history of the Moon, he gets caught in the crosshairs of two global powers spoiling for a fight. Reluctant to be the match that lights this powder-keg, Dechert knows his life and those of his crew are meaningless to the politicians. Even worse, he knows the killer is still out there, hunting. In his desperate attempts to save his crew and prevent the catastrophe he sees coming, the former Marine uncovers a dangerous conspiracy that, with one spark, can ignite a full lunar war, wipe out his team . . . and perhaps plunge the Earth back into darkness.

Colour of Paradise

The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires

Author: Kris E. Lane

Publisher: Yale University Press

ISBN: 030016131X

Category: History

Page: 280

Among the magnificent gems and jewels left behind by the great Islamic empires, emeralds stand out for their size and prominence. For the Mughals, Ottomans, and Safavids green was—as it remains for all Muslims—the color of Paradise, reserved for the Prophet Muhammad and his descendants. Tapping a wide range of sources, Kris Lane traces the complex web of global trading networks that funneled emeralds from backland South America to populous Asian capitals between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Lane reveals the bloody conquest wars and forced labor regimes that accompanied their production. It is a story of trade, but also of transformations—how members of profoundly different societies at opposite ends of the globe assigned value to a few thousand pounds of imperfectly shiny green rocks.

Guns for the Sultan

Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire

Author: Gábor Ágoston

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9780521843133

Category: History

Page: 277

Gabor Agoston's book contributes to an emerging strand of military history, that examines organised violence as a challenge to early modern states, their societies and economies. His is the first to examine the weapons technology and armaments industries of the Ottoman Empire, the only Islamic empire that threatened Europe on its own territory in the age of the Gunpowder Revolution. Based on extensive research in the Turkish archives, the book affords much insight regarding the early success and subsequent failure of an Islamic empire against European adversaries. It demonstrates Ottoman flexibility and the existence of an early modern arms market and information exchange across the cultural divide, as well as Ottoman self-sufficiency in weapons and arms production well into the eighteenth century. Challenging the sweeping statements of Eurocentric and Orientalist scholarship, the book disputes the notion of Islamic conservatism, the Ottomans' supposed technological inferiority and the alleged insufficiencies in production capacity. This is a provocative, intelligent and penetrating analysis, which successfully contends traditional perceptions of Ottoman and Islamic history.

Lost Colony

The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory Over the West

Author: Tonio Andrade

Publisher: Princeton University Press

ISBN: 0691144559

Category: History

Page: 431

During the seventeenth century, Holland created the world's most dynamic colonial empire, outcompeting the British and capturing Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Yet, in the Sino-Dutch War--Europe's first war with China--the Dutch met their match in a colorful Chinese warlord named Koxinga. Part samurai, part pirate, he led his generals to victory over the Dutch and captured one of their largest and richest colonies--Taiwan. How did he do it? Examining the strengths and weaknesses of European and Chinese military techniques during the period, Lost Colony provides a balanced new perspective on long-held assumptions about Western power, Chinese might, and the nature of war. It has traditionally been asserted that Europeans of the era possessed more advanced science, technology, and political structures than their Eastern counterparts, but historians have recently contested this view, arguing that many parts of Asia developed on pace with Europe until 1800. While Lost Colony shows that the Dutch did indeed possess a technological edge thanks to the Renaissance fort and the broadside sailing ship, that edge was neutralized by the formidable Chinese military leadership. Thanks to a rich heritage of ancient war wisdom, Koxinga and his generals outfoxed the Dutch at every turn. Exploring a period when the military balance between Europe and China was closer than at any other point in modern history, Lost Colony reassesses an important chapter in world history and offers valuable and surprising lessons for contemporary times.

God's Secret Agents

Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot

Author: Alice Hogge

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 0062047256

Category: History

Page: 488

One evening in 1588, just weeks after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, two young men landed in secret on a beach in Norfolk, England. They were Jesuit priests, Englishmen, and their aim was to achieve by force of argument what the Armada had failed to do by force of arms: return England to the Catholic Church. Eighteen years later their mission would be shattered by the actions of the Gunpowder Plotters -- a small group of terrorists who famously tried to destroy the Houses of Parliament -- for the Jesuits were accused of having designed "that most horrid and hellish conspiracy." Alice Hogge follows "God's secret agents" from their schooling on the Continent, through their perilous return journeys and lonely lives in hiding, to, ultimately, the gallows. She offers a remarkable true account of faith, duty, intolerance, and martyrdom -- the unforgettable story of men who would die for a cause undone by men who would kill for it.

The Age of Gunpowder Empires, 1450-1800

Author: William Hardy McNeill

Publisher: Amer Historical Assn

ISBN: N.A

Category: History

Page: 49

Gunpowder

Explosive flavours from modern India

Author: Devina Seth,Harneet Baweja,Nirmal Save

Publisher: Kyle Books

ISBN: 0857835475

Category: Cooking

Page: 192

The famous gunpowder spice mix is a heady blend of pulses and spices, including chilli, curry leaves and asafoetida. It is a fitting title for this exciting collection of recipes from the founders of the hugely respected restaurant of the same name. In this beautiful book, complete with stunning photography, Harneet, Devina and Nirmal have managed to capture the bustle and flavours of their childhoods in Kolkata, and the intricacy of true homestyle dishes from across India. From Maa's Kashmiri Lamb Chops (which have garnered outstanding reviews from many restaurant critics) to Wild Rabbit Pulao, these exceptional recipes are impressively authentic, yet given a modern twist. Throughout the book, the authors share personal anecdotes about their recipes and give handy cheats to make things easier for the home cook, including time-saving tips and alternative ingredients. With chapters covering Small Plates, Big Plates, Sweet Plates & Drinks and Sides & Spice, Gunpowder is the perfect opportunity to create some of these widely admired dishes in your own home.

Hank

Author: Arch Montgomery

Publisher: N.A

ISBN: 9781890862220

Category: Juvenile Fiction

Page: 171

For ages 12+. Eighth-grader Hank Collins has quit his Little League team because he dislikes the coach, and now his summer promises to be long and boring. His divorced parents are preoccupied -- his mother is happily smoking pot with her new husband and his father is having an affair with his secretary -- and they pay little attention to Hank. Only his stepmother (Perfect-Lady-Karen) seems to notice him, and her attentions lead to preachy Bible sermons and little else. Hank spends much of his time near the Gunpowder River, where he meets two older men who invite him to join their paintball team. He enjoys this diversion, and agrees to join them for a weekend camp-out tournament. On the excursion, Hank finds out that the two men are gay; unfortunately, so do their Christian homosexual-hating campmates, who chase them and kidnap Hank. The boy escapes, and is rescued by his English teacher, who is coincidentally driving home from a summer retreat.

God's Traitors

Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England

Author: Jessie Childs

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

ISBN: 0199392358

Category: History

Page: 443

Explores the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England through the eyes of one remarkable family: the Vauxes of Harrowden Hall.

The Blackthorn Key

Author: Kevin Sands

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

ISBN: 1481446517

Category: Juvenile Fiction

Page: 384

In 1665 London, fourteen-year-old Christopher Rowe, apprentice to an apothecary, and his best friend, Tom, try to uncover the truth behind a mysterious cult, following a trail of puzzles, codes, pranks, and danger toward an unearthly secret with the power to tear the world apart.

Gunpowder Guy

Author: Stewart Ross,Susan Shields

Publisher: Wayland Pub Limited

ISBN: 9780750225014

Category: Great Britain

Page: 28

Gunpowder Percy

Author: Grace Tiffany

Publisher: Bagwyn Books

ISBN: 9780866988155

Category:

Page: 294

It's 1603, and Sir Thomas Percy can't stay away from the Globe playhouse and the history plays London is mad for. Inspired by the warrior Hotspur in Shakespeare's Henry IV, he joins a group of disaffected Catholics that includes the mysterious traveler Guido Fawkes and the rebel aristocrat Robin Catesby. Together they and the women who love them embark on a quest to destroy a Protestant king and return the nation to a mythic medieval past.

Fawkes

A Novel

Author: Nadine Brandes

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

ISBN: 0785217355

Category: Young Adult Fiction

Page: 448

“Fawkes is the perfect mix of history and magic.” —Cynthia Hand, New York Times bestselling author of My Lady Jane Thomas Fawkes is turning to stone, and the only cure to the Stone Plague is to join his father’s plot to assassinate the king of England. Silent wars leave the most carnage. The wars that are never declared but are carried out in dark alleys with masks and hidden knives. Wars where color power alters the natural rhythm of 17th-century London. And when the king calls for peace, no one listens until he finally calls for death. But what if death finds him first? Keepers think the Igniters caused the plague. Igniters think the Keepers did it. But all Thomas knows is that the Stone Plague infecting his eye is spreading. And if he doesn’t do something soon, he’ll be a lifeless statue. So when his Keeper father, Guy Fawkes, invites him to join the Gunpowder Plot—claiming it will put an end to the plague—Thomas is in. The plan: use 36 barrels of gunpowder to blow up the Igniter King. The problem: Doing so will destroy the family of the girl Thomas loves. But backing out of the plot will send his father and the other plotters to the gallows. To save one, Thomas will lose the other. No matter Thomas’s choice, one thing is clear: once the decision is made and the color masks have been put on, there’s no turning back. “I was up late in the night reading, waiting to get to the fifth of November to see how the plot would actually unfold, and it did not disappoint. An imaginative, colorful tale about choosing for yourself between what’s right and what others insist is the truth.” —Cynthia Hand, New York Times bestselling author of My Lady Jane “Hold on to your heart as this slow-burning adventure quickly escalates into an explosion of magic, love, and the truth about loyalty.” —Mary Weber, bestselling author of the Storm Siren Trilogy “Fawkes is a tale full of spiritual depth, tragedy, and hope. A beautifully written allegory for the magic of faith, with an achingly relatable hero who pulls you into his world heart and soul. A must-read for all fantasy fans!” —Lorie Langdon, author of Olivia Twist “A brilliant book that fulfills every expectation. Brandes turns seventeenth century London into a magical place. I was captivated by the allegory of her magic system and how she blended that fantasy with history. I highly recommend this gripping and beautifully crafted book to all. It will leave you both entertained and pondering matters raised in the storyline long after you’ve finished reading.” —Jill Williamson, Christy Award-winning author of By Darkness Hid and Captives “A magical retelling of the seventeenth century’s famous Gunpowder Plot that will sweep you back in time—to a divided England where plagues can turn you to stone and magic has a voice. Deft and clever, Fawkes is a vibrant story about the search for truth and issues relevant to us, still, today.” —Tosca Lee, New York Times bestselling author