Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >Hmm...two centuries. Is this attributable to the Chinese? The origin of  
> outsourcing as we know it today? <g>

No.  The Chinese didn't have firearms until they were imported from Europe.

Gunpowder was first described as being used in Europe by Roger Bacon in 1216, 
used to hurl stones at fortifications. (That is, Bacon described it, not used 
it).

The size and portability of the guns was scaled down through the centuries 
until all sorts of matchlock guns were in use by the 1400's.   In Burgandy 
around 1610 a practical mechanism using flint and steel  was developed called 
a 
'snaphaunce; (hen pecking).  It was this new weapon with which  Les 
Mousquetaires 
du Roi were originally armed.  

By the bye, this has something to do with homesteading interest.  Until 1910 
or so and the advent of the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen, any 
ambitions for warfare were limited to the amount of natural nitrogen salts 
available (potassium nitrate being the principle ingredient of gunpowder).  
You had to 
mine the nitrates or gather them from islands where bird droppings 
accumulated.

But with the Haber-Bosch process you could fix all the nitrogen you wanted so 
long as you  had good source of heat, like natural gas.  Now you could wage 
much more extensive and frequent wars, which is exactly what happended.  
Pounding cities into rubble was only practical beginning with the First World 
War.

The same nitrates used for gunpowder and explosives is also agricultural 
nitrogen fertilizer and the instant abundance of it gave rise to the 'Green 
Revolution' which in term allowed the population of the world to increase 
tenfold.  
Now with the fossil fuels that are needed to make nitrates becoming scarce, 
we 
will be using our nitrates to wage wars to decrease the populations made 
possible by those same nitrates.   </HTML>