Saltpeter

Author : David Cressy
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191611859
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Saltpeter written by David Cressy and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 régime 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. Saltpeter, the Mother of Gunpowder tells this fascinating story for the first time. Lively and entertaining in its own right, it is also a tale with far-reaching implications. As David Cressy's engaging narrative makes clear, the story of saltpeter is vital not only in explaining the inter-connected military, scientific, and political 'revolutions' of the seventeenth century; it also played a key role in the formation of the centralized British nation state - and that state's subsequent dominance of the waves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Author : David Cressy
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019969575X
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Saltpeter written by David Cressy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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'.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bulletin written by and published by . This book was released on 1886 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Juliet E. K. Walker
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 9780813108407
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Free Frank written by Juliet E. K. Walker and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 1995-01-18 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Free Frank is not only a testament to human courage and resourcefulness but affords new insight into the American frontier. Born a slave in the South Carolina piedmont in 1777, Frank died a free man in 1854 in a town he had founded in western Illinois. His accomplishments, creditable for any frontiersman, were for a black man extraordinary. Goods and services commanded a premium in the life of the frontier. Free Frank's career shows what an exceptional black man, though working against great odds, could accomplish through industry, acumen, and aggressiveness. His story suggests a great deal about business activity and legal practices, as well as racial conditions, on the frontier. Juliet Walker has performed a task of historical detection in recreating the life of Free Frank from family traditions, limited personal papers, public documents, and secondary sources. In doing so, she has added a significant chapter to the history of Afro-Americans. - Back cover.

Author : Richard L. Myers
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313080577
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The 100 Most Important Chemical Compounds written by Richard L. Myers and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-08-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a chemical compound? Compounds are substances that are two or more elements combined together chemically in a standard proportion by weight. Compounds are all around us - they include familiar things, such as water, and more esoteric substances, such as triuranium octaoxide, the most commonly occurring natural source for uranium. This reference guide gives us a tour of 100 of the most important, common, unusual, and intriguing compounds known to science. Each entry gives an extensive explanation of the composition, molecular formula, and chemical properties of the compound. In addition, each entry reviews the relevant chemistry, history, and uses of the compound, with discussions of the origin of the compound's name, the discovery or first synthesis of the compound, production statistics, and uses of the compound.

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1270 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book House documents written by and published by . This book was released on 1883 with total page 1270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : United States. Bureau of Animal Industry
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 534 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture written by United States. Bureau of Animal Industry and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 536 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Annual report of the Bureau of Animal Industry. v. 25, 1908 written by and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : United States. Bureau of Animal Industry
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 532 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Annual Report of the Bureau of Animal Industry for the Year ... written by United States. Bureau of Animal Industry and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : David Cressy
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191611867
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Saltpeter written by David Cressy and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-01-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 régime 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. Saltpeter, the Mother of Gunpowder tells this fascinating story for the first time. Lively and entertaining in its own right, it is also a tale with far-reaching implications. As David Cressy's engaging narrative makes clear, the story of saltpeter is vital not only in explaining the inter-connected military, scientific, and political 'revolutions' of the seventeenth century; it also played a key role in the formation of the centralized British nation state - and that state's subsequent dominance of the waves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.