Gunpowder - Clive Ponting

It's surely the nastiest and most uncomfortable irony in all of recorded (and probably unrecorded) human history; the discovery of gunpowder was prompted by alchemists searching for the Elixir of Life....

It seems only fair, what with China in resurgence these days, that we pause for a moment and give due praise to Chinese ingenuity. Not only did they discover what happens when you mix charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur in the correct proportions but they subsequently developed the great majority of what we arrogant Westerners consider to have been 'our' greatest military advances - they had bombs, incendiaries, rockets, landmines, cannon and guns a thousand years before the rest of us stopped bashing each other with metal sticks. Directly or indirectly they actually dragged the rest of us kicking and fighting into the modern age whilst we clung to swords and spears screaming at the top of our lungs that we didn't want to go. In fact it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to note that China has already attacked the USA, albeit indirectly; their gunpowder rockets were refined by Tipoo Sultan of India to give the 18th century Redcoats a tricky time of it; recognising a good thing when we saw it we Brits subsequently used them to shell the rebellious North Americans. Thus giving the world the "Star Spangled Banner" with the line in the rocket's red glare.

Sorry.

Clive Ponting goes in depth to explore the history and the spread of this outwardly innocuous substance; starting in China (where it was a state secret for 400 years on pain of instant death) and moving to the Muslim world where the rest of us got a taste of just how powerful this thing really was - the triple walls of Constantinople had gone unchalleneged for a hundred years and more, until in 1453 the Ottomans bashed holes in them within 7 days. India also got it's rude introduction to modernity thanks to the Mughals - of whom the aforementioned Tipoo was one. From the East it then hit Europe and, thanks to us, crushed both Inca and Aztec empires, freed a continent and enslaved another one before returning East and giving the Samurai of Japan a nasty surprise. Perhaps one of the first examples of an invention that had truly global impact.

Ponting's achievement is in turning what might have been just another dry textbook about a handful of dry chemicals into something that could capture the imagination of any schoolboy; each chaper deals with a specific application of the "fire drug". What it's made of, how it's made (though fortunately not the particulars), the differing types of powders and the uses of each, the effect and development of the weapons, the impact on Europe, Africa and the Americas etc etc. 200-odd pages in fact of what might have been dull but is actually fairly entertaining.

6 out of 10