G'day Barkley, You write: > Actually it was the Chinese who first figured >out how to use gunpowder to make guns and >cannons. Whoops! Guess that shows I didn't go to a good highschool ... >The technology diffused westwards. And quickly! I see the Poms were loosing 'bombards' (cannon) at the French by the time of Crecy (ie by 1346). A couple of idle and tangential thoughtlets for the tangentially idle: I see also that 'the nation state' makes its entrance in France (probably when Joan's mob makes peace with the Burgundians at Arras in 1435), Spain (the union of Castile and Aragon in 1479 under a sovereign crown), and England in 1485 (the Tudors after Bosworth Field in 1485). These states had unprecedented economies of scale going for them when it came to taxation, unprecedented local threats (the other nation states) and the cutting-edge coordination/space-ruling technology of the day: printing (Gutenberg 1448 and Caxton 1476), combined with the rise of the humanistic school (weakening the stultifying scholasticism of the more orthodox types). Powerful stuff. I mention this last because in many ways the west of the 15th century was still catching up to where it (the med regions, anyway) had been in the year dot. As I don't know a thing about China, Japan and India du juour, so I don't know if there's anything of any significance in that little lot. Nite all, Rob.
