![]() Guano from certain birds and animals was also another important natural source of potassium nitrate. Since the British controlled so much of the Indian saltpeter trade, the French put their best chemists to work to produce artificial sources of saltpeter. ![]() Even though the East India company was known for its business in cotton, silks, indigo, tea (it was the East India Company's tea that was thrown into the Boston harbor at the start of the American revolution), they also traded in saltpeter, so much so that about 15% of cargo volume on their ships was saltpeter and it was one of their largest sources of profit. The East India Company, which was the world's first multinational corporation, and controlled about 50% of the world trade at one point (beat that, Walmart!), made huge profits from shipping saltpeter from India back to England. King Hemchandra (or Hemu), from one of the largest kingdoms in northern India in the 16th century, was not from any royal family, but from a family of green-grocers, and he made his fortune by trading in saltpeter, before becoming the King. Vast fortunes were made by those who dealt in saltpeter. This is why saltpeter men had special privileges, which we studied in our previous post. The quality of charcoal is an important factor in the quality of the gunpowder, therefore the techniques of making high quality charcoal were very jealously guarded.Ĭontrol of saltpeter meant the control of gunpowder, therefore many countries put a lot of thought into ensuring a supply of saltpeter. It must be noted that wood from certain types of trees makes better quality charcoal than others. Of course, this means a supply of dry wood is needed to make charcoal, but since large forests were common in many regions, therefore this ingredient was easily available to everyone during the early days of gunpowder manufacturing. Charcoal is made by burning wood in a closed environment, by starting a fire and then cutting off the supply of air, allowing the water and sap to evaporate and other volatile chemicals in the wood to burn off, leaving only the carbonized wood behind. In fact, charcoal manufacturing was even a profession and last names like Collier and Coulier from England, Kohler from Germany, Carbone from Italy and Spain, Carbon from France etc., all indicate that a person's ancestors were charcoal manufacturers. ![]() So, by the time of the 13th century, charcoal was known to everyone in the world. By the Bronze age, people were using charcoal to make fires hot enough to melt copper and later on, iron as well (ordinary wood fires cannot get hot enough to do this, but charcoal fires can). Prehistoric drawings made in caves have been chemically analyzed and determined to be made by charcoal sticks. Charcoal has a long history, from thousands of years ago.
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