Gunpowder Works on Middle Earth

[dcollins]

Clearly, acceptance and proliferation of technological advances is much faster, and much more accepted, in a modern capitalistic society than in those of other types. It's often difficult for us to see how much slower the distribution of technical advancements was in other times and places.

For example, apparently the Chinese had gunpowder for use in festivals and celebrations by the 1st century AD. However, the first recorded use of rockets in warfare wasn't until 1232 AD. That's over a thousand years!

There's more information on this website at NASA: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_rockets.html

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I'm inclined to agree that some form of gunpowder was used in LtoR. But remember what we call "gunpowder" is very different from what people used even a hundred years ago. It is extreemly tricky stuff and in olden days it would sometimes just explode from having been left alone too long. There's an HG Wells story where the good guys talk to a bunch of gunpowder gurus (to make a rocket, I think, it has been a long time). In any case, the gunpowder gurus were all missing bits of body. This was common in Well's day. You worked with gunpoweder, you eventually lost your fingers or got blown up.

And as far as gunpowder equating with guns. Guns didn't surpass longbows until the mid 19th century. Benjamin Franklin suggested that we train our troops with longbows as opposed to muskets in our war for independence. The problem with longbows is that it takes YEARS to get good with them ... which, of course, is not an issue if one is an elf.

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Clearly, acceptance and proliferation of technological advances is much faster, and much more accepted, in a modern capitalistic society than in those of other types. It's often difficult for us to see how much slower the distribution of technical advancements was in other times and places.

For example, apparently the Chinese had gunpowder for use in festivals and celebrations by the 1st century AD. However, the first recorded use of rockets in warfare wasn't until 1232 AD. That's over a thousand years!

There's more information on this website at NASA: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_rockets.html

Ah, well... The Chinese lacked the benefit of working magic and the wisdom of wizards. Besides, we have no idea as to how long fireworls existed on Middle Earth.

Gandalf's pyrotechnical devices were comples, sophisticated, and potent. We have established that gunpowder works on Middle Earth. We are now only quibbline about its applications in regards to warfare and weapons.

Roll out the rocket artillery, say I! Send for the arquibusiers and grenadiers, and we'll show those orcs a thing or two...

Gary

 

[qstor]

I agree with Mark that Gandalf was the only one with knowledge about how to create the fireworks.

And as far as wizards in ME creating the fireworks or using them. Remember there were only 5. And two weren't involved in Western Middle Earth.

Mike

 

[Frostmarrow]

Ah, well... The Chinese lacked the benefit of working magic and the wisdom of wizards. Besides, we have no idea as to how long fireworls existed on Middle Earth.

Gandalf's pyrotechnical devices were comples, sophisticated, and potent. We have established that gunpowder works on Middle Earth. We are now only quibbline about its applications in regards to warfare and weapons.

Roll out the rocket artillery, say I! Send for the arquibusiers and grenadiers, and we'll show those orcs a thing or two...

Gary

That is really strange in the real world. I mean the Chinese were very wise and shows a remarkable level of inventivness and acceptance of new things. They had a paper currency early for example. Which btw Marco Polo was mocked in Europe for even bringing here. It strikes me as very strange that the Chinese didn't make the connection. When we (the Europeans) got hold of gunpowder we used it for weaponry almost right away. Perhaps new applications of old materials requires a new or at least different mind set. The answer to the original question might very well be; Middle Earth lacks innovators.

However, I agree that we should get some to use on those pesky orcs. I get increasingly more accepting of the idea of gunpowder for use in a fantasy setting. Perhaps Gary is working on how to implement them? There is more to guns than just a damage profile...

 

[Tsyr]

Sorry Gary, but I don't even see that we have "estabalished" that gunpowder works. We have established that some wizards, at least Gandalf and possibly the others, are able to recreate the effects of gunpowder.

I note again, the wizard Gandalf was able to create the fireworks.

The fireworks themselves, despite the comedic insertation of a pair of pesky pintsize punks lighting one off, never in the book were given any leve of scientific detail at all. They are barely even described physicly (the fireworks themselves, not the effects). And we know that Gandalf was a pyromaniac of the highest and mightiest order. It seems perfectly logical that he could create them through magic... indeed, the dragon (both in the movie and in the book), as well as the butterfly firework (in the book and I think in the movie, I don't recall), and the tree and sailying ship fireworks (only in the book I'm fairly sure) all seem to be as much a creation of magic as science... they are well above even what you see today at the massive Fourth of July display in Boston, or at Mouse Land, or what not. The tree we might be able to do (Fairly sure we could, if we put our minds to it), possibly the butterfly (which may have been meant in a somewhat more metaphorical sense in the book), but neither the dragon nor the sailing ship seem even within our abilities if we put our mind to it... they seem to defy physics.

Tolkien used the term fireworks because that would be a term familiar to his readers, and one that would bring vivid displays to life. And because, really, that is what you had... displays of fire in the sky... but saying that because they were called fireworks they must be fireworks as we understand them is a risky path to tread indeed.

Eh, my three copper anyhow. (Inflation, you know?)

 

[Umbran]

If I remember correctly, I believe that the Orcs of the White Hand (Saruman's army) did use "Blasting Powder" during the battle of Helm's Deep to breech the walls of said fortification....

No, they did not use "blasting powder", or at least I cqannot find those words used. What they used is not fully described. The main characters claim that the orcs "lit the fires of Orthanc" beneath the walls.

Whether or not it is "normal" black powder explosive is not something we can resolve. But it also isn't very relevant. At the start of LotR, the only known sources for the stuff are wizards, and they aren't talking.

Remember that artillery and dragoons use lots and lots of gunpowder. That means lots and lots of preparation. Even if the stuff is completely mundane, by the time the story starts, the wizards don't have time to supervise and teach the production and use of the stuff on the large scale.

Why didn't these guys make the stuff before the story started? Because they thought it better not to do so, I expect. Making such knowledge free and open would eventually undermine the power fo the "bad guys" like Saruman and Sauron. Would you trust orcs with it? And the "good guys" like Gandalf probably have it in their heads that letting that knowledge out willy-nilly would do more harm than good, in the long run.

And lets not forget that Tolkien himself seems to have had a thing against technology, personally....

 

[Squire James]

Hm... I recall a passage in the "Otherworld" series by Tad Williams (where a bunch of unusually-realistic "worlds" existed in an isolated corner of the Net) where "the hobbit world" was left unattended long enough for jet aircraft to be involved in the war. "The Hobbit" did mention that the goblins were skilled at making weapons that would "trouble the world for many years to come" so perhaps the orcs would get them first!

Being a gun advocate sounds more like something Saruman (rather than Gandalf) might do. If he didn't fall under Sauron's influence, the War of the Ring would probably had been winnable without destroying the Ring. Even without gunpowder, Gondor backed up by Rohan and Saruman's forces may have kept Sauron from getting across the Great River at all! If Saruman had armed the men of Dunland with muskets, well, I'd see another Last Alliance scenario going here (ie: the fighting happening in Mordor rather than Gondor). Destroying the Ring may not be that big a priority then, and perhaps the alliance would fail to destroy it. Rinse and repeat for the Fourth Age, except the next time it would be a shooting war!

 

[Gez]

If you look at it, Middle Earth has factories also. In fact, it is a somewhat medieval world that is undergoing an industrial revolution at the same time as the war of the ring.

It was well illustrated in the movie: look at what Isengard became... And then, Saruman do the same thing to the Shire, cutting trees and building big ugly mills and factories.

JRR Tolkien was sometimes charged of being a luddite. Indeed, the main force for technological progress is evil and the orcs (funny when you consider that all non-tolkien orcs have a "technology" much less advanced than other races) and the main force for good are all people stuck in their traditions and ancestral way of life. In fact, Tolkien, like Cervantes (remember Don Quixote fighting against windmills ? Although this may be taken for a comical scene, it has the symbolic of old-school chivalry struggling against modernism and machine; and ultimately losing) but with a different tone, describe the end of an age and the beginning of a new one.

The age to come is the age of Man, and of Machine. The elve, unable to adapt to the change, leave and flee to the intemporal Valinor. The orcs stays. They'll eventually merge fully with humans (Saruman was the first to create human/orc hybrid, even if Peter Jackson strangely decided to make the Uruk-Hai orc/goblin hybrids -- I could swear orcs and goblins are synonyms in the books !), and this will result in the man of today, petty, egoist, concerned only by power and money. With this books, Tolkien said that all these industries that raped the peaceful landscapes and polluted the atmosphere was depriving the world of its elves and its magic, turning it into a harsh, orcish world.

Technology exist, but is used by the villains.

 

[Eye Tyrant]

This is a "sudden revaletion" to me.

While working on something regarding what those able to use magical powers could and would be doing, it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.

In the FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS, book and film, Gandalf has and employs pyrotechnical devices, fireworks that include skyrockets.

Of course the Chinese invented such things, and then went on to use the idea for such things as rockets, hand grenades, mines, cannons, and small gunpowder weapons. So now I am wondering why the armies of Middle Earth didn't employ at least explosive rockets and hand grenades in their warfare...

Gary

I realized this quite some time ago and often wondered the same... I am surprised that so few people put the connection together until now.