Book Note

Brenda J. Buchanan, Ed. Gunpowder, Explosives and the State: A Technological History. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. xxiii + 425 pp. $95.

Reviewed by Ralph R. Hamerla

In Gunpowder, Explosives and the State, essays by 23 contributors offer an account of gunpowder's development, its use, the products needed for its production, and its place in history as a commodity of international trade. Gunpowder is exceptional because it was both a marketable commercial product across Europe and a vital component for national security, at least through the end of the 19th century. This gives gunpowder-as-commodity a privileged (albeit ignored) role not only in worldwide markets, but in the rise and survival of states. Nations' need for gunpowder was often in direct conflict with their need to obtain the raw materials used to produce gunpowder in an international, often uncontrolled market. Gleaned from a series of conference papers presented at the International Committee for the History of Technology from 1996 to 2002, this collection demonstrates the unappreciated importance of gunpowder in world affairs