Bronze age advanced weaponry

[Flocculencio]

This is just a question for a world building project I'm working on. Could a civilisation which had never adopted widespread use of iron due to easily accessible copper and tin/zinc deposits in relative proximity develop the mettalurgical skill necessary to cast soohisticated bronze weapons and bronze firearms? I know IOTL bronze was often favoured for cannon but I'm thinking about bronze plate armour, bronze crossbows, bronze barrelled arquebuses etc.

 

[carlton_bach]

In principle, bronze (technically, copper alloy) firearms are not a problem as ong as you stick with basic black powder designs. You need modern steel to withstand the stresses of anything more advanced than a rifle musket or revolver, but that's probably more advanced than you were thinking.

Crossbows are not a problem in a bronze-age world. In fact, since bronze does not expand while corroding as much as ireon does, you can make the release mechanism more precise without requiring soldiers to be polishing it forever. You won't get metal bowstaves, of course (not unless you're positing really advanced metallurgy), but those aren't really necessary. A good composite design matches a steel bow in terms of power and reliability any day. Even today, with factory-made spring steel, most crossbows are made with modern composites because of weight and material fatigue issues.

Armour is probably more of an issue. You can make bronze plate armour. Some of the stuff the Greeks built in late archaic times is technically every bit as demanding as fifteenth-century armoury (though their design was off). I don't think you can make it as strong as good steel, though. Strength-for-weight is where high-end iron alloy really has the edge. I don't envision there being armour of proof, or anything like it, in that setting.

Of course, firearms and crossbows did bad things to armour anyway. And do not foreget that other composite materials are also useful for protection. It doesn't have to be Milanese plate.

 

[Flocculencio]

In principle, bronze (technically, copper alloy) firearms are not a problem as ong as you stick with basic black powder designs. You need modern steel to withstand the stresses of anything more advanced than a rifle musket or revolver, but that's probably more advanced than you were thinking.

Crossbows are not a problem in a bronze-age world. In fact, since bronze does not expand while corroding as much as ireon does, you can make the release mechanism more precise without requiring soldiers to be polishing it forever. You won't get metal bowstaves, of course (not unless you're positing really advanced metallurgy), but those aren't really necessary. A good composite design matches a steel bow in terms of power and reliability any day. Even today, with factory-made spring steel, most crossbows are made with modern composites because of weight and material fatigue issues.

Armour is probably more of an issue. You can make bronze plate armour. Some of the stuff the Greeks built in late archaic times is technically every bit as demanding as fifteenth-century armoury (though their design was off). I don't think you can make it as strong as good steel, though. Strength-for-weight is where high-end iron alloy really has the edge. I don't envision there being armour of proof, or anything like it, in that setting.

Of course, firearms and crossbows did bad things to armour anyway. And do not foreget that other composite materials are also useful for protection. It doesn't have to be Milanese plate.

Yeah- The scenario involves a thallasocratic culture based on Preislamic Indonesia, but which has stuck to bronze due to rich deposits of tin, arsenic and copper ores around the archipelago.

Land tactics tend toward crossbow and pike squares, slowly givin way to pike and shot. Armour is expensive and only worn by rich nobles and the like so it's not really an issue for most of the setting.

 

[Troyer IV]

Well, sure you could, but eventually someone is going to search for a way to make it stronger, which leads to iron. Eventually.

Bronze ranged weapons are going to have inferior range, because the strength behind the pull is going to be less. Too much tension, it bends or breaks. As I understand it - and I'm no metallurgist - repeated use of bronze items wears them rather quickly, anyway. Could be wrong, though.

Then there's armor to consider. It's going to weigh a metric shit ton. Sure, iron and steel is heavy, but bronze is something like 80 lbs. I've heard, but can't say for sure, that bronze plate is better than other plate armors, but I hold judgement on that, personally.

But pound for pound, it's also really, really expensive. Which leads to another reason why folks would try other alloys.

 

[guinazacity]

Now a bronze age culture discovering firepower would be some real damn interesting pod.

 

[Zireael]

Well, sure you could, but eventually someone is going to search for a way to make it stronger, which leads to iron. Eventually.

Bronze ranged weapons are going to have inferior range, because the strength behind the pull is going to be less. Too much tension, it bends or breaks. As I understand it - and I'm no metallurgist - repeated use of bronze items wears them rather quickly, anyway. Could be wrong, though.

Then there's armor to consider. It's going to weigh a metric shit ton. Sure, iron and steel is heavy, but bronze is something like 80 lbs. I've heard, but can't say for sure, that bronze plate is better than other plate armors, but I hold judgement on that, personally.

But pound for pound, it's also really, really expensive. Which leads to another reason why folks would try other alloys.

Iron as it was at the beginning of the Iron Age was weaker than bronze. However, iron can be sharpened while bronze chips. Also iron is slightly lighter, but it's not a huge difference.
That's why early Iron Age cultures preferred bronze armor + iron weapon combination when they got hold of iron smelting.

 

[Reader347]

Now a bronze age culture discovering firepower would be some real damn interesting pod.

Like China?

 

[wietze]

and plate armour isn't even necessary, scale armour works too

 

[Intransigent Southerner]

Like China?

...the Chinese Bronze Age ended in Zhou times...

 

[jahenders]

As some have noted, bronze was very popular for armor and weapons until it was found that iron or steel could be stronger, lighter, and cheaper for similar use. However, if you have a power with a really robust supply of everything needed for bronze, they'd have less impetus to move toward iron/steel and would incorporate more of OTL developments in bronze. In a sense, their bronze age would last hundreds of years longer. Eventually, though, the advantages of steel would be be seen.

However, if, while in the height of their expanded bronze age, this power developed gunpowder technology (far earlier than anyone did), that combination could have a huge impact. They could easily make bronze muskets, cannon, and such. With those on the battlefield in numbers, the wisdom of developing more advanced steel armor declines -- you'd be developing platemail around the same time it's becoming obsolete. Similarly, with muskets on the battlefield before swords and such get too advanced for bronze, the need to develop greatswords and such of steel declines -- sure it's a great weapon, but not if someone's shooting at you before you can get close.

 

[Umbric Man]

Can I just commend everyone in this thread for giving such interesting and great replies? I'm both learning and pondering the subject now, so it's pretty successful as a topic past the usual political stuff we around here.

 

[carlton_bach]

Yeah- The scenario involves a thallasocratic culture based on Preislamic Indonesia, but which has stuck to bronze due to rich deposits of tin, arsenic and copper ores around the archipelago.

Land tactics tend toward crossbow and pike squares, slowly givin way to pike and shot. Armour is expensive and only worn by rich nobles and the like so it's not really an issue for most of the setting.

If they are going to be doing a lot of their fighting at sea in tropical climates, they could really come to appreciate bronze. It is far less vulnerable to saltwater corrosion (still used in some aspects of shipbuilding for that reason). And so close to the Sinosphere (assum,ing there is a Sionosphere), they will have access to some sophisticated armouring techniques based on fabric, lacquer, leather and string. These are also useful because you don't automatically drown when tossed overboard.

You're giving me a flashback to an old AH roleplaying setting here. An early modern world where Central Indian Hindu states rule the seas with the aid of mercenary Tamil marines - lightly armoured, agile, disciplined and tough as nails, using crossbows, muskets and halberds in formation. That mode of fighting would work here, too.

 

[Flocculencio]

If they are going to be doing a lot of their fighting at sea in tropical climates, they could really come to appreciate bronze. It is far less vulnerable to saltwater corrosion (still used in some aspects of shipbuilding for that reason). And so close to the Sinosphere (assum,ing there is a Sionosphere), they will have access to some sophisticated armouring techniques based on fabric, lacquer, leather and string. These are also useful because you don't automatically drown when tossed overboard.

You're giving me a flashback to an old AH roleplaying setting here. An early modern world where Central Indian Hindu states rule the seas with the aid of mercenary Tamil marines - lightly armoured, agile, disciplined and tough as nails, using crossbows, muskets and halberds in formation. That mode of fighting would work here, too.

Oh bollocks- I thought I was being original

It's a fantasy setting- there is a Sinosphere analogue but it has crashed into a dark age following a disaster of some sort.

I like the idea of lacquered armour rather than bronze, though. Bronze weapons with lacquered armour, perhaps. And in any case the armour would be goong out of fashion in the face of arbalests and arquebuses.

 

[Flocculencio]

Can I just commend everyone in this thread for giving such interesting and great replies? I'm both learning and pondering the subject now, so it's pretty successful as a topic past the usual political stuff we around here.

Seconded- thanks for the replies.

 

[Flocculencio]

As some have noted, bronze was very popular for armor and weapons until it was found that iron or steel could be stronger, lighter, and cheaper for similar use. However, if you have a power with a really robust supply of everything needed for bronze, they'd have less impetus to move toward iron/steel and would incorporate more of OTL developments in bronze. In a sense, their bronze age would last hundreds of years longer. Eventually, though, the advantages of steel would be be seen.

However, if, while in the height of their expanded bronze age, this power developed gunpowder technology (far earlier than anyone did), that combination could have a huge impact. They could easily make bronze muskets, cannon, and such. With those on the battlefield in numbers, the wisdom of developing more advanced steel armor declines -- you'd be developing platemail around the same time it's becoming obsolete. Similarly, with muskets on the battlefield before swords and such get too advanced for bronze, the need to develop greatswords and such of steel declines -- sure it's a great weapon, but not if someone's shooting at you before you can get close.

This is sort of what I was thinking

 

[dandan_noodles]

IIRC, part of the process for making good gunpowder weapons involves distillation; would a bronze culture be able to make sophisticated glassware necessary for the process?

 

[RGB]

1. You can't make mail with bronze, that's sort of a frowny face. Mail is the best all-around armour for most of history. But! You CAN make scale and you can make small plates. You know who used bronze plates for composite armour (i.e. scale shirts and brigandine?) - why, the Spanish. In the 17th c. On the Northern frontiers of Mexico.

Yes, they had steel lances and crossbows and powder arms but they still found bronze brigandine useful against their enemies.

2. Large bronze plates are hella heavy, but did exist in antiquity and in fact quite early, see Dendra panoply probably meant for a chariot-based warrior.

3. Bronze (or even brass) is lovely in the sense that it's very low-demand low-tech metallurgy that can make some high-precision tools and weapons. Anything that needs to be cast JUST SO is best and easiest done in bronze. For example: firearm locks. Complex hilt guards in rapiers and basket swords. Keys and keylocks. Mace and warhammer heads! Whether very ornate, or simple wedges, many were made in bronze all the way into the early modern era.

4. Bronze is of course much better than iron for canon casting. Less likelihood of cannon exploding and killing the crew. Steel is only necessary for when the stresses generated by the powder arms get really intense i.e. not until the 19th c. level of tech.

And now let's consider what happened with societies that went from stone age to muskets in one fell swoop: they never developed many things we consider staples of premodern combat at all, but pikes and ranged weapons are intuitively a decent combination.

That's how Kamehameha beat his adversaries, for example.

So I find your general idea highly plausible/believable as it were. My only real question and it might be a killer is, why is iron so disfavoured and why is steel expensive in your universe? Iron is available pretty much everywhere after all unlike copper and tin.

 

[Practical Lobster]

I have to agree that as soon as feasible, iron would start being used in certain things. This doesn't mean bronze stops being utilized - as RGB points out it has its utilities, especially for a civilization that kicks off gunpowder early.

Arsenic will fall into disfavor if there's any other way to make bronze, cause it won't take any society long enough to figure out how awful it is for its users, I imagine.

Otherwise it seems plausible. I think that the idea of pike squares is an interesting one, but since this is a maritime Indonesian civilization, horses will be in short supply. Shorter spears designed for killing foot soldiers will be more commonplace, and since bows and arrows won't be replaced entirely, especially early on, these formations might well resemble more heavily-armored hoplite phalanxes with gunmen incorporated into them as skirmishers or to deliver an opening volley before the hoplites close in.

The other great thing about gunpowder is that it will terrify elephants. Armies who don't have the time or resources to desensitize the beasts to gunfire will have some nasty routs on their hands, I expect.

 

[Flocculencio]

I have to agree that as soon as feasible, iron would start being used in certain things. This doesn't mean bronze stops being utilized - as RGB points out it has its utilities, especially for a civilization that kicks off gunpowder early.

Arsenic will fall into disfavor if there's any other way to make bronze, cause it won't take any society long enough to figure out how awful it is for its users, I imagine.

Otherwise it seems plausible. I think that the idea of pike squares is an interesting one, but since this is a maritime Indonesian civilization, horses will be in short supply. Shorter spears designed for killing foot soldiers will be more commonplace, and since bows and arrows won't be replaced entirely, especially early on, these formations might well resemble more heavily-armored hoplite phalanxes with gunmen incorporated into them as skirmishers or to deliver an opening volley before the hoplites close in.

The other great thing about gunpowder is that it will terrify elephants. Armies who don't have the time or resources to desensitize the beasts to gunfire will have some nasty routs on their hands, I expect.

Yes, although less heavily armoured than hoplites I suspect. Maybe padded leather breastplates with largely bare legs and arms (leather greaves?). The spears can be something like a Greek dory with the spearmen carrying large shields to screen the arbalests/arquebuses at the heart of the formation.
Or perhaps there could be a social distinction. The gentry serve as spearmen while the rabble are drilled just sufficiently to point guns in the rjght direction. It falls to the gentry to stand their ground against an enemy charge.

 

[RGB]

I mean the primary means of body defense for the Hellenistic phalanxes was a linothorax, not exactly anything to do with metallurgy. Granted glued linen would probably disintegrate in Indonesia really quickly but padded cloth armour in general would still be mildly useful against arrows and sword cuts, and brigandine (if say bronze is used for the plates) would be excellent against both. Add some rattan shields to guard the wrists and there's your Seleucid phalanx

Relevant question: how advanced is textile industry in this setting? It's an answer you might be interested in anyway as the world creator.