Could the modern world have developed without gunpowder?

[Workable Goblin]

IOTL it was only discovered once, and that was by accident, so probably not.

I disagree, if by "it" you mean explosives. There are just too many industrially useful explosive chemicals around, like ammonium nitrate, so once industrial development moves into chemicals and chemistry it's virtually certain people will have the idea of using explosives on the battlefield. I can't see a situation where industrialization and anything much resembling OTL pre-gunpowder warfare can coexist for more than a century or so, unless you have industrialization flame out before it starts getting into chemicals.

On the other hand, this could result in a very interesting alternate approach to war, where guns as such don't exist, and instead the principal armaments are a mixture of grenades and rockets. It did seem to take a long time for people to have the idea of a gun--it's not exactly the obvious way to use an explosive--so it wouldn't be too implausible for the idea to simply not occur to people in a couple of centuries. And assuming an ongoing industrial revolution, that's enough to make guns basically unnecessary, in a certain sense--yes, they're decent at killing people, but these people have rocket artillery, guided missiles for tanks and ships, gyrojet-type firearms for their infantry and so on that are not so much clearly worse than guns that the idea of building a controlled exploder to propel bits of metal at people is likely to gain a lot of traction.

 

[RousseauX]

IOTL it was only discovered once, and that was by accident, so probably not.

Statistically when you have thousands of years + however many generations of people you will get at least someone who gets the exact set of circumstances required for gunpowder 99% of the time

 

[chrnno]

Statistically when you have thousands of years + however many generations of people you will get at least someone who gets the exact set of circumstances required for gunpowder 99% of the time

73.6% of statistics in the internet are totally made up.

That aside, and ignoring I disagree it is anywhere near that likely, if you take that one at face value there are countless things occurring over the years and events with chance as high as 1% will abound so having it occur is perfectly reasonable.

 

[Beausoleil]

I disagree, if by "it" you mean explosives. There are just too many industrially useful explosive chemicals around, like ammonium nitrate, so once industrial development moves into chemicals and chemistry it's virtually certain people will have the idea of using explosives on the battlefield. I can't see a situation where industrialization and anything much resembling OTL pre-gunpowder warfare can coexist for more than a century or so, unless you have industrialization flame out before it starts getting into chemicals.

How are we defining industrialization here?

 

[Alcsentre Calanice]

Without gunpowder, Europe could remain caught up in endless Middle Ages, with feudalism and guild-dominated towns never being replaced by centralising states and colonialist-mercantilist national economies.

That don't have to be true. Feudalism can be overcome without gunpowder, simply by well-organized standing armies. Knights and castles can be vanquished by an organized, disciplined army of pikemen with powerful siege engines.

 

[Beausoleil]

That don't have to be true. Feudalism can be overcome without gunpowder, simply by well-organized standing armies. Knights and castles can be vanquished by an organized, disciplined army of pikemen with powerful siege engines.

The other thing to take into account would be the advances in ship technology and the possibility of wealth based on the trade of raw commodities harvested overseas. A large standing army is not inconceivable under such circumstances.

The other thing that I think could be common would be things akin to the Free Companies. Organized mercenary bands. Imagine a sort of new chivalry that incorporates large standing armies financed by overseas cash crop harvesting or mine wealth. Military corporations. That could be a sort of solution for the lack of standing armies in the event that the firearm doesn't occur to anybody, in lieu of endless feudal warfare with heavier armored knights versus pikemen and longbow archers.

 

[Workable Goblin]

How are we defining industrialization here?

The widespread use of machines to undertake various tasks, whether effectively substituting for other sources of work (e.g., steam engines) or to enable entirely new tasks to be undertaken (e.g., electronics). Although machines have of course been used for various tasks for thousands of years (millions if you allow knives, hammers, etc. to count as "machines"), the widespread use of machines as a general replacement for other sources of work rather than simply magnifying existing abilities (as a plow) is a feature only of the past few centuries, i.e. of the "Industrial Revolution" period.

 

[Salvador79]

That can happen but it's by no means necessary. Since the fall of the WRE, a millennium had passed without large powerful centralised states (if we're ignoring the ever-dwindling ERE which, by the High Middle Ages, wasn't much anymore anyway).

 

[The Gunslinger]

The world that never figures out gunpowder probably doesn't have the knowhow to figure out physics and chemistry either. All the sciences are linked and I doubt they'd figure out industry BEFORE burning powder.

 

[Beausoleil]

The world that never figures out gunpowder probably doesn't have the knowhow to figure out physics and chemistry either. All the sciences are linked and I doubt they'd figure out industry BEFORE burning powder.

I think there's a difference between using gunpowder and using gunpowder to launch a projectile from a metal barrel. We could have the use of gunpowder without getting firearms. Like the use of the wheel in the Americas or the steel plow in Europe, as others have mentioned. It isn't necessary for the idea of firearms to occur after the idea of using an explosive powder occurs, say for mining.

 

[pugnhippo01]

Could humanity have entered industrialization had gun powder never been discovered or perfected to how it did?

Could we have seen a modern world with non gun powder weapons continuing in development to the present?

Depends on what you mean by "enter industrialization'': i think its plausible to have a late 18th/early 19th century tech level including early steam, mechanical reapers, and telegraph on a small scale, but i don't think you can do much more. Railroads and pretty much everything that comes after require an absolutely huge amount of metals that don't really seem practical to mine without explosives, and as others have said once you have explosives its really only a matter of time until you have cannons. If you don't have explosives for mining then you have a very limited supply of metals which limits their use to small and limited run items.

In this scenario a relatively short railroad would be a massive national infrastructure project, in 1750 Britain produced 28k tons of iron[1](with gunpowder) at 100 lbs/yd this would mean that the entire national production of iron could have laid 178 miles of single track, approximately the distance from London to Leeds. This soft iron rail would then have to be regularly replaced as it wore out...you get the idea of the investment. A shortage of metals probably butterflies away stainless steels and thus much of modern chemistry. No chemistry no transportation, no modern world.



[1] Pg. 34, http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/ecn110b/readings/ecn110b-chapter2-2005.pdf

 

[Beausoleil]

A shortage of metals probably butterflies away stainless steels and thus much of modern chemistry. No chemistry no transportation, no modern world.

Steel would seem to be the most essential. What specific applications and machines rely entirely on steel and could not be replicated in effect without it?

 

[pugnhippo01]

Steel would seem to be the most essential. What specific applications and machines rely entirely on steel and could not be replicated in effect without it?

I referenced iron since its the precursor to steel which in turn leads to stainless but the mining limitations would apply to all types of metals including copper alloys. The better question is "what applications require metal components?''. As an aside, iron is much more common than copper and copper today is about 8X the price of steel so substituting copper alloys would be prohibitively expensive.

Off the top of my head things that require metal or metal components: high speed bearings, engines (ICE or steam), chemical reaction vessels, springs, fasteners(bolts,rivets,etc.), wire(electrical, barbed, or other), high pressure applications. Anything that requires the use of, or is derived from technologies requiring the use of these (and others) would only be available in limited quantities.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Between the development of effective gunpowder field artillery around 1650 or so and the permanent victory of sedimentary empires over the nomads took only around 100 years or so (I think the Qing victory over the Dzungar Khanate was that point).

The victory had started before then, though -- e.g., Russia had already got to the Pacific by 1639.

 

[Balaur]

The other thing to take into account would be the advances in ship technology and the possibility of wealth based on the trade of raw commodities harvested overseas. A large standing army is not inconceivable under such circumstances.

The other thing that I think could be common would be things akin to the Free Companies. Organized mercenary bands. Imagine a sort of new chivalry that incorporates large standing armies financed by overseas cash crop harvesting or mine wealth. Military corporations. That could be a sort of solution for the lack of standing armies in the event that the firearm doesn't occur to anybody, in lieu of endless feudal warfare with heavier armored knights versus pikemen and longbow archers.

The first standing army units in Europe where the French and Burgundian Ordonnance companies of Gendarmes and their supporting light cavalry, not gunpowder troops. However, gunpowder weaponry had been around since the 13th century, so the Ordonnance companies probably get butterflied.