No Gunpowder

Hierophant

In the spirit of several of the threads, lets say that Gunpowder (ie cannons, rockets, muskets, and rifles) are delayed until 1600. How will this effect European history? Will Byzantium still fall? Will the English longbow become widespread throughout Europe? How will the colonization of the America's, Africa and Asia be effected?
 

Forum Lurker

Byzantium still falls. Trebuchet will replace cannon as the seige weapon of choice; if slower to build and use, they are no less effective in the end. The longbow will not be popularized, given the extremes to which one must go to ensure a large competent body; I would predict instead an emphasis on crossbows, and more pike-heavy tercios than developed in OTL. Colonization is somewhat impeded, but the advantages of high steel production, horses, and smallpox will still win out in the end.
 

Othniel

Forum Lurker said:
Byzantium still falls. Trebuchet will replace cannon as the seige weapon of choice; if slower to build and use, they are no less effective in the end. The longbow will not be popularized, given the extremes to which one must go to ensure a large competent body; I would predict instead an emphasis on crossbows, and more pike-heavy tercios than developed in OTL. Colonization is somewhat impeded, but the advantages of high steel production, horses, and smallpox will still win out in the end.
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I think that the spread westward would be impeaded by this though. It was horribly slowed by the lack of a repeating weapon. If a repeating crossbow shows up sooner you may have a bloodier quicker expansion. Of corse these being easier to build catches on with the Native Americas. A desently equal war ensues by the 19th century. Japan ends up with California.
 

Forum Lurker

Actually, a repeating crossbow is at least an order of magnitude harder to build than a flintlock musket, still considerably harder than a flintlock rifle. The tolerances on a crossbow nut are much, much lower than those on any muzzle-loading weapon. The main killer of Amerinds was smallpox, and that'll be unaffected; it's not until the wars against the Great Plains tribes in the mid-nineteenth that anything approaching technological parity will arrive, and if guns are invented in the early seventeenth century, as initially postulated, there'll be flintlock rifles by that point, again giving Europeans a critical edge.
 

Othniel

That's it, I'm starting a tieline with no pigs. (which are believed to been the animal that it originated from and since we had domesticated them it gave us the resistance to smallpox.)
 

wkwillis

What colonisation? No gunpowder means that local coastal galleys can always defeat sailing ships. Therefore, no exploration trips like Columbus.
 

Forum Lurker

No, local coastal galleys do not automatically trump sailing ships in the absence of gunpowder. First, many colonized locales did not have local coastal galleys; the entire North and South American continents, for example. Secondly, while it is true that cannon are considerably more effective than torsion and tension engines for shipboard use, it's still possible to build a quite effective broadside out of ballistae, or to line the decks with archers, or to use a vessel too massive to effectively ram or board.
 
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