WI the Chinese never invent the hand cannon?

SunDeep

Banned
Would handguns be butterflied away altogether in such a TL, or would their eventual development somewhere else be inevitable regardless? If the latter, where and when else might they be developed instead? How underdeveloped would TTL's handguns be in comparison to those IOTL in the equivalent era? And how profoundly could these changes affect the balance of world power, and the course of world history?

In the former instance, if hand cannon are never invented- and perhaps even the latter scenario, if they're invented too late for the development of more sophisticated firearms from their base design to be deemed worthwhile- what kind of weapons might end up taking pride of place on the battlefield ITTL by the time we reach the 20th century? Some form of handheld rocket barrage, perhaps... :D
 
It doesn't matter too much whether the Chinese invented the hand cannon or not. The nature of European military competition (i.e. numerous states competing with each other in close proximity) made hand cannon invention pretty inevitable there.

The closest alternative would have been the continued use of bows, primarily crossbows since they were easier to master (though I guess the English would stick to longbows as they tried to do OTL). But ultimately, guns were way easier to use and way faster to make (and could also frighten cavalry, the bane of most ranged units) so there would have been very very little contest.
 
Simple, the Europeans would likely not stumble upon the secrets of gunpowder for many many years. The most likely they will get this technology is if an alchemist gets lucky and accidentally create it out off mistake (similar to how the Chinese discovered it.)

Europe since Rome has basically copied Chinese/Arab technology and was quite frankly violent and irrelevant tiny continent compared to the rest of Asia.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
The Song Dynasty was on the verge of an industrial and cultural revolution on the scale of the European Renaissance, then the Mongols came in and destroyed this progress. However, one amazing thing that can be credited to the Mongol Empire is that its conquests helped to pollinate the achievements of this revolution across all of Eurasia, where the knowledge would eventually seed the development of gunpowder weapons and industrialism in Europe and the Near East.

If the Song had never developed gunpowder weaponry, then it is entirely possible that its development among Europeans, Arabs, Indians, and Persians would be significantly delayed.
 
The Song Dynasty was on the verge of an industrial and cultural revolution on the scale of the European Renaissance, then the Mongols came in and destroyed this progress. However, one amazing thing that can be credited to the Mongol Empire is that its conquests helped to pollinate the achievements of this revolution across all of Eurasia, where the knowledge would eventually seed the development of gunpowder weapons and industrialism in Europe and the Near East.

If the Song had never developed gunpowder weaponry, then it is entirely possible that its development among Europeans, Arabs, Indians, and Persians would be significantly delayed.

Wait what? The Mongols where tangential to gunpowder developments and the industrialization they smothered took hundreds of years to reapear and in an entirely different context in a very different system.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
Wait what? The Mongols where tangential to gunpowder developments and the industrialization they smothered took hundreds of years to reapear and in an entirely different context in a very different system.

I'm not saying that the Mongols developed anything, but that their conquests spread Song's achievements across the whole of Eurasia. A single empire controlled the area from Anatolia to Korea, and from Siberia to Java. A whole lot of cultural and technological ideas got exchanged amongst the conquered peoples.
 
I don't think it would change too much.
Gunpowder was the important technology and it had already made its way to Europe. I believe cannons were developed pretty much independently in Europe and China from this basis with hand cannons and then guns being a natural thing to attempt from there.
 
Would handguns be butterflied away altogether in such a TL, or would their eventual development somewhere else be inevitable regardless? If the latter, where and when else might they be developed instead? How underdeveloped would TTL's handguns be in comparison to those IOTL in the equivalent era? And how profoundly could these changes affect the balance of world power, and the course of world history?

In the former instance, if hand cannon are never invented- and perhaps even the latter scenario, if they're invented too late for the development of more sophisticated firearms from their base design to be deemed worthwhile- what kind of weapons might end up taking pride of place on the battlefield ITTL by the time we reach the 20th century? Some form of handheld rocket barrage, perhaps... :D

One plausible (or at least not implausible) scenario would be for European gunpowder weaponry to focus more on East Asian-style fire arrows (basically, an arrow with a rocket attached for propulsion), to the extent that handguns weren't developed as much, if at all. After all, early handguns were pretty inaccurate and slow to fire, and didn't really have much going for them other than the fear factor created by all that fire and noise, which rocket-propelled arrows would have too.
 
The Song Dynasty was on the verge of an industrial and cultural revolution on the scale of the European Renaissance, then the Mongols came in and destroyed this progress. However, one amazing thing that can be credited to the Mongol Empire is that its conquests helped to pollinate the achievements of this revolution across all of Eurasia, where the knowledge would eventually seed the development of gunpowder weapons and industrialism in Europe and the Near East.

If the Song had never developed gunpowder weaponry, then it is entirely possible that its development among Europeans, Arabs, Indians, and Persians would be significantly delayed.

as others said, gunpowder was already around, and no doubt the handgun or cannon would be invented somewhere else.

s for the mongols ruining the song period, i think the black death played a huge role too, as in some cities up to 90% of the population was killed.
 
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