Cannons? Gun Powder? Rockets?

[HLGStrider]

Gun Powder was obviously invented during the time of the LotRs. They had fire works.

My question is why wasn't it implemented for use in war fare?

Had they just not got that far in development?

The fireworks of Gandalf strike me as advanced (Probably due to a little magic, of course).

There are some mention in The Two Towers and The Return of the King to evil machines being used by the badguys. Could these be cannons and such? The mentions are kind of vauge, and I can't find one.

One theory is that if the Bad Guys used it that Tolkien considered guns an infernal invention. That they had taken away from the "Honor" of warfare. He had lived through WWI and knew of the power of shells. Of course, I'm not expecting that sort of technology, but if you've seen Mulan (those small rocket cannons, which might've been fabricated) wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that sort of thing.

How about it? Do you think that these inventions were within their grasp? Do you think that the bad guys were using them?

 

[Brent]

Interesting post. And I take your point, especially about WWI

Though of course gunpowder weapons were crap on the battlefield.
Up until the American Civil War in the 1860's the most deadly and accurate weapon was the longbow, not the musket. The reason the musket replaced the bow was it was far faster to train a man to use a musket than it was to use a bow, you had to grow up with a bow to be really good. In England the King actually banned all games except archery on pain of death for a period of time.

Pistols are all but useless in the gunpowder era. Don't beleive all that nonsense you see in movies about shooting a rider with a pistol - its rubbish.

Now we all know that Elven Bows figure in the ME Universe and we know that the Elves have VERY good vision. So if your a Dark Lord and you have a bunch of mindless orcs it would be easier to train them as musketeers but you'd never get close enough (say 80 to 100 yards) for them to inflict damage on a smaller bunch of men who lay down devastating fire at 250 yards with a bow.
Now Tolkien writes about the Numenorean bow (made of metal) which we must assume had longer range than a longbow and greater power - I think but I'm not sure that Isildurs men only really start to take heavy losses at Gladden fields when the orcs close and they run out of ammo - could be wrong)
Now the high elves - Noldor types - would make bows of outstanding quality and power and these guys are immortal so lets say they make a weapon accurate out to 750 yards and they could just pick you off. Your gunpowder weapons would be useless.
Where it WOULD be useful is blowing things up, but again not as good as people think based on Hollywood Movies. So the orcs bring a blasting fire with them to breach the walls at Helms Deep - but would such technology work on the Outer Wall of Minas Tirith ?

You can't beat a sword for close in fighting.

Add to that the history of the Roman Empire (about 1,000 plus years) and notice how they never developed such weapons. I think JRRT's world is not so implausible.

 

[Lantarion]

1,000 years, maybe, but in the through the Sil to the end of the LotR is many many thousand years!!

 

[Brent]

Originally posted by Pontifex
1,000 years, maybe, but in the through the Sil to the end of the LotR is many many thousand years!!

technological developement has almost nothing to do with the passage of time, its to do with the socio system and how it works.
Rome dominated, Rome was master, you want something doing, get a slave - whats the point in a food processor -slaves will do that, hence very little technology development for a long period of time.

There are plenty of places on this planet where people have lived for many years in a condition which could be considered to be "primative" by our western standards.

Then in ME you get The Silmarils ?? Whoops. Can we "create" jewels of such nature ? If we excavated them today would they impress us ?
Or would they be like the great halls described in Beowulf ?

For me, given Tolkien's picture, I understand the "blasting fire" and the none appearance of gunpowder weapons.
What IS interesting is without the use and development of gunpowder weapons you won't get to to HE and the modern rifle.

 

[ltas]

technological developement has almost nothing to do with the passage of time, its to do with the socio system and how it works.
Rome dominated, Rome was master, you want something doing, get a slave - whats the point in a food processor -slaves will do that, hence very little technology development for a long period of time.

Good point, but then again, they didn't have slaves in ME, did they? (except in Mordor).

 

[Rúmil]

Allthough bows long remained more precice that muskets, in our world, they had fallen completely out of use by the middle of the 15th century. Pecision wasn't needed, just a weapon you could teach a conscript to use in a week.

As for orcs and guns, well, first, as you said, they would be shot by Noldor or Númenoreans before they could get in range. But also, bear in mind that the force of the Orcs was in sheer numbers. Giving them crude bows and swords that could be made in very lage numbers at little cost and in a short time was all right, not giving them costly artefacts that they were liable to lose or break, and that was not very reliable anyway. (an early musket is a very capricious item)

And as for the absence of technological avance on the "good" side, well they were intelligent enough to realise that technology is not good in itself if it can be done without, and that progress is useless and damaging.

 

[Gil-Galad]

I think that everything is very simple.Tolkien's world is far far away from the guns,cannons etc...They just don't have any place there.And something more......As I know chinese invented the Gun powder and the fireworks hundreds years before the first gun or musket.So I think this fact gives an answer to your question.

 

[Tyaronumen]

Errr --- the stuff that the Orcs used at Helm's Deep (the "blasting fire") sure sounds a lot like crude explosives to me (ie. gunpowder) to me.

Sure, you can say that it was Saruman's "magic", but IMHO that's a bit of a cop out...

 

[HLGStrider]

Thanks, Gil, your answer best suited what I meant by the question, if it was unusual for them to have the fireworks without using the powder for other things.

I think why I really found this strange was that it wasn't long after England found gun powder that they found guns.

 

[Tyaronumen]

Why strange? Europeans were constantly trying to find new, cheaper, and more effective ways of killing their competitors, right up until the end of WW II.

 

[Rúmil]

Hee, hee, they still are up to it, but I must say the Americans have taken a great lead in that field.

 

[HLGStrider]

Which is why I jumped to that Sauron would be trying to develop more weapons too... And gun powder came immediately to my mind. I'm not talking pistols. I'm talking things like Crude rockets...

I don't think Sauramen's magic was gun powder. The guy was doing a lot more than magic. He was tearing up trees and digging pits... Etc.

 

[Tyaronumen]

Originally posted by Rúmil
Hee, hee, they still are up to it, but I must say the Americans have taken a great lead in that field.

Heheheh... well, I haven't seen the French and the Germans going at it on the open battlefield (knock on wood) for over 50 years now, so they seem to have tapered off the mania a bit.

America definitely has a lead nowadays -- having 10,000 nuclear missles will certainly give you a good lead in terms of maniacal destructive capacity.

 

[Tyaronumen]

Originally posted by HLGStrider
Which is why I jumped to that Sauron would be trying to develop more weapons too... And gun powder came immediately to my mind. I'm not talking pistols. I'm talking things like Crude rockets...

I don't think Sauramen's magic was gun powder. The guy was doing a lot more than magic. He was tearing up trees and digging pits... Etc.

Hmmm -- you ever study the early use of early explosives such as gun powder?

They were often used -- for tearing up trees, digging pits, blasting holes in rock, in walls, etc.

Saruman's 'magic' WAS something like gun powder -- at least that is what Occam's Razor (and Tolkien's notes to the effect that our 'Machines' are, in effect, 'Magic' by another name to the ignorant) would tell us.

 

[HLGStrider]

At least I get some agreement...

 

[Tyaronumen]

Originally posted by HLGStrider
At least I get some agreement...

Was it I who was agreeing with you? Hmmm, actually, I couldn't tell if you were saying that you thought Saruman's magic was what we traditionally think of as 'magic' (ie. Harry Potter whoopsy-wonder waggle your fingers and a lightning bolt strikes magic) or as the applied use of his inherent powers as a Maiar combined with a lot of techno-know-how to develop tools that then created 'magic' (said tools being things like gunpowder, etc.)

Heck, I still can't tell.

 

[aragil]

Fun thread. First off- adding to Rumil's point, Tolkien seemed pretty 'anti-technological-advancement', from what I've seen in his letters and biography. He absolutely hated cars (he rode a bicycle, but I also seem to remember reading something about his car-driving philosophy of 'Charge them and they scatter'), he often wrote to his son Christopher that he thought the airplane and aerial combat in general were bad influences on warfare, and let's not forget in the Hobbit where he says something to the effect that Goblins undoubtedly created all the machineries of distruction which plague the world. So I don't think it would fit in with his concept of the 'Free-peoples' to invent better killing machines. When the Noldor develop swords etc, in Valinor, it is following the advice of Morgoth and is generally seen as a bad thing. Numenor and Gondor alone seem to be the representatives of 'good' powers heavily investing in the military, and as Brent has mentioned they are at the pinnacle of the personal ranged weapon- the steel bows of Numenor (Isildur only had ~20 archers at Gladden, no doubt they dismayed the Orcs but the could scarcely be expected to account for the thousands of Orcs that attacked). Even so, Numenor was on the brink of good/bad when they were deploying their bows, and most of Gondor's investment in their military was defensive in nature. So it's up to the Bad Folk to advance military technology. Interestingly, most of the advances I can think of in the Third Age for the baddies are biological in nature- the breeding of the Uruks the (arguably) separate breeding of the Uruk-hai, the advent of the Olog-hai, etc. The battle at the Pelannor mentions seige weapons- but these aren't terribly advanced. There's towers, catapults (both head-lobbing and fire-lobbing), and of course Grond. But if memory serves me correctly, Morgoth spent several years preparing seige engines for Gondolin, so the weapons deployed at Pelannor might not have been new. Another perplexing mention comes from the discussion of the Druedain in UT. The Orcs in First Age Beleriand are described as carrying around some sort of fire that can't be extinguished with water. Unfortunately I don't know enough about weapons to know when this sort of weapon existed in our world, but to me it sounds like some sort of chemical agent like napalm. Which reminds me of a final thing to mention- I believe it was Rumil who recently posted the letter where Tolkien speculates we would be 3- 4 ages (each ~3000 years) advanced from the time of the War of the Ring. This would put that battle back to about 7000 BC, where cannons etc. would be extemely out-of-place.

 

[HLGStrider]

At least this is interesting.

I was saying that you agreed that it was possible that Sauramen used gun powder at least in excavation which is a partial agreement.

Tolkien did have a natural eversion to technology. I think it was because of the date of his life. He lived through a disturbing time, saw two world wars, politics in England changed (They lost the empire, governments became less like the almost free market Shire) he saw the countryside become urban. He saw society change and intellectuals change. Tolkien was a man adverse to change, I would say. He did, however, drive a car with methods that scared his poor dear Edith to death (Her name was Edith, right?).

The fire that could not be extinguished? What about Turkish fire, used in the seige of Constantinople? or something similar?

That was an interesting part of history.. the fall of Byzantium... I loved that story... so sad.

Where was I?

Oh well.

I think magic is a word that should be used with caution in connection with Tolkien. It is too mixed up with two totally different things. One, the Harry Potter swish and whatever almost playful stuff, and two the occult. I would use the words "arts". Dark arts for bad and just arts for good.

 

[Rangerdave]

Or as Robert A. Heinlein once wrote.

Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Just something to chew on.
RD

 

[Walter]

posted by Elgee
if it was unusual for them to have the fireworks without using the powder for other things.

Well gunpowder is one thing (btw. it wasn't called "gunpowder" by the time it was invented, for the guns weren not yet invented either ), but a gun with a bullet anotherone. What we call gunpowder, was most probably "invented" by chance, it's just one of many - fast occurring - exothermal chemical reactions. Inventing a gun or a bullet requires a much advanced technology...

posted by Rúmil
Hee, hee, they still are up to it, but I must say the Americans have taken a great lead in that field.

Well, yes, but not for the least bit due to the german immigrants and the german technology they had gotten hold of after WWII...

posted by Rúmil
And as for the absence of technological avance on the "good" side, well they were intelligent enough to realise that technology is not good in itself if it can be done without, and that progress is useless and damaging.

Very wisely spoken...

from Heinlein, posted by RD
Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

posted by JRR Tolkien in his Letter #131
It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as 'its own', the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator – especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, – and so to the Machine (or Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices (apparatus) instead of development of the inherent inner powers or talents — or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills. The Machine is our more obvious modern form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognised.

Tolkien clearly distinguished between the "magic of machines" which were in his opinion inherently evil or "instruments of evil" and the "magic" of the elves which was not really magic, just well developed "skills" that appeared as magic to men and hobbits. Or the "magic" of the istari, which were just their maiar-powers not understood by mankind...