Gunpowder - Saltpeter & The East India Company:

 When I read a history of the British East India Company - that book referred to Indian "Black Earth" as being the source of a high value export to England .. but I didn't know then just what the hell this stuff was ... it was SHIT. (both pee & poo).

 

SALTPETER .. POTASSIUM NITRATE .. KNO3 can be extracted from urine rich material- this might be a fascinating story - or just plain BORING - depending on your interests and IQ eh - and whether you like guns & shooting stuff ..

- For a start you gotta sort-out which of the two sorts of black earth we are talking about - as there is one kind that makes UKRAINE valuable to Billionaires - deep humus-rich peaty fertile agricultural soil that grows food crops cheaply & profitably ..

- Then there is SHIT मलजल malajal.. well that's how "Black Earth" starts, when it was stacked in dung heaps and pits for years around human settlements - and in caves full of batshit where it matures and grows bacteria that breaks it down into mould that becomes so rich in nitrates as to grow a visible white nitrate crust. 

- Here is another clue - is there a land where way back in history, very dense populations of homo sapians sapians lived, - ate stuff, and crapped -  depositing their own and animal manures in concentrated deposits ... err India?

In 1561, Queen Elizabeth paid £300 (equal to about £100,000 today) to German engineer Gerard Honrick - for an industrial process “Instructions for making saltpetre to growe”

Scraping & Refining Saltpetre circa 1580 & 1700

If you want to take offence in the modern way about this topic - you might blame Sir Francis Drake and Queen Elizabeth I - who put their heads together to pirate & plunder the Spanish - who in turn were busy plundering the Americas. - This brought riches to England while upsetting SPAIN .. who decided to 'kick-British-ass' with THE SPANISH ARMADA (failed .. bad weather stopped play). The English captured so many Spanish armada ships - that some men of property decided to use this surplus shipping to set-off into South Asia (where INDIA is) and to see what else they might steal over there under the name of THE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY - chartered by Elizabeth I.

Note: Drake cashed-in his chips in 1596 aged 56 in Panama - While Elizabeth I died at home aged 70 in 1603

Once encampeded in India these proud English business men built a private ARMY of a quarter of a million men - twice the size of the English army - to control the locals while enslaving them and stealing anything/everything of value that they found ... even including their Pee & Poos.

The East India Company built 'Old Money' wealth for the English land-owners for more than 300 years of dealing in SLAVES, SHIT, SHIPS and SOLDIERS .. SALTPETER : POTASSIUM NITRATE - KNO3:

Link to an old history of this important salt that is THREE QUARTERS of gunpowder ..

https://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/110/05/0923.pdf

You can read all this stuff without the politics just about anywhere that Google sends you - provided that you CAN read .. but basically the industrial process of extracting SALTPETER involved washing the aged shit black earth mould repeatedly with water to dissolve the salts from it, evaporating off that water while stirring, - and purifying the wet potassium nitrate by mixing in WOOD ASH and then drying it ready for eventual mixing 75:15:10 with CHARCOAL and SULPHER. - For GUNPOWDER.

BLOWING FROM A GUN EXECUTIONS IN INDIA:

"That'll Teach 'em." (British Justice)

Today - Potassium Nitrate is commonly added to meats, wines, & cheese etc as a preservative because it can prevent bacterial growth - as well as still being the main constituant of GUNPOWDER when you can find it.

Nice eh

Marty K.