Sara S
06-12-2007, 06:11 AM
In today's excerpt--the discovery of a synthetic process
for manufacturing nitrates lead directly and
immediately to both the global population explosion
and to the unprecedented casualty
level-23 million people-of World War I:
"For all the ...guns that their factories could produce,
Europeans could not manufacture nitrates, the stuff
that made gunpowder explode--they had to find it in
the natural world. ... Nitrogen is also crucial to the
growth of plants. ... [T]he largest sources of naturally
occurring nitrates are produced as animal
waste. ... Paradoxically then, both the size of the global
human population and its ability to conduct modern
warfare depended on, and were limited by, nature.
That fact led to a global search for naturally occurring
deposits of nitrates, mostly in the form of bat and bird
guano. ...
"The first clump of Peruvian guano was brought to
Europe in 1804 by the German naturalist and world
explorer Alexander von Humbolt, and then extracted in
ever greater amounts and exported by British
merchants. By 1890, the supplies of Peruvian guano
were mostly exhausted, but another natural source
(sodium nitrate, or 'saltpeter') that could be mined was
found in southern Peru; in 1879 Chile had gone to war
with Peru to gain control of the sodium nitrate, and
exported it to the industrializing world, which used it to
make both fertilizer and gunpowder. ...
"In 1909 a chemist named Fritz Haber synthesized
ammonia (which contains nitrogen that could be
processed into nitrates) in his laboratory, and a year
later the issues of industrial production were resolved
by Carl Bosch of the German firm BASF. The process
of synthesizing ammonia, known as the Haber-Bosch
process, shaped the subsequent course of
world history.
"The synthesis of ammonia made possible the growth
of the world's population. ... [B]y 1900, most of the
good
arable land in the world was already being farmed, so
that increased food production could come most
readily from the application of additional fertilizer. ...
The Haber-Bosch process for synthesizing ammonia
made it possible to increase the food supply and
support the world's current population of about 6.2
billion people. In other words, in the twentieth century,
the population of the world increased from about 1.6
to 6.2 billion largely because of the Haber-Bosch
process. That increase in the human population alone
makes the twentieth century unique in all of human
history. ... More than that, it also made possible the
industrial production of explosives, and, because
Germany was the first to use this new technology,
increased the confidence of its military leaders. And
that was to be a crucially important factor contributing
to the outbreak of world war in 1914."
Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern
World, Rowman & Littlefield,
2007, 157-159.
for manufacturing nitrates lead directly and
immediately to both the global population explosion
and to the unprecedented casualty
level-23 million people-of World War I:
"For all the ...guns that their factories could produce,
Europeans could not manufacture nitrates, the stuff
that made gunpowder explode--they had to find it in
the natural world. ... Nitrogen is also crucial to the
growth of plants. ... [T]he largest sources of naturally
occurring nitrates are produced as animal
waste. ... Paradoxically then, both the size of the global
human population and its ability to conduct modern
warfare depended on, and were limited by, nature.
That fact led to a global search for naturally occurring
deposits of nitrates, mostly in the form of bat and bird
guano. ...
"The first clump of Peruvian guano was brought to
Europe in 1804 by the German naturalist and world
explorer Alexander von Humbolt, and then extracted in
ever greater amounts and exported by British
merchants. By 1890, the supplies of Peruvian guano
were mostly exhausted, but another natural source
(sodium nitrate, or 'saltpeter') that could be mined was
found in southern Peru; in 1879 Chile had gone to war
with Peru to gain control of the sodium nitrate, and
exported it to the industrializing world, which used it to
make both fertilizer and gunpowder. ...
"In 1909 a chemist named Fritz Haber synthesized
ammonia (which contains nitrogen that could be
processed into nitrates) in his laboratory, and a year
later the issues of industrial production were resolved
by Carl Bosch of the German firm BASF. The process
of synthesizing ammonia, known as the Haber-Bosch
process, shaped the subsequent course of
world history.
"The synthesis of ammonia made possible the growth
of the world's population. ... [B]y 1900, most of the
good
arable land in the world was already being farmed, so
that increased food production could come most
readily from the application of additional fertilizer. ...
The Haber-Bosch process for synthesizing ammonia
made it possible to increase the food supply and
support the world's current population of about 6.2
billion people. In other words, in the twentieth century,
the population of the world increased from about 1.6
to 6.2 billion largely because of the Haber-Bosch
process. That increase in the human population alone
makes the twentieth century unique in all of human
history. ... More than that, it also made possible the
industrial production of explosives, and, because
Germany was the first to use this new technology,
increased the confidence of its military leaders. And
that was to be a crucially important factor contributing
to the outbreak of world war in 1914."
Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern
World, Rowman & Littlefield,
2007, 157-159.