对,比如孟加拉的硝石就非常重要,可以让英国产出第一流的火药
Larger Indiamen of 1,450 tons increased the freights of textiles and spices being brought from India, and tea and silk from China. Another commodity also found its way to London wharfs in larger quantities – one less conspicuous and desirable to consumers, but more precious to the strategists seeking Bonaparte’s downfall.
In 1808, the year in which this story began, the Company had contracted to supply 6,000 tons of Bengal saltpetre to the Government. By the time that Mauritius was taken in 1810, that quantity had doubled to more than 12,000 tons. As Wellington’s battles started to turn the tide in the west – Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vitoria – while Bonaparte was throwing the Grande Armée to the wolves of the Russian winter in the east, an uninterrupted supply of the purest form of saltpetre represented a real strategic advantage. One historian has suggested that the superiority of Britain’s Navy was partly due to the potency of its gunpowder, estimated to be greater than that of the French by a factor of six to five.46 It may not be stretching a point unduly to suggest that a contribution, not only to the war at sea but the battle for Europe, was made by the Indiamen that fought their way through the hurricanes of 1808–9 and brought their cargoes of saltpetre safely home.
Storm and Conquest The Battle for the Indian Ocean, 1808-10 |