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'Chemists' War', 1914–1923: Modern War, Munitions, and National Systems

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'Chemists' War', 1914–1923: Modern War, Munitions, and National Systems SEYMOUR MAUSKOPF REVISITING THE ‘CHEMISTS’ WAR’ , 1914–1923: MODERN WAR, MUNITIONS, AND NATIONAL SYSTEMS INTRODUCTION The Ordnance Office, faced with an unprecedented demand for gunpowder, did not receive the quantity expected. Throughout the war it made various unsuccessful attempts to obtain more cooperation from the powder makers, who themselves had considerable problems in achieving a product of a satis- factory standard and in the necessary quantities, especially when trying to balance the demands of government and private trade.1 This quotation sounds strikingly close to the situation in the First World War, or at least during the first year or two and, depending on the protagonist, considerably longer. It is, in fact, a description of the munitions crisis facing Britain in that ‘other’, much earlier ‘World War’, the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). My research in the history of explosives and munitions has focused on developments to the end of the nineteenth century. In reading the papers in this book, I experienced a sense of déjà vu. Despite enormous differences in the scientific, technological, industrial, political, and bureaucratic landscapes, the same general concerns and challenges that faced the Great War had faced the belligerent powers 150 years earlier. It is useful to consider these in sketching the modern development of munitions, and to use them as a heuristic guide in seeking comparisons and contrasts with 1914–1918. In this way, we would hope to draw out the larger implications of this book for the study of science, technology and warfare. MUNITIONS SUPPLY IN THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR, 1756–1763 State Institutional Management During the Seven Years’ War, possibly for the first time on a global basis, European nations took upon themselves the management and supply of munitions. Both France and England, the major protagonists, found their needs not met by traditional means, whether contracting through the powder ‘ferme’ in France, or buying from private powder makers in England. France, in particular, faced the additional challenge of securing adequate supplies of one of the principal raw materials for gunpowder, saltpeter, the best contemporary source for which was India. The result, over the next decades, was a history of comprehensive reform and reorganization – in England, government purchase of some private powder mills, including Faversham Mills (1759) and Waltham Abbey (1783),2 and in France, 247 248 SEYMOUR MAUSKOPF a government-supported scientific programme of artificial saltpetre production – an 18th-century analogue of the Haber-Bosch process – centred on the formation of the Régie des Poudres (1775). State-Supported Scientific Management and Research ‘The chief support of war must, after money, now be sought in chemistry.’3 In both France and England, the responses to these wartime challenges involved research, education, and quality control. In France, the major figure was Antoine- Laurent Lavoisier; his English equivalent was William Congreve (the Elder). In these ways, the crisis of the Seven Years’ War (and the subsequent American and French Revolutions) thus inaugurated the modern era of munitions. These formed part of a much larger move towards rationalist and bureaucratic management, documented for France by Ken Alder in Engineering the Revolution and earlier by Charles Gillispie in Science and Polity at the End of the Old Regime. This resulted in the development, in France, at least, of what has been called the ‘second scientific revolution’. During the French Revolution, government management became even more clearly marked. Although Lavoisier was a casualty of the Revolution, his chemical colleagues, such as Berthellot and Guyton de Morveau, and the scientifically trained ‘élèves des poudres’, were pressed into the service of the State to develop ways of collecting, refining and incorporating raw materials to make gunpowder quickly and efficiently, as Patrice Bret has indicated. An equally significant outcome of the Revolution was the establishment of the École Polytechique, the Écoles de Genie, and the Napoleonic requirement that heads of powder factories (that is, the Service des Poudres)bepolytechniciens. I have argued elsewhere that the scientific engineering research styles instituted through these schools continued through the 19th century and climaxed in the work of Émile Sarrau and, even more importantly, Paul Vieille, the inventor of the first successful military smokeless powder, in the mid-1880s.4 A spin-off of the French tradition was the development of American munitions. E.I. DuPont was one of Lavoisier’s élèves des poudres and subsequently carried his French science-based training to DuPont in the United States. Moreover, the École Polytechnique tradition was institutionalized at the West Point Military Academy, which produced by the 1840s what Stanley Falk has called a generation of ‘soldier-technologists’, including Alfred Mordecai and T.J. Rodman, the inventor of prismatic powder, the most successful form of black powder for large guns.5 In England, it is less easy to see institutional and intellectual continuity from Congreve through the 19th century. But the officers at the newly reconstituted Royal Gunpowder Factory were trained at the Royal Artillery School at Woolwich; and in the post-Crimean War period, the Ordnance Select Committee of the War Office instituted a series of committees comprised of scientifically trained officers and scientists to examine the entire range of armaments. These included ‘explosives committees’ from 1858 to 1866, from 1869 to 1881 and from 1888 to 1891 (the REVISITING THE ‘CHEMISTS’ WAR’ , 1914–1923 249 latter developed cordite). There were also ‘guncotton committees’ from 1864 to 1868, and again from 1871 to 1874.6 In addition, in 1855, the British government established the office of War Department Chemist, in the person of Frederick (later Sir Frederick) Augustus Abel, FRS. Abel devoted a good part of his investigative attention to guncotton: from the early 1860s, he had hoped to ‘tame’ it so that it could serve as a reliable smokeless propellant; he did not succeed (at least not until cordite was developed) but by 1866, had developed a way of insuring its stability by ‘pulping’ it to destroy most of its fibrous structure. In fact, the first nitrocellulose smokeless powder was the result of the combined traditions of France and England. THE PROBLEMATIC ROLE OF CHEMISTRY IN 19TH-CENTURY MUNITIONS The career of Abel raises the question of the role of chemistry — and chemists — in the development of munitions. Abel was one of the earliest students of the Royal College of Chemistry in London, and perhaps the only one to carve out a career with the military. This is of great significance. As Hermann Boerhaave suggests, chemistry was looked upon in the 18th century as a promising science for the improvement of munitions. Indeed, chemists played a major role in the State reform and rational- ization of munitions. But, despite the enormous growth in chemistry as an academic discipline, its role in providing a scientific basis for industrial research and the development of smokeless powder and high explosives through the fabrication of nitrocellulose, nitroglycerine, and picric acid, chemistry and chemists were, for the most part, marginal to the development of munitions for most of the 19th century. Part of the reason was that munitions chemistry did not pose interesting research questions. The chemical reaction of gunpowder explosion was understood reasonably well by 1800, and attracted little attention. Conversely, chemical consid- erations gave way to physical problems in the improvements of gunpowder. For example, the suiting of black powder for the large guns from the 1860s involved considerations of size and shape of powder grain/cartridge, and powder density. The experience of Germany illustrates the marginality of chemistry. Despite the fact that German chemistry came to dominate the world during the 19th century, there is little evidence of German chemists’ interest in munitions. One of the few examples of research was carried out by Robert Bunsen and his Russian artillery student, Leon Schischkoff, and published in 1857. In this ‘Theory of Gunpowder’, Bunsen deployed thermochemical considerations to gain purchase on such parameters of explosion as temperature, pressure and energy. But, to the best of my knowledge, this was a one-shot for Bunsen, and he never returned to munitions. Moreover, he did not carry out this research under government or military patronage. However, thermochemistry turned out to be the one area in which a few chemists did play a more central role. The most important was Marcellin Berthelot. In the 250 SEYMOUR MAUSKOPF wake of the Franco-Prussian War, Berthelot turned his recent interest in thermo- chemistry to the study of explosions of all kinds, ranging from black powder to high explosives. This resulted in his ambitious Sur la Force des Poudres et des Matières Explosives (1872, 1882). The historical valuation of Berthelot has not been high in recent years, but I have recently argued that he played an important role in giving structure to the work of polytechniciens such as Vieille.7 France seems to have been virtually unique in the early 20th century in possessing a government- supported theoretical and experimental tradition in the study of munitions.8 But, as Bret shows, by the eve of the Great War, this advantage was offset by the lack of trained chemists, as well as by rivalries and lack of coordination between the munitions laboratories. Nor was munitions production closely associated with industrial research. Indeed, as Jeffrey Johnson’s paper shows, there was resistance among German firms to take up munitions and high explosives production. The principal reasons for this are straightforward: munitions and explosives production is dangerous, both to physical plant and to the health of the workers. Moreover, munitions production is economically precarious. In time of war, business is good, but there has always been a problem in maintaining capacity when demand is low. This was true in the 18th century, and it was true at the end of the 19th.
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