Articles in the diamond pitt category

Extracts from 1689 HOC Journal

Extracts from the 1689 House of Commons Journal concerning complaints against the East India Company.

25 May

And the Counsel for the East India Company delivered in a Narrative of the Rebellion, or Tumult, which happened 21 October 1684, dated at St. Helena, 27 December 1684

8 June

Resolved that those who ordered martial law at St Helena (the Company refusing to reveal who had signed the order) not be covered by the general act of indemnity for these crimes.

13 July

Petition of Martha Bolton, Widow, was read; setting forth, That George Sheldon, her Brother, and one Gabriel Powell, Two of the Nine Persons condemned by Martial Law at Sancta Hellena, having, in December last, delivered to one Captain Dore, (then coming for England), a Petition to the late King James; setting forth, The ill Usage they had from the East India Company, and their Agents; whereof as soon …

Bengal: saltpetre

A seventeenth-century army increasingly relied on gunpowder, and the production of that vital resource required three mineral ingredients - charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre. Of these, the two minority ingredients were charcoal, which could be obtained readily wherever there were trees, and sulphur, which was mined in many places and was fairly cheap. However, three-quarters or so of the mix was taken up by saltpetre, the mineral potassium nitrate. Saltpetre forms naturally in small quantities in some locations, but for regular supply it had to be 'farmed' by heaping animal dung with earth in large beds that were then treated with urine for a period of months. Bacterial action produces potassium nitrate, which with the right technique can be refined to a relatively pure crystalline product.

The Mughal army was as gunpowder-based as the European armies. At the start of the sixteenth century the technologies were very similar, with European powers making …