Ah yes, somebody asked about him comparing Randland with 17th century earth as it would have been without gunpowder, but said that there was gunpowder in Randland.
Jordan explained that the development of something like gunpowder is not as natural as it might seem to us. They had fireworks for a thousand years in China before thinking of using it as a weapon (and then they only threw fireworks over the walls because they’d run out of rocks). Steel was invented time and again with never becoming widely known. Things like that. There’s no reason for Randlanders to connect ‘wanting to do things Aes Sedai do, but without using the Power’ with fireworks. There are currently only a handful of people thinking about possible uses of fireworks as a weapon, and that only because they were around to learn about the damage of a Chapterhouse blowing up or something similar. Besides this, Randlanders aren’t thinking about making weapons when dealing with fireworks, they’re thinking about making money with it, because it’s a luxury good. It’s just as if caviar could be used as a weapon.
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