Is it plausible that a country developed steam engines before gunpowder?

Question

Man, I really have to find a way to stop getting into logic dead-ends.

So, in the story I’m writing, there’s this country that developed big bad war machines that run on steam engines. The way they work or if they make sense or not is irrelevant.

These war machines brought military superiority to the said country and made them conquer pretty much every other country except one because this one has magic (specifically, this kind of magic).

Now, I need for the sake of logic that the aforementioned big bad war machine bearing country still uses sword, shield and pike infantry and heavy cavalry. Or to be clearer, I need a country that has steam engine technology to not have discovered gunpowder yet.

Obs.: By "gunpowder" I mean "projectile propulsion system that would effectively (including cost-wise) replace swords, shields, pikes and heavy cavalry".

I did my research. According to source, gunpowder was first used in the military by China in 1126, while the first steam engine used to actually move a big vehicle (locomotive) was only applied in 1804 (source). That’s 678 years. Is that plausible that a civilization based on our own would not discover something that important for more than 500 years? Can I have a plausible excuse?

Please assume:

• This country is cold, harsh, and very military based. The same can be said about its people;
• They can’t use magic because reasons. Even if they have the fuel mentioned in the linked question, it just doesn’t work;
• Steam engines are the only advanced technology they have. No electricity or the likes.

Also, note that they having discovered gunpowder but being unable to apply it in the military is also a solution (obviously with a plausible enough explanation).

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EDIT:

Lack of interest in chemistry is out of question. There is no way a military force that big is not actively and extensively researching chemistry. Also, little edit in the body of the question.

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UPDATE: Thanks for all the answers. I'll go with a mix of @Jeutnarg and @PaulTIKI's answers, as those were the ones that gave the most useful solutions to my specific world, and @Graham's comment.

Answer 1

Yes

You're in luck, the first steam engine was actually invented in the 1st Century AD a good 1000 years ahead of gunpowder.

The Aeolipile is technically a steam engine, what's required is for the people of the time to see its potential rather than dismiss it as a toy.

Heron (c. 10–70 AD) takes a more practical approach, in that he gives instructions how to make one:

№ 50. The Steam-Engine.

PLACE a cauldron over a fire: a ball shall revolve on a pivot. A fire is lighted under a cauldron, A B, (fig. 50), containing water, and covered at the mouth by the lid C D; with this the bent tube E F G communicates, the extremity of the tube being fitted into a hollow ball, H K. Opposite to the extremity G place a pivot, L M, resting on the lid C D; and let the ball contain two bent pipes, communicating with it at the opposite extremities of a diameter, and bent in opposite directions, the bends being at right angles and across the lines F G, L M. As the cauldron gets hot it will be found that the steam, entering the ball through E F G, passes out through the bent tubes towards the lid, and causes the ball to revolve, as in the case of the dancing figures.

How could this be viable?

Luckily most of the required technologies were already in use. The water wheel has been in use for several hundred years. Gears were known to the man who first described the Aeolipile, Hero of Alexandria, who also described a wind wheel operating an organ. It's not unreasonable to suggest that he could have invented a steam engine based on a combination of these technologies, if only to do something basic like running an Archimedes' screw.

Consider reading Hero's Pneumatica, especially his descriptions of machines for Temple Doors opened by Fire on an Altar. He may not have invented the steam engine but he was most of the way there. If his interests had leaned that way, I'm sure he could have done it.

Answer 2

Absolutely. The exact chemicals required for gunpowder and the ratios in which to put them, not to mention the various other advances in gunpowder technology that made it so fearsome, can easily be not discovered. Gunpowder is the combination of seemingly unrelated elements, where steam power is the natural evolution of the thought 'gases take up more room when they're hotter'.

A scarcity of any of the key components would certainly lead to people not putting sulphur and potassium nitrate together before the advent of steam power, and similarly anything that would lead to steam power being more popular earlier (the success of the aeolipile, for example) would lead to more people focusing on steam power as the means to military success over trying to further refine various chemicals into a destructive force.

The thing you will have to watch out for is sufficiently clever people deciding to use compressed steam or a steam gun as a weapons system in it's own right. Or maybe that would be good for you. Who knows?

Answer 3

No.

The answer to your title question is "yes", there is nothing about black powder specifically that makes it inevitable that it would be discovered before steam power.

But your full question is a very different one, with a different answer. It isn't really feasible feasible for steam engines to be developed without gun-like weapons also being developed. The simple reason is that the same principles used in a steam engine can be used in a projectile weapon: a steam cannon. In fact, such a weapon is considerably simpler than a steam engine and designs of such weapons predate any usable steam engine.

Steam guns were never used in warfare because by the time the technology was made to manufacture them in usable numbers and quality, easier-to-use gunpowder was available. But if gunpowder were not available, steam guns would have been a natural outgrowth of the much more complicated steam engine development.

It is true that Heron made a very early steam-powered device long before gunpowder or steam guns existed. However, this device wan not a practical way to use steam to power machinery. It produced far too little power to do anything useful for a feasible amount of water and fuel. The machinery to get useful work out of steam is much, much, much more complicated.

Answer 4

Yes, and you can do it even in a world where people create gunpowder and recognize its usefulness.

In fact, your world should naturally evolve that way. The existence of your type of magic gives military technology reason to prioritize projectile defense over melee defense, and this would only increase the more prevalent and powerful magic is, since your magic lends itself towards projectile attacks. Why would you wear expensive, bulky plate armor when your enemy can just shoot a metal spike through you from a mile away? No, you need something that conceals or can deflect projectiles, not something that makes you highly visible and slower.

How does anti-projectile armor make it so people don't use gunpowder in war? You may already have guessed, but let's examine why Europe adopted guns to find out more.

Guns started really showing up in Europe in the late 15th century. Here's what armor looked like scroll down to look at cavalry at that time. You may notice that these heavy knights look almost invincible. That's because they darn near were invincible, only succumbing to specialized weaponry or after being knocked to the ground, and trying to do that was a good way to get yourself killed. That armor is the reason that guns were adopted. Guns were the only weapon that could take down these heavy knights reliably and at a distance (period crossbows were not sufficient to penetrate quality plate). The single, crucial advantage of armor penetration compensated for the slow rate of fire, cumbersome nature, and expense of gunpowder weaponry.

Without that initial advantage, guns will never be adopted at all and so will not advance to become useful - at least, not for thousands of years.

And now you're about to say something about cannons - cannons are fine. OP explicitly stated that their goal is to keep "swords, shields, pikes and heavy cavalry" as viable options on the battlefield. Cannons don't replace those things, so we're in the clear.

Answer 5

Well, simple gunpowder could be delayed by making elemental sulfur (sometimes called flowers of sulfur) hard to find. Also, keep in mind that it was a pretty long time from when gunpowder was developed to when it was used to propel a lump of metal down a tube with the intent of killing something. Steam power exceeding chemical propellant is very possible. In addition, Melee weapons were in wide scale use all the way up until the Late 1800s so that preference could keep on.

Steam Cannon aren't very hard to envision. The same with steam machine guns and so on. They would, out of necessity, be at the very least cart mounted weapons. The advantage of gunpowder as a propellant is that it carries a lot of energy for a very small amount of mass and volume. To get similar results from steam would require a very bulky, dangerous, and above all, slooooowwww machinery. For anything less than a cannon, you'd be better off with crossbowmen (cheaper and faster to engage and reload)

Your end result would be Steam powered cannon replacing weapons like catapults and trebuchets, but with the bulk of the fighting being carried out by melee weapons. Archers would still be in demand. You could, in theory, even have gunpowder weapons at this time, but with sulfur being so hard to find they would be prohibitively expensive. Pistols would be the purview of kings.

In this world you could even up the Steampunk ante by adding a Nicola Tesla type genius to the mix and have prototype electrical weapons.

I like the idea behind this world. Keep it up!

Answer 6

Basic steam engines are ancient.

Making good steam engines was blocked by metallurgy and manufacturing tolerances. Engineering was also important, but nothing could be done without the materials and manufacturing tolerances required.

Once you have viable machines, incentive to make better metals and tighter tolerance machining is made, together with the power to make the machines that permit those very things. In effect, this is the core of an industrial revolution; a feedback loop of technology making technology better, and incentives to follow the loop upwards.

Gunpowder was also ancient, but it wasn't very practical. The problem is that a good cannon or gun requires strong metals and exact machining tolerances.

These two requirements may seem similar.

The very things that let you make a strong boiler an pistons is the thing that lets you make a cannon or rifle.

Whichever version of gunpowder isn't that important. You just need to make a reasonably stable yet reasonably high energy self-combusting mixture of stuff, and a way to light it on fire.

Similarly, boiling water is easy.

The hard part is turning that into something useful.

Barring trees that grow steam engines, the technological underpinnings of steam technology and guns are too similar for them reasonably diverge too much.

Answer 7

They might not have gunpowder but they definitely want stem-powered trebuchet to hurl rock long-distance (when they are beyond reach of pikes of their opponents).

Answer 8

Development is often driven by need and opportunity.

if your country had an abundance of steam power everywhere (like at Yellowstone) then people might start figuring out how to use it before fire (Heck, it might delay fire's invention since you could cook and be kept warm by steam). I could see picking a particular vent and jamming rocks into it so that pressure would build until the rock came flying out at speed. Weaponizing that wouldn't be a stretch if such holes were abundant.

At that point you might use wood/fire and even coal just to make your steam-ballistics portable because you are so familiar with the way the steam engines and weapons of war work--you might ignore other technology paths altogether for a time.

Currently our power generation--from coal to nuclear--all rely heavily on steam technology, it's still THE primary method to convert heat to movement (Wind is the other big one I can think of right now). It might just turn out that there are undiscovered steam solutions to some of our existing problem that are better than our current solutions but we never found them because a portable heat source was harder to deal with than electricity/explosive force.

If you could dig a hole anywhere and pour water in and have it turn to steam I'm pretty sure that would be the core of nearly all the machines in the world.

Another way this could happen--suppose your civilization evolved on a highly radioactive world and was therefore immune to it. If you could find rocks hot enough to make water boil for an extended period of time, why would you ever need another power source? But as far as I know you'd need steam to convert that heat into movement (There is probably a way to convert it straight to electricity though, but that might be considered more of a gimmick or toy--just like we'd consider a small steam engine a toy)

Answer 9

Of course. Steam energy requires fossil fuel and water . Gunpowder is made with sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate (saltpeter). Steam energy was technically used as soon as steam could be used to rotate something (in wood for example). Sources of steam can be natural.

Answer 10

In elaboration to Separatrix's answer, the development of Steam engines would come with some careful consideration of the Aeolipile. Instead of answering how would it be done, I would like to discuss why someone would want to develop steam-powered machines instead of gunpowder.

Speed

While not all steam machines were fast or on rails, there have been innovations in steam power that gave steam vehicles such as the Double steam car which boasted 1500 mile range without refuel and 0 to 60 in 15 seconds. If I were a military tactician, such as the Huns, I would like to arrive to arrive with a large force for a surprise attack.

Capacity

To carry your fancy war machines by horse would mean to struggle at every point whenever you have to carry them over a hill and arriving late to the party every time. Steam powered machines would solve the issue of running low in supplies as a single steam vehicle(4) would carry more than several horses.

Intimidation

While OP has not provided many details about the time era where his empire is located, I am assuming that it is between the Medieval era and the early Renaissance era. Most people of the time would be promptly frightened by an incoming iron beasts and the heavy clanging of metal.

I would avoid ancient tanks of war(3) though.

Answer 11

As mentioned by Separatrix, basic steam engine was discovered quite some time before black powder. There is commonly accepted opinion among historians, that it's further development was stymied by wide availability and chipnes of slave labour. Make it unavailable or very expensive, and you've got incentive to develop steam technology, and it is worth mentioning that antiquety possessed very advanced theoretical and practical knowledge in mechanics, as evident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Compared to Greeks and romans, your country would need better knowledge of metallurgy, though.

Answer 12

Depending on how you are developing your world, you can make small tweaks to chemistry and nerf gunpowder. (For example, in Zelazny's The Guns of Avalon, the protagonist, knowing of Earth gunpowder, finds with great effort an obscure substance that functions the same way in Amber. If he had not been exposed to gunpowder weapons on Earth he would not have seen the practical use of the explosive substance.)

Answer 13

Actually it is possible that most planets in our universe invented gunpowder after steam engines(or at least some of them). :)

Without chemical industry humans would not be able to obtain nitrate if not for a quirk of biochemistry. First our organisms produce some urea, then microorganisms oxidise it to nitrid acid, then it reacts with potassium carbonate and we get potassium nitrate.

Energy is produced while urea is oxidized (that's why microorganisms do it). If vertebrates learned how to oxidize it by themselves, saving a little energy, then producing potassium nitrate would be impossible until chemistry gets at least to the level of 19th century(most likely middle-end of 19th century).

Answer 14

Yes, steam engines could be invented before gunpowder but it doesn't matter much because steam guns would be invented, too.

When you have steam engines you have boilers, cylinders and pistons, it's straightforward to take a long cylinder, leave it open at one end let steam throw the piston to the enemy.

The only reason steam guns saw only little use in our timeline was that gunpowder and other explosives are more efficient for most purposes, but in a world without explosives steam tanks and steam war boats wouldn't lack steam guns.

The steam-powered trebuchet proposed by Peter Masiar are likely adaptations of early steam machines - like the Newcomen engine - therefore you could expect steam-powered artillery even with the most primitive steam engines.

Answer 15

The question if wrong. We know that people had steam engines long before gunpowder. Apart from mentioned Aeolipile Hero created steam engine that could open doors.

The question you should ask is: WHY?

Why would they need to use steam engine in warmachines? To build steam powered tank? The amount of resources needed to build such thing would equal hundreds if not thousands of armour and weapons for soldiers.
Not to mention the time needed to construct one tank versus time needed to build war chariot.

Think that using steam engine in mines, agriculture or to strengthen the economy would bring better fruits for the country.

Better mining means more resources and faster creation of standard weapons.

So easy calculation would tell anyone that using steam engines as a weapon would be useless.