BUCHANAN, Brenda J.

PERSONAL:

Female.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Bath, Bath, England, research associate.

MEMBER:

International Committee for the History of Technology.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(Editor) Gunpowder: The History of an International Technology, Bath University Press (Claverton Down, Bath, England), 1996.

(With others) Gunpowder Plots: A Celebration of 400 Years of Bonfire Night, Allen Lane (London, England), 2005.

(Editor) Gunpowder, Explosives and the State: A Technological History, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Brenda J. Buchanan is interested in the history of technology, and particularly the history of gunpowder. She has edited two books on the subject—Gunpowder: The History of an International Technology and Gunpowder, Explosives and the State: A Technological History—and has contributed to a third, Gunpowder Plots: A Celebration of 400 Years of Bonfire Night.

Gunpowder Plots focuses primarily on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which a handful of English Roman Catholic dissenters, led by Guy Fawkes, laid plans to blow up a huge store of gunpowder under the House of Lords while it was in session. If they had carried out their plan, they would have assassinated the king, a great number of nobles, and the bishops of the Anglican Church all at once. The conspirators were discovered and foiled, and their actions used as justification for further anti-Catholicism for years to come. The fifth of November, the date the plot was thwarted, came to be celebrated as Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night, on which fires were lit, effigies of the Pope were burned, or, in more modern times, fireworks displays were mounted. Gunpowder Plots contains many essays examining the history of the celebration and its current status. Buchanan's contribution is a "fascinating" piece on gunpowder and fireworks, according to Alice Hogge in the Economist.

Buchanan commented on the International Committee for the History of Technology Newsletter Web site that the study of gunpowder and explosives is important because "this technology lies at the heart of our human history. Gunpowder and the explosives and propellants which followed it, were a form of energy which changed the world. They provided a power beyond the natural limitations, so that mining and engineering works could be undertaken; voyages made and land explored; and trade encouraged.… And in their military applications, explosives set in train conquest, the building of states, and the development of empires."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Economist, November 5, 2005, Alice Hogge, review of Gunpowder Plots: A Celebration of 400 Years of Bonfire Night, p. 92.

New Statesman, November 7, 2005, Robert Winder, review of Gunpowder Plots, p. 50.

Spectator, November 5, 2005, David Crane, review of Gunpowder Plots, p. 66.

ONLINE

International Committee for the History of Technology Newsletter,http://www.icohtec.org/ (December, 1999), Brenda Buchanan, "An Explosive Decade at ICOHTEC, 1989-1999."*