Grantville Gazette Volume 27
Page 21
McGHEST/Nitroaromatic indicates that Furacin is derived by several steps from furfural. Indeed, furfural, which is in natural feedstocks, is undoubtedly the source of the furan ring in all of these compounds. Furan chemistry is briefly discussed in M&B 1078ff and McGHEST/Furans.
Forget Salvarsan, the organoarsenic compound that was the first effective anti-syphilitic, fosfomycin (the simplest known antibiotic, a C3), and the quinolones. (for reasons, see Appendix).
Antivirals (other than vaccines and antibodies). Yeast RNA (about 8-12% dry weight; Halasz 29) can be hydrolyzed to supply raw materials for synthesizing the antiviral nucleic acid analogues. The component RNA nucleobases are heterocyclic compounds falling into two categories, the pyrimidines (cytosine, uracil) and the more complex purines (adenine, guanine). If a ribose sugar is attached we have the corresponding nucleosides.
The antiviral pyrimidines include cytarabine, dideoxycytidine, edoxudine, floxuridine, idoxuridine, trifluridine and zidovudine. To make cytarabine, we must replace the ribose of cytosine with arabinose. Arabinose is found in many plants but of course we need to learn to identify and isolate it. Edoxudine is uracil attached to deoxyribose (obtainable from DNA) rather than ribose.
While it is conceptually simple to replace one sugar with another, Hardewijn (xix) warns that "between the 1950s and 1970s the synthesis of a modified nucleoside was a difficult undertaking." Part of the problem is assuring that the correct sugar oxygen reacts with the correct nucleobase nitrogen. The Merck Index "Named Organic Reactions" does set forth two nucleoside syntheses, the Hilbert-Johnson reaction (1930) and the Vorbruggen glycosylation (1970). The former requires knowledge of how to synthesize a 2,4-dialkoxypyrimidine and the latter requires knowledge and availability of silylating agents.
The antiviral purines include acyclovir and ganciclovir, which don't contain sugar, and dideoxyadenosine, dideoxyinosine, and vidarabine, which do. MI says, for acyclovir, that there's a "convenient synthesis from guanine," which is true, but the catch is that guanine has five nitrogens and you want to derivatize just one of them. It took decades to develop the synthesis in question. (Cabri).
As to other reported antivirals, we could make cuminaldehyde thiosemicarbazone and moroxydine, as there is useful synthetic info (MI, CCD). We just know the structure of kethoxal , but it's aliphatic and possible for the late 1630s.
Amantadine is less likely. We do know how to make adamantane (MI), and there are hints that amantadine can be made by a route involving adamantyl chloride (the standard routes actually involve bromide), but I think it far from obvious how one proceeds from there (Vardanyan 551).
Even if we can make a drug reported to have some antiviral activity, it may not be effective against the viruses we need to fight, or at least not enough to justify the investment of resources into developing a commercial-scale synthesis.
* * *
The likeliest near-term pharmaceuticals are reviewed below. Synthetic info is usually just the final step, but you can look up the precursors and work backward.
Explosives
Yes, there's a war on, so we need chemicals that go "Bang!" We have RDX. I would expect that trinitrotoluene (TNT), picric acid (also a dye!), nitroglycerin (also pharmaceutical) and nitrocellulose will be available within a few years of the Ring of Fire.
Sunscreens
This may seem a trivial application of up-time knowledge, but imagine spending days on the deck of a ship trapped in the doldrums (the sun was said to have "dried the feces within the body"; Dash 78) or working under the baleful glare illuminating the fields of a tropical colony. Several standard UV blockers, notably benzophenone and PABA (Field 2ff), are well within the demonstrated synthetic capability. They will compete with the inorganic pigments titanium dioxide and zinc oxide.
Flavors and Fragrances
Many of these will be isolated from natural sources, such as the essential oils of select plants. These include various phenol derivatives, such as eugenol (cloves), isoeugenol (nutmeg), anethole (aniseed), vanillin (vanilla bean), thymol (thyme, mint), safrole (sassafras). (M&B 794) M&B 620 discloses how to convert eugenol or isoeugenol into vanillin.
Offord, "White Gold" (Grantville Gazette 9) discusses sugar (sucrose, fructose) from sugarcane, sugar maple, sugar beets, and sweet sorghum. However, we can also isolate the sweeteners mannitol (Fraxinus ornus; seaweed), sorbitol (mountain ash berries), and xylitol (Finnish birch trees). (MI). Xylitol can be made from the xylose of wood lignin.
Preservatives
We have acetic acid, we can easily synthesize benzoic and propionic acids, and sorbic acid can be isolated from rowan berries or synthesized (MI).
Pesticides
In the seventeenth century, a considerable part of the food supply was consumed by pests rather than people. Insects also spread disease. Hence, there's a market for pesticides. There are several inorganic pesticides, but they're outside the scope of this essay.
Natural organic insecticides include nicotine (partial synthesis, M&B 1065; Solomons 1000), various garlic oil components, and pyrethrins (pyrethrum flower).
Among the organochlorines, DDT and hexachlorobenzene are in canon. We can also make hexachlorocyclohexane (Lindane); EB11/polymethylenes says that it's "formed by the action of chlorine on benzene in sunlight" (probably better to have a ultraviolet light source) and Merck Index notes that this results in formation of eight stereoisomers, the gamma being the one that's pesticidally active. It gives the physical properties of the alpha, beta and gamma isomers, and it seems as though we could separate the alpha by distillation and the beta by extraction. We can also make pentachlorophenol by chlorination of phenol, much as we do hexachlorobenzene. The popular herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid should also be feasible. And there're synthetic plans for the (banned) insecticides chlordan and aldrin (Solomons 1025).
Unlike the organochlorines, the organophosphates are biodegradable. Unfortunately, they are also more toxic to people. One of the safer ones is malathion; CCD has a summary synthesis. There's also glyphosate (1970), a glycine analog, but I am not sure how much guidance there will be on how to make it.
We know starting materials for the synthesis of the herbicide naproanilide (Solomons 951).
Fertilizers
Urea is used as a fertilizer because of its high nitrogen content. Any chemist would know that urea was the first (1828) organic chemical to be synthesized from inorganic starting materials; particulars are given by EB11. The modern route (EA) is by brute force (high temperature, high pressure) combination of liquid ammonia and liquid carbon dioxide.
Photographic Chemicals
Organic chemicals used in the darkroom include acetanilide (chloramphenicol precursor), acetic acid (vinegar), amidol (from chlorobenzene, M&B813), hydroquinone (from aniline, M&B976), Metol (from hydroquinone and methylamine, EB15), phenidone (from phenylhydrazine, MI), catechol (from salicylaldehyde, MI), pyrogallol (from gallic acid, CCD 735), and Rodinal (p-aminophenol) (two routes, CCD 45).
Polymers
Synthetic rubbers and plastics are among the most important end-products of the modern chemical industry. However, they deserve an article of their own. Suffice it to say that many of the top organic chemicals shown in Table 3-2 are "top" because of their use in manufacturing polymers.
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Next: Part 5, Polymers and Composites
Author's note: Bibliography will be in Appendix published in "Gazette Extras" on www.1632.org after Part 5 is published.
What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate (Why the Ottomans aren't Talking to Up-timers)
Written by Panteleimon Roberts
Diplomacy with the Ottomans seems not to be working for Grantville and the USE because the Ottomans don't seem to want to talk. "Almost a year and a half, from the spring of 1632 onward, of patient and carefully drafted letters, friendly overtures carried to Istanbul by a dozen or more hands, had dropped into a black hole for all the good they seemed to have done."[1] In fact, we are told t
hat ". . . anyone claiming to be an up-timer would automatically be put to death if found anywhere within the Ottoman Empire."[2]
This hardly seems fair. After all, what have the up-timers done to the Ottomans? Aren't they freely sharing their twentieth century knowledge with all who are interested, bringing wonderful advances in technology and an enlightened political system that includes religious freedom wherever their influence extends?
The fact is Sultan Murad IV and his advisers would not have banned up-timers without believing they had good reason to do so. As it happens, the actions described above are a big part of those reasons. The activities of the up-timers look very suspicious to Ottoman eyes, and it does not help that the up-timers have allied themselves with the enemies of those who the Ottomans consider to be their best friends in Europe. To understand this, we must consider what information the Ottomans have about Grantville and what their interpretations of this information are likely to be.
What information the Ottomans have about the up-timers will depend, in part, on where they got their information. So the first questions that must be answered are where the information about Grantville comes from and what is it likely to include.
The first source will have been the letters sent from Grantville. So what happened to all those letters? Most probably they were all collected in a file either under the control of the clerk in charge of the European-German records, given where Grantville appeared, or in the files relating to the Swedes, given the initial alliances Grantville made. It is unlikely that any were delivered directly to Murad IV himself—this simply wasn't done with materials from unknown non-Muslim foreigners. If a sufficiently important messenger carried one of the letters, it is possible that the Grand Vizier, Tabaniyassi Mehmed Pasha, might have accepted it.[3] Mehmed Pasha was fairly well informed about events in Europe—and he felt (as Murad IV seems also to have felt) that the interests of the Empire were best served by avoiding entanglements in European affairs and letting the Christians knock themselves out while the Safavids were dealt with. Those under him tended to have similar ideas—the Persians were seen as the main enemy—although there were factions that felt advantage should be taken if and when a European target of opportunity appeared.
Grantville would not have appeared to be a target of opportunity. The initial impression would have been that some local German ruler had decided to attempt to set up a private kingdom, and was hoping for an Ottoman connection to give the Habsburgs pause before they smashed him. Supporting some would-be princeling would have held no attraction at all for the Ottomans. It would also not have been anything worth mentioning to the sultan except possibly in passing, as an example of how the Thirty Years' War was fragmenting Europe.
Then, too, it is important to recognize that the Ottomans in general, and Murad in particular, were somewhat preoccupied in 1632 and 1633 with issues closer to home than Grantville. In 1632, the sultan would certainly have been more interested in ensuring that he had control over Constantinople than in what was happening in Germany. In 1633, Murad was still securing control over the wider Empire. When he did have attention to spare, it would have gone to the struggle with the Persians. All in all, it seems likely that no serious notice would have been taken prior to mid-1633.
When notice was finally taken, it would have been clear that Grantville was no small matter of a rebellious lord, but rather a major player in a radically changed power structure in Europe. This would have worried the Ottomans, since their expectation would have been that, should one side or the other gain victory in the internecine structures that had been occupying the Christians, the Europeans would then unite and attack them, and the last thing they wanted was a second war on top of the war they already had with the Persians. Further, as will be shown below, the initial letters from Grantville will not have made a good impression.
At some point as information about the up-timers came in, those responsible for the security of the Empire would have concluded that a threat existed. The conclusion may have been reached at a low level first, as the clerks responsible for dealing with correspondence from abroad noticed the increase in the apparent importance of Grantville. Or it may have occurred at a higher level—one can imagine the French ambassador securing an audience with the Grand Vizier to seek an alliance against this new threat. Whether the alert came from above or below, it would have eventually reached an official with the responsibility to bring the potential threat to the attention of the sultan so that action could be taken.
Sultan es-Selatin Murad Oglu Ahmed (known to us as Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire) wielded absolute power.[4] Nevertheless, both as a matter of religious duty and practicality, Sultan Murad will have consulted with his government before acting.
While such consultations could be as simple as the divan-i hümayun (Imperial Council, hereafter just divan) meeting, making a decision, and sending recommendations to the sultan for his approval, this is unlikely to be how it happened. Murad was actually very engaged with his government and, while it was always clear that the final decision was his, surprisingly willing to listen to others before the decision was made.[5] Given the complexities and ramifications of the appearance of the up-timers, while the divan may have sent a recommendation to the sultan, it was most likely to request that he convene a meshveret (consultative meeting), which brought in a wider group and provided a military council-style three-step forum in which to deal with complex problems.
The first step of a meshveret entails bringing in experts to explain the problems and possible responses. The experts in this case would have included the scribes responsible for European relations, possibly some foreigners (including ambassadors) with direct experience or information from their homelands of the people from Grantville, and a selection of the learned men of the ulema.[6]
Once the experts had spoken, the sultan would invite the officials of his government to offer their opinions. This would be done in a strict order of precedence, with the lowest ranking speaking first. After all who wished to speak had done so, the sultan would speak, giving his views and issuing any commands he felt appropriate to the situation, leaving the implementation of his orders to the affected officials or to the divan. The meshveret ended when the sultan spoke, giving him the last, and indisputable, word on the subject.
The resources available to the Ottomans to learn about things happening in the middle of Europe did not, popular opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, include a network of Ottoman intelligence officers. Instead they relied on the reports of merchants, intelligence provided by their tributary state the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik), and information provided to them by the foreign diplomats who resided in Constantinople. Because of the perceived need for rapidly producing an assessment, merchant reports would not have been a major part of the picture since they were obtained only irregularly and took time to compile. The Ottomans would have asked the Ragusans for what they had, and summoned the diplomats to tell what they knew.[7]
The Republic of Ragusa had an intelligence network which was in many ways the equal of that of up-time countries. The Ragusans had developed their intelligence capabilities for the purpose of survival—Ragusa was an essentially merchant state with neither the ability to field large armies or significant natural defenses located in a region over which major powers contended. They used the intelligence that they gained as bargaining chips to maintain their independence. Decisions about what intelligence was shared were made by the Ragusan Senate.[8]
Because decisions about intelligence sharing were made with an eye toward what was best for Ragusa, a certain bias was introduced into what intelligence was shared. To put it simply, the Ragusans preferred to provide information to the Ottomans that was selected to conform to what the Ragusans thought the Ottomans expected. As they would have been unsure of the reception it would receive, their comprehensive report on Grantville would, by policy, not have been the first.[9] The information that shaped the initial Ottoman opinion of Grantville would per
force come from the European missions in Constantinople.[10]
The European diplomatic community in Constantinople at this time consisted of four ambassadors, the resident representative of the Holy Roman Empire, and various temporary missions. The four ambassadors were, in order of seniority, the Venetian Baillio, the French ambassador, The English ambassador, and the Dutch ambassador.
Of those who might present a favorable, or at least neutral, view of Grantville, Ottoman relations with Venice may be regarded as comparable to those between the United States and the Soviet Union during the period of détente.[11] The Dutch, while ably represented by Cornelis Haga, are newcomers.
Those who might present a negative view of Grantville are in rather better positions. The resident representative of the Holy Roman Empire, Johann Rudolf Schmid, labors under the handicap that relations between the Habsburg Emperor and the Ottomans tend to be strained. But he seems to have been a remarkably capable and well-connected individual.[12] The English representative, Sir Peter Wyche, was at least competent, reasonably well-liked by the Ottomans, and absolutely loyal to Charles I.[13]
And then there are the French. The French had an extraordinarily close relationship with the Ottomans. Indeed, it was so close that many believed that a French princess must have figured in the lineage of the Ottoman sultans.[14] This was fortunate for the French because their ambassadors in this period left something to be desired.[15] We may well learn that Richelieu sent a special embassy to Constantinople relatively early on to explain the up-timer threat to the Ottomans. But, whether the information was provided by the existing ambassador or a special emissary, there is no question that the French view will have had a large impact on Ottoman perceptions of Grantville.