Mereni wrote:Rele wrote:DarkNacht wrote:I doubt the cementation process would have been known to the early pilgrims as it was still very new/unknown to most of Europe at the time and metal production technology in the colonies was far behind what most of Europe had.
Apparently the colonies had very good metal production. http://www.flintriflesmith.com/WritingandResearch/WebArticles/ironandsteel.htm
It even says "The Brits were buying both bar iron and pig iron from the colonies, manufacturing it into finished goods and selling those back to the colonies, literally, by the boat load."
So the Colonies were basically their source of mining labor and economy.
But if you read the rest of that article, the colonies were encouraged to produce only pig and bar iron, the least refined kinds of iron, and the Iron Act of 1750 disallowed the making of infrastructure that allowed production of things like bar iron and nail rod used to make swords and nails and the like. While that act was largely ignored and difficult to enforce, we're still doing pretty good in-game just being able to make our own swords and nails.
British imperialism at work. The same was happening in India where those colonies were shipping exotic wood to england to be transformed into furniture and then sold back to english officers in India. Hence the proliferatiion of british colonial furniture shops today (weren't they called India imports? It has been a while since I was in the states.)
