Where was the land mine invented?

Answer 1

The land mine has had a long history of invention. Many historians speculate that the Chinese under the Ming dynasty dabbled with mine-like technology in the 14th century around the time fireworks were invented in East Asia. But since China closed their borders off from the West this technology was largely ignored for years. Meanwhile, back in Europe many amateur inventors attempted to build a land mine for use in many new wars that were waged in the Baroque and Victorian eras. Pedro Navarro of Spain and Samuel Zimmerman of Prussia tried and failed to build land mines in the 16th and 17th centuries, this pre-mine was called a fougasse (French for shell-bomb), but because these weapons were cheap and highly inefficient; they not readily used by any European military force.

The modern land mine was conceived by Confederate Gen. Gabriel J. Rains when he used this new technology in 1862 in the Battle of Yorktown against Union soldiers. Rains had already experimented with this weapon in the Seminole Wars in Florida in the 1840s as booby traps and to save on standard war material. This invention was patented and was later sold to other nations for a profit. The German Empire, in 1914, took this new weapon and advanced it further for its imperial endeavours. It was even modified in the Battle of the Somme for the new invention of poison gas with abhorring causitiles.

Some international treaties banned land mines with yields that are too explosive for wartime purposes. However, the Soviet Union illegally experimented with nuclear land mines until the 1980s. And the Ottawa Treaty is in effect to dig up any lost mines throughout the world and dismantle them to protect the safety of free peoples everywhere, but the U.S. has not ratifyed this treaty yet. Land mines are a central weapon in modern warfare and countinues to be advanced by the militaries of the world.