What's the significance of gunpowder in Gulliver's Travels?

As for gunpowder, for Gulliver (and through him, the English), gunpowder represents the height of achievement primarily because of the power it has provided. The Brobdingnag king, however, is not corrupted by power. He is able to see that the negative effects of gunpowder would far outweigh the positive ones in his society. He might be right that Gulliver is narrow-minded, but his tirade on the general stupidity of the Brobdingnags takes the opposite point of view. Still, on this issue he is unable to see his own faults or those of his society. It is up to Swift to show us, through Gulliver's tale, what Gulliver's insistence on gunpowder means.