The Era of Chinese Predominance, 1000–1500 39eluding gunpowder, joined this array of complicated weaponry about
the year 1000. Explosives were valued initially as incendiaries, but the
Chinese began to exploit the propulsive power of gunpowder after
about 1290, when the first true guns seem to have been invented.^31
Chinese technical innovation, indeed, appears to have concentrated
specially on weaponry in the Sung period. Technological advances
among the barbarians perhaps impelled the Chinese to try to keep
ahead. At any rate, before their conquest of north China in 1126, the
Jürchen and other barbarian neighbors of China gained increasing
access to products of Chinese artisanal skills. Improved armor and a
greater supply of metal for weapons was the major symptom of this
change. Clearly the Sung rulers faced a narrowing technical gap be
tween themselves and their principal rivals—a gap that practically dis
appeared after the conquest of north China by the barbarians. Faced
with this sort of threat, Sung authorities began systematically to re
ward military inventors, as the following passage illustrates:
In the third year of the Kai Pao period of the reign of Sung Tai-
Tse [i.e., A.D. 969] the general Feng Chi-Sheng, together with
some other officers, suggested a new model of fire arrow. The
Emperor had it tested, and (as the test proved successful) presents
of gowns and silk were bestowed upon the inventors.^32
With such patronage in high places, obstacles to innovation were
minimized.
The city-based, defensive character of Sung strategy also encour
aged technical experiment. It made sense to expend ingenuity and
resources preparing complicated and powerful machines of war to
defend city walls and other fixed positions, whereas such machinery
initially was far too cumbersome for use by armies designed to take the
field and move rapidly across open country. Only later, when catapults
and gunpowder weapons had become really powerful, did the Mon
Aubin, ed., Etudes Song, ser. 1 (Paris, 1978), pp. 119–42; Joseph Needham, “China’s
Trebuchets, Manned and Counter-weighted,” in Bert S. Hall and Delno C. West, eds.,
On Pre-modern Technology and Science: A Volume of Studies in Honor of Lynn White, Jr.
(Malibu, Calif., 1976), pp. 107–38.
- Joseph Needham, “The Guns of Khaifengfu,” Times Literary Supplement, 11 Janu
ary 1980; Herbert Franke, “Siege and Defense of Towns in Medieval China,” in Kier
man and Fairbank, Chinese Ways in Warfare, pp. 161–79; L. Carrington Goodrich and
Feng Chia-sheng, “The Early Development of Firearms in China,” Isis 36 (1946):
114–23; Wang Ling, “On the Invention and Use of Gunpowder in China,” Isis 37
(1947): 160–78. - Quoted from Wang Ling, “Gunpowder,” p. 165. According to Wang Ling, the fire
arrows in question may have been tipped with gunpowder that exploded on impact.