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The Mongol Empire - the first 'gunpowder empire'?

Profile image of Stephen G. HawStephen G. Haw

2013, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, series 3, Vol. 23.3: 441-469

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186313000369
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30 pages

Abstract

The Chinese were the first to make gunpowder and to use it in warfare. The gunpowder formulae in the Wu Jing Zong Yao (early 1040s) are well known. The dates at which various gunpowder weapons came into use in China, what kinds of gunpowder weapons the Chinese used, and exactly when explosive gunpowder was developed, have all been less clear. The extent to which Chinese gunpowder weapons may have been used by the armies of the Mongols during the period of their conquests, in the thirteenth century, has also been much disputed. This article addresses all these issues and argues that, by the early 1200s, the Chinese were regularly using a range of incendiary and explosive gunpowder weapons. Defectors from the Jin empire to the Mongols carried knowledge of such weaponry with them. It was used in the Mongol campaigns after 1211 and played a significant role in the Mongol conquests.

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