The Heilongjiang hand cannon or hand-gun is a bronze

hand cannon The hand cannon (Chinese: 手銃 ''shŏuchòng'', or 火銃 ''huŏchòng''), also known as the gonne or handgonne, is the first true firearm and the successor of the fire lance. It is the oldest type of small arms as well as the most mecha ...

manufactured no later than 1288 and is the world's oldest confirmed surviving

firearm A firearm is any type of gun designed to be readily carried and used by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries (see Legal definitions). The first firearms originated in 10th-century China, when bamboo tubes ...

. It weighs 3.55 kg (7.83 pounds) and is 34 centimeters (13.4 inches) long. The Heilongjiang hand cannon was excavated during the 1970s in Banlachengzi, a village in

Acheng District Acheng District (Manchu Language: Alcuka Hoton) is one of nine districts of the prefecture-level city of Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province, Northeast China, covering part of the southeastern suburbs. The district was approved to es ...

Heilongjiang Heilongjiang () formerly romanized as Heilungkiang, is a province in northeast China. The standard one-character abbreviation for the province is (). It was formerly romanized as "Heilungkiang". It is the northernmost and easternmost province ...

province, China. It was found alongside other bronze artifacts made in the style of the Jurchen Jin

Dynasty A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family,''Oxford English Dictionary'', "dynasty, ''n''." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1897. usually in the context of a monarchical system, but sometimes also appearing in republics. A ...

(12th–13th century). The hand cannon was probably used in battles fought nearby in Banlachengzi in 1287 and 1288. The ''

History of Yuan The ''History of Yuan'' (''Yuán Shǐ''), also known as the ''Yuanshi'', is one of the official Chinese historical works known as the ''Twenty-Four Histories'' of China. Commissioned by the court of the Ming dynasty, in accordance to political ...

'' states that a Jurchen commander by the name of Li Ting led a group of soldiers equipped with hand cannons into a military camp in 1288, as part of an anti-rebellion campaign for the Yuan dynasty. The cannon currently resides at the Heilongjiang Provincial Museum in

Harbin Harbin (; mnc, , v=Halbin; ) is a sub-provincial city and the provincial capital and the largest city of Heilongjiang province, People's Republic of China, as well as the second largest city by urban population after Shenyang and largest ...

, China.

Description

The Heilongjiang hand cannon is long without a handle and weighs . The diameter of the interior at the end of the

barrel A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, ...

is . The barrel is the lengthiest part of the hand cannon and is long. There is no inscription on the hand cannon. The hand cannon has a bulbous base at the

breech Breech may refer to: * Breech (firearms), the opening at the rear of a gun barrel where the cartridge is inserted in a breech-loading weapon * breech, the lower part of a pulley block * breech, the penetration of a boiler where exhaust gases leav ...

called the ''yaoshi'' () or gunpowder chamber, where the explosion that propels the

projectile A projectile is an object that is propelled by the application of an external force and then moves freely under the influence of gravity and air resistance. Although any objects in motion through space are projectiles, they are commonly found in ...

occurs. The diameter of the Heilongjiang hand-guns powder chamber is . The walls of the powder chamber are noticeably thicker to better withstand the explosive pressure of the gunpowder. The powder chamber also has a

touch hole A touch hole, also called a vent, is a small hole at the rear (breech) portion of the barrel of a muzzleloading gun or cannon. The hole provides external access of an ignition spark (fire), spark into the breech chamber of the barrel (where the ...

, a small hole for the fuse that ignites the gunpowder. Behind the gunpowder chamber is a socket shaped like a trumpet where the handle of the hand cannon is inserted. The bulbous shape of the base gave the earliest Chinese and Western cannons a vase-like or pear-like appearance, which gradually disappeared when advancements in

metallurgical Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...

technology made the bulbous base obsolete.

Historical context

Gunpowder was invented in China during the 9th century. One of the first references to gunpowder occurs in the Taoist alchemical text known as ''Zhenyuan miaodao yaolüe'' (), composed during the mid-800s, containing a passage mentioning the use of gunpowder. By the 12th century, Song dynasty forces were utilizing gunpowder weapons such as

fire lance The fire lance () was a gunpowder weapon and the ancestor of modern firearms. It first appeared in 10th–12th century China and was used to great effect during the Jin-Song Wars. It began as a small pyrotechnic device attached to a polearm weapo ...

grenades A grenade is an explosive weapon typically thrown by hand (also called hand grenade), but can also refer to a shell (explosive projectile) shot from the muzzle of a rifle (as a rifle grenade) or a grenade launcher. A modern hand grenade gene ...

, and metal bombards. Exploding gunpowder bombs were used as early as 1126 during the Jingkang Incident, when the Jurchen Jin dynasty besieged the Song capital of Kaifeng. The Song defenders launched explosive bombs called ''pili pao'' () at the besiegers. The predecessor of the hand cannon, the fire lance, was a spear tied with a bamboo or paper barrel that could fire projectiles. The transition between the fire lance to the cannon or hand cannon was gradual, so literary references to a weapon called ''huotong'' (; "fire tube") can either denote fire lances or metal-barrel firearms. The ''Xingjun Xuzhi'' (; "What an Army Commander in the Field ought to Know") dated 1230, lists ''huotong'' among other gunpowder weapons, but may refer to either a fire lance or a hand cannon. This has been attested to by surviving metal cannons and hand cannons in China from the 13th and 14th centuries. The oldest among the excavated cannons is the Wuwei cannon dated to 1227. It was discovered in

Wuwei, Gansu Wuwei () is a prefecture-level city in northwest central Gansu province. In the north it borders Inner Mongolia, in the southwest, Qinghai. Its central location between three western capitals, Lanzhou, Xining, and Yinchuan makes it an important bu ...

and likely originates from the

Western Xia The Western Xia or the Xi Xia (), officially the Great Xia (), also known as the Tangut Empire, and known as ''Mi-nyak''Stein (1972), pp. 70–71. to the Tanguts and Tibetans, was a Tangut-led Buddhist imperial dynasty of China tha ...

period. The Wuwei cannon weighs , a diameter of , and a length of . An iron

cannonball A round shot (also called solid shot or simply ball) is a solid spherical projectile without explosive charge, launched from a gun. Its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the barrel from which it is shot. A round shot fired from a lar ...

and a small quantity of gunpowder were also discovered at the Wuwei archaeological site. The earliest cannon inscribed with a date of manufacture is a bronze cannon. It is dated to 1298 according to an inscription in the 'Phags-pa script. Outside of archaeological finds, appearances of the cannon in Chinese art may suggest that the cannon was invented as early as the 12th century. The oldest artistic representation of a cannon is a stone relief sculpture dated to 1128. The sculpture was discovered in 1985 carved in the walls of Cave 149 of the

Dazu Rock Carvings The Dazu Rock Carvings () are a series of Chinese religious sculptures and carvings and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Dazu District, Chongqing, China. The carvings date back as far as the 7th century AD, depicting and influenced by Buddhi ...

in Dazu,

Chongqing Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), Postal Romanization, alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a Direct-administered municipalities of China, municipality in Southwes ...

. The Heilongjiang hand-gun is dated to 1288. At and is considerably lighter than older projectile devices such as the bulky

trebuchet A trebuchet (french: trébuchet) is a type of catapult that uses a long arm to throw a projectile. It was a common powerful siege engine until the advent of gunpowder. The design of a trebuchet allows it to launch projectiles of greater weigh ...

s that were used to launch explosive bombs. Since the earliest textual reference to a "huo chong," or "fire tube," is dated to 1230 and the oldest surviving hand cannon is dated to 1288, the invention of the hand cannon likely occurred in the mid-13th century. The invention of the metal-barrel hand cannon in China did not diminish the popularity of the earlier bamboo-barrel fire lances. The fire lance was cheaper and more portable than the hand cannon and was still used in China until the 16th century when the

musket A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually d ...

replaced the fire lance.

Excavation and dating

The hand cannon was discovered in July 1970 at an

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

in Banlachengzi village (). The village is situated on the shores of the

Ashi River The Ashi River is a right tributary of the Songhua in eastern Manchuria,. in Harbin's Acheng District in the People's Republic of China. Name The river has borne the name "Ashi" since the Qing (17th–20th century). Before that, it was known as t ...

. The archaeologists discovered several bronze objects that were excavated with the hand cannon. The excavated objects were a bronze vase, a bronze mirror, and a bronze cooking pan. All the bronze artifacts were manufactured in the style of the Jurchen Jin dynasty. The Jin dynasty collapsed after the Mongols besieged and captured Caizhou in 1234, which suggests that the Heilongjiang hand-gun can reasonably be dated to the 13th century at the latest. The dating of the Heilongjiang hand-gun is based on battles in 1287 and 1288 that were fought near the site where the archaeologists discovered the hand-gun. The battles were part of Mongol prince Nayan's rebellion in Manchuria against

Kublai Khan Kublai ; Mongolian script: ; (23 September 1215 – 18 February 1294), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Shizu of Yuan and his regnal name Setsen Khan, was the founder of the Yuan dynasty of China and the fifth khagan-emperor of th ...

, the emperor of the Yuan dynasty. An account of the 1287 and 1288 battles is documented in the ''

'', which references the use of hand cannons. In 1287, a group of soldiers equipped with hand cannons led by commander Li Ting () attacked Nayan's camp. The ''History of Yuan'' reports that the hand cannons not only "caused great damage," but also caused "such confusion that the enemy soldiers attacked and killed each other." The hand cannons were used again at the beginning of 1288. Li Ting's "gun-soldiers" or ''chongzu'' () were able to carry the hand cannons "on their backs" according to the ''History of Yuan''. The passage on the 1288 battle is also the first to coin the name ''chong'' () for metal-barrel firearms. ''Chong'' was used instead of the earlier and more ambiguous term ''huo tong'' (), which may refer to the tubes of

fire lances The fire lance () was a gunpowder weapon and the ancestor of modern firearms. It first appeared in 10th–12th century China and was used to great effect during the Jin-Song Wars. It began as a small pyrotechnic device attached to a polearm weapo ...

, proto-cannons, or signal flares. Wei Guozhong () was the archaeologist who excavated and dated the cannon. He wrote a description of the archaeological find in the article "A Bronze Bombard Excavated at Banlachengzi in Acheng Xian in Heilongjiang Province," which was published in 1973 for the journal ''Reference Materials for History and Archaeology''. Wei proposed a connection between the hand cannon discovered in Banlachengzi and the nearby battle sites. The historian

Joseph Needham Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (; 9 December 1900 – 24 March 1995) was a British biochemist, historian of science and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science and technology, in ...

remarked that Wei's "find will long remain of capital importance since it is the only metal-barrel hand-gun so far discovered which almost certainly belongs to the 13th century."

Notes

References

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