Gunpowder and Rocketry | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The development of gunpowder and the rocket have relatedhistories, and both are believed to have originated in China by the late Song dynasty (eleventh century CE). Gunpowder was the first explosive and propellant and one of world history's most important inventions. It has three ingredients mixed together: potassium nitrate (also called saltpeter), sulfur, and charcoal. Gunpowder, also called black powder, propelled the first bullets and rockets. The rocket used a low nitrate, slower-burning gunpowder and was self-propelled once the powder ignited.

Most likely gunpowder and the rocket were surprise discoveries rather than inventions. For centuries, Chinese Taoist philosophers experimented with chemicals to seek the answer to longevity. One Taoist book, Zhen yuan miao Dao yao lue (Classified Essentials of the Mysterious Tao) of around 850 CE, warned not to mix certain ingredients, including sulfur, saltpeter, and other ingredients, because the mixture had been known to flame up, singe beards, and burn a house. This was one of several known Taoist alchemical explosions, and the Chinese of the period do not appear to have understood the true nature of combustion. As late as the seventeenth century, they still believed the combustion of gunpowder was caused by the interaction of the yin, or female element, and yang, the male element.

Early Chinese military terms are often difficult to interpret, but the earliest recognizable gunpowder formulas are found in Wu jing zong yao (Essentials of Military Classics), edited in 1044 by Zeng Guangliang. The first true gun appeared about 1260. Many theories have been proposed as to how the rocket appeared. One is that the discovery was made when a Chinese soldier modified an ordinary incendiary "fire arrow."

For certain, Chinese chronicles contain numerous accounts of gunpowder weapons from the late Song dynasty, though it is often unclear whether they refer to rockets. The most famous examples are the flying fire arrows, or more correctly, flying fire spears, used by the Chinese against the Mongols in the siege of Kaifeng in 1232. Some authorities believe the devices were no more than thrown "flying fire" spears, or perhaps handheld lances that merely shot fire into the air; others contend they were true self-propelled rockets.

The term huo chien (fire arrow) at first meant simply an incendiary arrow but later came to mean rocket. The earliest known depictions of Chinese rockets, in the Wu bei zhi (Treatise on Armament Technology, c. 1628) of Mao Yuanyi, show many variations of arrows with rocket tubes attached, which were therefore true rocket arrows. This may be strongest evidence that Chinese rockets evolved from ordinary incendiary arrows.

Ironically, the clearest early Chinese reference to a rocket device involves fireworks. In 1264, according to Qi dong ye yu (Rustic Talks in Eastern Qi, c. 1290) by Zhou Mi, a fireworks display was held in the courtyard of the royal palace. One firework, called a "ground rat," went up the steps of the throne of the empress mother and frightened her. It was thus self-propelled, that is, it was a rocket.

However the rocket appeared, it spread to Arabia by the late 1200s, and apparently from there into Europe, probably to northern Italy first, via maritime trade routes. By the fourteenth century, the first guns appeared in Europe. The spread of gunpowder and the rocket throughout the rest of Asia is less well known. The first rockets in Korea appeared in 1377 and may have been directly introduced from China.

One possible way to establish the spread of rocketry in Asia is by tracing the origins of allegedly centuries-old Asian rocket festivals. Northeast Thailand holds the annual Boun Bang Fai festival in which giant, decorated gunpowder rockets with bamboo guide sticks are fired by different villages to please the rain gods and ensure a good rice harvest. Neighboring Laos celebrates the identical animistic and Buddhist festival. A very similar practice is found in the remote Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous District in Yunnan Prefecture, adjacent to both northeast Thailand and Laos. In Myanmar (Burma), there is the Pa-O Rocket Festival of the Pa-O minority group in the Shan states.

Closer examination shows a definite link between festivals in Thailand, Laos, Yunnan, China, and Burma, whose practitioners are all of the same Tai cultural stock. The actual histories of the festivals are unknown, but one theory advanced is that basic gunpowder and rocket technology started in China, in the eastern, more advanced area of the country, probably in the Song-dynasty capital of Hangzhou.

From this region, knowledge of gunpowder and the rocket probably spread via Chinese maritime trade missions to India in the early fifteenth century CE. In India, gunpowder, fireworks, and especially the rocket became well developed; Indian war rockets were used for centuries. From India, the technology may have spread first to neighboring Burma and from there to Thailand (Siam), Laos, and back again to China, to the more rural agricultural area of Yunnan.

In Japan, in several prefectures near Tokyo, annual Ryusei (Ascending Dragon) rocket festivals celebrate good harvests. However, the origin of the rocket festivals in Japan is more problematic. Undoubtedly knowledge of the rockets was imported at an unknown date to Japan and the festival was adapted to local culture. The Japanese had a seventeenth-century colony in Siam that conducted trade in gunpowder between the two countries, but no records have been found mentioning rockets.

Japan was introduced to gunpowder and guns in 1543 by the Portuguese. Fireworks were introduced in 1600, whereas one historian, without verification, claims that Japan imported "rocket arrows" from China about 1595.

More research needs to be done to expand the picture of the overall development and spread of gunpowder in Asia. Information coming out of the rocket festivals presently held in Thailand, Laos, China, Myanmar, and Japan may be a key to determining the origin and spread of the earliest rockets through Asia and elsewhere.

Crozier, Ronald D. (1998) Guns, Gunpowder, and Saltpeter: A Short History. Faversham, U.K.: Faversham Society.

Needham, Joseph. (1986) Science and Civilisation in China. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Partington, J. R. (1999) A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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