I'm building a Chronology of Chinese Siege Warfare - ca. 500 B.C. to A.D. 1911, a suppliment to my Chronology of Chinese History and Culture - ca. 7000 B.C. to A.D. 2005.

Hopefully I'll be finished with the basic outline and draft by the end of this year. I'm researching the start (ie. when they were invented or introduced into China), the evolution (eg. traction treb to counterweight treb etc.) as well as records of significant use of these weapons.

I'm trying for two sections, offensive and defensive but will for the moment only concentrate on projectile offensive weaponry (non-gunpowder). What I want to do is to increase the depth of what is available. Most text and whatelse you find out there only describe in broad details the types and uses of the weapons, merely skimming the surface of what is a huge body of knowledge in the fields of mechanics, engineering, strategy and tactics.

Also included will be the influences of Chinese siege weaponry to the surrounding cultures as well as the influences of siege weaponry from the surrounding cultures into Chinese culture and warfare.

I believe this is a vastly unexplored field of study though I've only just scratched the surface. Much still needs to be researched unlike Roman/European siege warfare which has probably been researched ad nauseum.

What eludes us tends to be obscure texts and references to what must have been an entire science on it's own in ancient chinese history.

Here's the temporary page until I get a permanent domain for it.

http://authors.history-forum.com/liang_jie...esesiegewarfare

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CATAPULT

By Liang Jieming
19th June 2005


Introduction

Of the world's great civilisations, only four saw the use of great siege catapults in their wars. These horrific weapons of war were the artillery of the day. The history of the catapult is both a colourful patchwork of different inventive sources as well as a combined effort of human ingenuity on a global scale. Chinese, Middle Eastern, Western and Hindu civilisations all fought against and amongst each other, employing every manner of siege engines from the lowly anti-personnel catapults to the huge medieval fortress smashers which have captured the popular imagination of today.

The word "Catapult" comes from the Greek words "kata" and "pultos" where "Kata" means downward and "Pultos" is a small circular shield. So put together, Katapultos probably means "shield crusher" or "shield piercer".

The word "Trebuchet" comes from the Old French word "Trabucher, meaning "to overturn" or "to fall-over", believed to be derived from the Latin "trabuc(h)us".

While the "Catapult" is generally used to mean anything that "catapults" a weight into the air and hence includes slings and rubberbands etc., the "Trebuchet" is used almost exclusively to mean the levered catapult as the lever swings or rather falls over to launch the projectile.

The First Catapults

Catapults have been in used by the various cultures throughout history. One very early reference to catapults comes to us from Part 2 of the Book of Chronicles (Chapter 26, verses 14 & 15) in the old testament of the Bible, during the reign of Uzziah of Judea in the late 9th century B.C. in the defence of Jerusalem.

"Uzziah provided for all the army the shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows and stones for slinging. In Jerusalem he set up machines, invented by skilled workers, on the towers and the corners for shooting arrows and large stones. And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped until he became strong."

It is not immediately clear what form these "machines... for shooting arrows and large stones" were but from the distinction the passage makes between these machines and the "bows and stones for slinging" provided to the army, it does seem that they were siege engines of some sort.

We do however know that the forerunner of the giant catapults of the Medieval era, simple traction catapults based on the lever principle were already in use during the Warring States period in China in the 5th century B.C. Their description appears in the writings of Mozi, in a Mohist text under a section on Siege Warfare.

A story survives from about 500 B.C. in China. The counterbalanced bucket was common by then. ZiGong (520-456 B.C.) was wandering the south of the country when he chanced on an old man who wasn't using a counterbalanced bucket to raise water to water his fields. The elderly man refused to use it as he hauled a pail back and forth, watering his garden. He complained about the counterbalanced bucket. It was a cunning device, he said, and people who use cunning devices have cunning in their hearts. Maybe he had a point. The Chinese soon made this work-saver into a savage war machine.

Also appearing alongside the traction catapult in the Mozi, were detailed descriptions of siege crossbows. These are the first known references to siege crossbows or acruballistas in the Far East. We know that this technology was soon in widespread use, right up till the start of the Han dynasty where references to acruballistas all but disappear from Imperial records only to reappear again in the chaos of the Three Kingdoms Period.

Across to the other side of the Eurasian landmass, in Classical Greece we find that in 399 B.C. in preparation for war with Carthage, Dionysius of Syracuse gathered craftsmen from all over the Greek world to produce new or improved armaments for him. One result of these efforts was the Gastraphetes or "belly bow" powered by an especially large composite bow. This soon spawned a different principled catapult based on the power of torsion sinews, the earliest descriptions of which are found in Athens dating back to 330 B.C. from the Chalkothek on the Acropolis. Two distinct types of catapults emerged, the javelin shooting Euthytonon, and the stone throwing Palintonon.

An interesting multiple shot Ballista crops up in the 3rd century B.C. by Dionysius of Alexandria together with the Engineers working in Rhodes famous for their siege engines. There is no evidence that this machine ever went beyond the prototype stage probably due to its complexity and low power.

An account of yet another interesting catapult is found in a manuscript by Cicero who describes a steam powered concept catapult by Archimedes. This catapult was never built but Leonardo da Vinci produced drawings of this steam catapult, calling it the "Architronio" in honour of its inventor.

The Romans inherited the Greek torsion weapons of war. The Roman catapult artillery split into two distinct types, the Ballista or its smaller version, the Scopio and the Mangonel. These were not lever principled catapults but instead used the power of twisted or torsioned sinew, technology inherited from the Greeks. Building on this inherited technology, the Romans in the 1st century A.D. simplified and tilted the Greek Ballista on its side and built a one arm torsion catapult called the Mangonel, nicknamed Onager or "Kicking Donkey". This was aptly named due to the way the catapult jumped when fired though some have suggested that it could have been a codename to trick the enemies of Rome.

The name Mangonel is probably derived from the ancient Greek word "Mangonon" meaning "Engine of War". The Romans called it a Manganum which was changed by the pre-medieval French to Manganeau and subsequently by the English in about the 1300s to the term Mangonel that we know today. However, in Spain, they were commonly called almanganiqs or almajenechs from the Arabic term.

The Roman Ballista and the Mangonel were used well into the medieval era in Europe when they were superceded by first the eastern traction catapult, then the Persian counterweight trebuchet where they took root and helped hasten the end of the feudal era in Europe.

The Qin dynasty of the 3rd century B.C. China fielded wheeled versions of the early traction trebuchet. This possibly implies that wheeled versions might have been used at least in the later stage of the Warring States period too. Unfortunately other than the singular reference in the Mohist text, descriptions of early Chinese catapults are scarce and when available, rather vague on things like the form of the support frame, height, number of operators etc. References to siege crossbows and catapults seemingly vanish for the next few hundred years in the subsequent Han dynasty. This could possibly be a reflection of the times. The Han dynasty inherited a unified China from the Qin. Unlike the Warring States and the victorious Qin dynasty which emerged from that period, the Han no longer faced fortified cities and fortresses. Instead, Han dynasty warfare is characterised by the projection of Han power along its borders with large mobile armies of crossbow squads, cavalry and garrison troops very similar to the incursions of the early United States army into the wilderness frontier of western North America.

An intriguing reference appears in A.D. 240. Ma Jun, a military Engineer of the Three Kingdoms Period, somewhat dissatisfied with the single shot catapult, proposed a multiple shot catapult based on a flywheel/ferris-wheel type construction. This strange catapult through theoretically possible would probably have been practically unfeasible for its time, and probably never went beyond the trial stage.

References to the "Xuanfeng" or Whirlwind catapult first arose in the Age of Fragmentation. This simple catapult was the direct descendant of the Mohist catapults of the Spring & Autumn/Warring States periods. For the next thousand years, the Xuanfeng was the mainstay of the Chinese artillery, the super-weapon that aided the expansion of Chinese dynasties at the expense of their neighbours. However, sometime in the middle of the Tang dynasty, the need must have arose for larger scaled catapults as is evidenced in the sudden appearance of references and illustrations of the HuDunPao and the "4-footed" trebuchet in military manuals and writings. This was possibly a consequence of the increasing incidence and significance of enemy fortified cities in the north, from the open nomadic steppes to the mountainous Korean peninsula.

During the Tang dynasty's founding years, in its siege of the Sui capital in A.D. 617, 300 catapults were said to have been deployed by the Engineer-General Tian Maoguang. Then again in a Tang dynasty siege of Pyongyang in A.D. 668 during the last year of the campaign against Koguryo, it is written that XuanFeng catapults were used to bring the city to its knees.

The Chinese developed a whole series of catapults. They ranged from the light "sniper" version "Xuanfeng (Whirlwind) catapults to medium range HuDun (Crouching Tiger) catapults to heavy "4-footed" catapults and open framed hinged counterweight trebuchets not unlike the European versions, which were capable of hurling a whole range of rather inventive projectiles. Anything from simple boulders, rocks, diseased animals, human heads, shrapnel clay balls, to exploding grenades would be thrown.

Chinese arcuballistas also grew in complexity from the simple single bow of the Warring States to multibow affairs. These employed multiple bows to scale up the power of the acruballista. No one is sure when the transition to multiple bows was made but by about the 5th century A.D., multibow acruballistas began to make an appearance though only coming into widespread use from the 8th to 11th centuries A.D. Known generically as Chuangzi Nu or "Little Bed Crossbows" for the bed-like frame used, two distinct forms can be discerned. They were the Shoushe Nu or "Hand Shot" double-bow Acruballista and the SanGong Chuangzi Nu or "Triple-bow Little Bed" Acruballista.

The Spread of Catapult Technology

The Chinese Xuanfeng, spread into the Middle East in and about the 6th century A.D. and may have been responsible in part for the sudden explosion of Islamic conquests outwards in a expanding circle for the next few centuries. In an excerpt from "Medieval Siege Weapons (2) - Byzantium, the Islamic World & India A.D. 476-1526 (New Vanguard 69)", David Nicolle talks about light Middle Eastern traction catapults and gives us a glimpse into the effectiveness of the light traction catapult as well as a very good description of how they would have been used and fired.

"Nicknames such as 'The Bride' and 'The Long Haired One' reflect the numerous pulling ropes attached to the other end of the beam. Accounts of a siege of Mecca during a civil war in 692 include a description of how such a manjaniq was used. Here the 'shooter' tucked up his long robes, picked up a rock, placed it in the sling and then ordered the team of rope-men to pull. Later information indicates that the 'shooter' did not release his hold on the sling immediately but judged his moment against the tension of the 'pullers'. As a result an experienced 'shooter' with a disciplined team of 'pullers' could achieve astonishing accuracy especially when, as we know from written and archaeological evidence, the missiles were shaped to a specific weight. Al-Baladhuri's account of the Arab siege of Daybul in what is now southern Pakistan in 712 describes how the Muslim commander, Muhammad Ibn al-Qasim, had a manjaniq called 'The Bride', which was operated by 500 men - probably an exaggeration. As al-Baladhuri wrote: 'There was at Daybul a lofty budd (temple or perhaps even a statue of the Buddha) surmounted by a long pole and on this pole was a red flag which unfurled over the city.' During the course of regular correspondence between Ibn al-Qasim and Hajjaj Ibn Yusuf, commander of Islamic forces in the east, Hajjaj advised that Ibn al-Qasim should:

Fix the manjaniq and shorten its foot and place it in the east (of the budd). You will then call the manjaniq-master and tell him to aim at the flag-staff… So he brought down the flag-staff and it was broken.

This remarkable shot so demoralised the garrison that the city soon fell. Numerous other mentions of the manjaniq in Islamic sources of the 7th-11th centuries show that the weapon was used against defenders on a wall, parapets, buildings inside a fortification and against ships attempting to break a blockade."

The first mention of traction catapults in Europe comes from Byzantium. In A.D. 587 the Avars, with the help of traction catapults, besieged and took the fortress of Appiareia in what is now northern Bulgaria. The Byzantine historian Theophylactus Simocatta wrote that the Avar learned about siege engines from a captured Byzantine soldier by the name of Bousas;

"Bousas taught the Avars to construct a certain siege machine, for they (the Avars) happened to be most ignorant of such machines, and he built the helepolis to hurl missiles. Soon thereafter the fortress was leveled, and Bousas collected judgment for their inhumanity, having taught the barbarians something frightful, the technology of besieging. Thence the enemy captured effortlessly a great many of the Roman cities by making use of this original device."

Bousas said that in exchange for his life, he constructed for the Avars a siege engine called a "Helepoleis" or "City Taker" (a heavy trestle-framed traction catapult).

We then find that ten years later, John the Archbishop of the Byzantine city of Thessaloniki in A.D. 597, describes the siege of Thessaloniki by Avaro-Slavic forces with fifty large traction trebuchets that hurled "great stones". In his account, he calls the big traction trebuchets "petroboles" or "rock throwers" and the smaller machines "lithoboles" or "stone throwers".

However, it is also possible that the Avars, due to their interactions with the Northern Wei of China, already know of traction catapults independently from Byzantium. David Nicolle in his book "Attila and the Nomad Hordes" published by Osprey states that the Byzantines copied new versions of "beam-sling mangonel siege machines" from the Avars who were driven from the northern frontiers of China only a few decades earier.

Due to a distinct lack of mention of traction catapults prior to this written account by Theophylactus, of the two scenarios, the diffusion of levered principle catapult technology is actually more probable to have been from the Avars to Byzantium than the other way around.

In the mixing pot of the Middle East, the Xuanfeng had joined a distinguished line-up of Middle Eastern Mangonels and Ballistas, adopted after the fall of the Roman empire via Byzantium. There, knowledge of Roman siege technology was kept alive throughout the European "Dark Ages" which except for a few notable exceptions, was an era dominated by strict religious fundamentalist dogma. The widespread reintroduction of these lost arts of making siege engines was to come only later when Christian Crusaders began marching into the Middle East to reclaim the "Holy Land" that was Jerusalem. Feverishly copying Islamic texts and ideas, the knowledge they brought back to Europe revitalised the European world, seeding the way for the blossoming of new ideas and innovation not just in the field of siegecraft.

Early painting/drawings of European catapults look uncannily similar to the Tang dynasty "XuanFeng" catapult as can been seen in a sketch in the "Chronicle of Petrus de Eboli ca. A.D. 1180". The earliest known depiction however, of a European traction catapult is a wall painting from the palace of Piandjikent, Transoxania. (Hermitage Museum, Leningrad) and is from the 7th-8th centuries A.D.

In the 11th century A.D. a new form of javelin firing catapult, the "torsioned" Springald emerged in the Middle East and in Byzantine. Known by the Arabs as the "qaws al-lawlab", we find that the Portuguese used just such as machine in A.D. 1184, killing Muwahid Caliph Abu Yaqub in defense of the town of Santarem. Its compact cart-like frame made it ideal as a defensive weapon on top of fortifications. A simplification of the Roman Ballista, the "torsioned" Springald spread into Iberia by the mid-13th century A.D when references to the "Ballista de torno" appear.

A separate and larger type of catapult, the single armed "tensioned" Springald also appears at about the same time. This catapult was probably an indigenous European invention, a retrograde and primitive form of catapult based on the flexure of a wooden plank to propel a javelin forward. We find few references to the "tensioned" Springald in continental Europe with most references to be found on the British Isles. Not much is know about this form of catapult but it seems to have been confined to a purely defensive role, firing through defensive slits on top of battlements much like that of the "torsioned" Springald.

These two forms of Springalds flourished briefly side by side with the increasingly powerful levered principled catapults, probably filling the function as a close ranged support weapon.

Strangely enough, despite the constant exchange of ideas and trade between the Japanese islands and that of mainland Asia, catapults never took root in Japanese warfare. Japanese warfare remained relatively small scaled and castles were breached more often than not via direct infantry assaults with scaling ladders and siege towers or from internal subterfuge than from the use of catapults. What we know of Japanese offensive siege weaponry seems to have been based on the Oyumi which was a large siege crossbow, possibly of indigenous design. However, no illustrations or complete descriptions of the Oyumi have survived and we can only guess at the type and form of this mysterious weapon. Japanese warfare remained low-leveled reminiscent of Chinese Warring States warfare of the 5th-3rd century B.C. until the introduction of cannon from both Spanish and Portuguese warships in the 16th century A.D.

In India, there is very little known about siege weaponry in Indian warfare though it would not be inconceivable to think that the fortresses and elephant armies of Indian dynasties employed some type of siege weapons in their wars. Much of what is available come from Muslim sources and are almost unanimous in their assertion that the Islamic invasions of the 8th centuries onwards saw the first introduction of catapults into the Indian subcontinent.

A source from the History of Pakistan states;

"Islam was first brought in by Arabs in early eight century. At that time, the religion itself was only about a century old. In 711 AD Mohammad Bin Qasam, a brilliant 19 year-old Arab general from Basra (Iraq) marched into Pakistan by way of Persia and Balochistan with the army of 60,000 men. He employed a method of warfare never before seen in the subcontinent - large carriage-drawn catapults capable of hurling heavy stones and missiles across the distances of about 200 yards. He marched all the way to Nerun (Hyderabad) where he engaged Raja Dahir, the local Hindu ruler and his massive army of 20,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Mohammad Bin Qasim defeated Raja Dahir with contemptuous ease."

There is however a reference which disputes this claim. King Ajátasattu (493 - 462 B.C.) of the Magadhan empire, in a battle ca. 478 B.C. against the republican states of the Lichchhavis used a type of catapult called the Mahaashilaakantaka. Jain texts describe its use together with a covered "tank" chariot which helped the King win his war. However, the type or form of this catapult are as yet undetermined or researched. Catapults in India suffer from a scarcity of information.

The Evolution of Catapults

The Ayyûbid Sultanate (A.D. 1169-1250), Kurds who rose to power in the area around Mosul are believed to have been the first to adapt the traction catapult and invent the hinged counterweight catapult, though hybrid weighted traction trebuchets were already in sporadic use throughout Europe and the Middle east by then. It was these hinged counterweight catapults from Islamic world that spread into Europe and into China. The Chinese name for hinged counterweight catapults translates loosely to something like "Muslim catapult" owing to the Muslim Engineers the Mongols brought with them to China on their campaigns.

Saladin in A.D. 1187 in his siege of Jerusalem against European Crusaders, saw the first pictorial documented use of hinged counterweight Catapults in history in al-Tarsusi's treatise written in A.D. 1199 in Alexandria for Saladin which even then, already alluded to the fact that these were not new inventions.

Tantalising accounts of intermediate fixed counterweight catapults however, had already appeared in and about the turn of the 12th century. Paul Chevedden writes in "The Invention of the Counterweight Trebuchet" that based on the nomenclature of period accounts, the possibility exists that Byzantine Engineers were already experimenting and building fixed counterweight catapults as early as the siege of Tyre by Frankish Crusaders in A.D. 1124. Earlier still is a possible "first" emergence of this technological advancement in Nicaea in A.D. 1097 when Emperor Alexios I was engaged in the development of large trebuchets, Helepoleis of several types;

"and most of them were not fashioned according to conventional designs for such machines but followed ideas which he had devised himself and which amazed everyone."

There is one more tantalising mention of a possible candidate for a counterweighted trebuchet in Europe in the 12th century A.D. but the descriptions remain controversial and obscure. The Danish historian Saxo writes that King Erik Emune used trebuchets at the siege of Haraldsborg near Roskilde in A.D. 1131. The Danes who at the time had little knowledge of siege warfare used Saxons to build and handle the engines. That it was a catapult is not in dispute. The controversy is in the range of the trebuchet mentioned. In Saxo's account, the range of the machine is given at 200m which is beyond the range of even the largest traction trebuchets though it could still only have been a weighted traction trebuchet instead of a true counterweighted trebuchet.

What we do know conclusively however, is that the first documented use of hinge counterweighted trebuchets in Song dynasty China was in A.D. 1273 during the Mongol siege of Xiangyang. The Song dynasty quickly adapted their existing traction catapults into similar hinged counterweight trebuchets but couldn't counter the new Mongol terror weapon from the middle east.

The 12th-13th century A.D. was a period of rapid catapult development in the Far East. The catalyst for this sudden surge in new catapult forms was the Mongol invasions and the incorporation of the relatively new technology of hinged counterweight trebuchets into the Mongol war machine. The desperate defenders of the Song dynasty were quick to learn the new techniques. Many new forms and hybrid forms emerged, adaptations of existing Song dynasty traction catapults to incorporate buckets and stone weighted bags by beleaguered Chinese Engineers. Despite the Song dynasty's rapid absorption of the new catapult ideas, it was too little too late. The Song dynasty crumbled not long after, a mere 6 years after the first introduction of the new terror hinged counterweight catapults into the battlefield at the siege of the twin cities of Xiangyang and Fangyang.

In A.D. 1232 however, an earlier story survives from the Jin Dynasty of a possible independent development of the counterweight catapult. The Jin commander Qiang Shen, in his defense of Luoyang from the Mongols,

"invented a trebuchet called the 'Arresting Trebuchet' (E Pao), which was used to prevent (the enemy) from overrunning (his position). Only a few men were needed to work it, yet (with this engine) great stones could be hurled more than 100 paces, and there was no target which it did not hit right in the middle."

Although the Mongol army eventually raised the siege, this inventive commander died in the following year, followed by the Jin Dynasty two years later, so apparently the design was not transmitted southward to the beleaguered Song dynasty.

No one has been able to find the first documented instance of when hinged counterweight trebuchets were first introduced into Europe but it is generally agreed that the earliest documented descriptions of hinged counterweight catapults in Europe was the siege of Dover Castle in England by the French under Prince Louis who landed a French Army at Thanet in support of the rebel barons against King John in A.D. 1216.

End of an Era

In China, the hinged counterweight trebuchet, despite its power didn't last as long as in Europe because of the early rise of gunpowder weapons. During the abovementioned siege of Xiangyang by the Mongols, the hinged counterweight trebuchet was already sharing the limelight with Song dynasty rockets and early versions of the gun. In Europe, the hinged counterweight had its heyday owing to the longer lag between the earlier introduction of the hinged counterweight to Europe and the later introduction of gunpowder based cannon to Europe compared to that of the far east.

However, even in Europe, the pole position of the Catapult couldn't last. The arrival of efficient gunpowder weapons herald the end of the catapult's dominance in the battlefield, bringing to a close an interesting chapter in the annals of human warfare. Large and cumbersome, the great siege catapults of yesteryear soon gave way to the technologically superior weapons of the gunpowder age.

Nevertheless, the image of the catapult persists even till today. The siege engine continues to seize the popular imagination and never fails to bring out a sense of awe and astonishment, appearing periodically in the mass media of the day, in films, in print and in catapult re-constructions by “Medieval” clubs of catapult enthusiasts the world over.

Copyright 2005 Leong Kit Meng
All rights Reserved

well researched well done

Thank you. It's a work-in-progress so I'm still adding info to the article.

Added a new portion on possible Byzantium counterweight trebuchets as early as th late 11th century based on the works of Paul Chevedden.

The 旋風 (xuán fēng) "Whirlwind" Traction Catapult



The Xuanfeng or "Whirlwind" is a basic traction catapult, and a direct descendant of the first Mohist traction catapults of the 5th century B.C. The throwing power in a Xuanfeng comes from a team of people pulling downwards on ropes tied to the short arm of the throwing arm. The power of this catapult is only limited by the number of pullers up to a maximum limit of space available below the lever arm. Like all traction catapults, it could fire projectiles with great variation in range simply by changing the number of pullers. It's high rate of fire was also an advantage in the Xuanfeng since the lowering of the throwing arm for firing was a simple matter of the pullers releasing their ropes.

This catapult was generally used like the sniper version of a rifle. It wasn't the power of the punch that mattered but the accuracy of the shot. The Xuanfeng, due to it's lack of power, wasn't deployed to knock down walls. Instead, it's main functions were to take out specific soft targets with it's ability to swivel 360 degrees. With a team of pullers and pulling downwards on ropes tied to the short arm of the throwing arm, a "shooter" would guid the catapult by pulling and aiming the catapult on the projectile side, adjusting the angles before release for optimum shot and accuracy. This resulted in incredible accuracy, and this "light" catapult was used to snipe at other catapults or enemy generals with its arsenal of porcelain/clay shrapnel balls and other inventive projectiles.

Unlike European catapults, the Chinese anchored their catapults by sinking the legs in a few feet or so into the ground, so many illustrations of the Xuanfeng are shown with a very small based. A typical Xuanfeng stood anywhere from twice a person's height to about 3 times a person's height. Because of it's small size, it was easy to transport when broken down into its various components, and to setup wherever it was required.

There are basically general 4 variants of the Xuanfeng.

1.
The basic Xuanfeng did not have a 4 leg base but instead only had 2 legs sunk into the ground for stability. These must have been very, very light catapults for throwing small rocks, "shrapnel" balls, gunpowder explosives, human heads etc.
2.
There were also Xuanfeng batteries which were made up of a whole row of Xuanfeng catapults all mounted in a row on a single simple base and like the basic variant, the whole mount was also made to swivel 360 degrees, allowing for a lot of flexibility in usage. The Xuanfeng batteries were probably used in battle to mass fire projectiles at the same time and in the same direction to create fire saturation over a given enemy position. This multiple catapult was also conceivably used to create a continuous rate of covering fire during a battle to keep the enemy from returning fire.
3.
The slightly heavier variant of the Xuanfeng was mounted on a more stable 4 leg base frame with lateral crossbracing. This heavy Xuanfeng still maintained it's 360 degree field of fire while allowing for the firing of slightly heavier projectiles.
4.
The Xuanfeng was also sometimes mounted on a mobile wheeled platform. These could be towed out anywhere they were needed with the actual catapult throw-arm and central post slotted in on-site when needed. The mounted Xuanfeng catapults tend to be medium sized catapults, overlapping in power and range with that of the medium range HuDunPao or "Crouching Tiger" Catapult. The development of catapults with such mobility which did away with the traditional sunken leg base might have been a consequence of increasingly accurate counter-battery fire.

When firing projectiles, the design of the Xuanfeng was such that the throwing arm impacted against the frame of the central post at the point of release. This results in a "early" release short of the vertical as well as a slight whipping effect on the bundled bamboo which was the common material used to make the throw arms. Releasing projectiles short of the vertical creates a high trajectory for the projectile, maximising the range achievable which can be seen mirrored in the typical types of projectiles used by this catapult. By the time of the Song dynasty in the 10th to 13th centuries, the Xuanfeng's were firing explosive grenades as well as molten cast-iron pots which created large area damage to troops and equipment alike, on top of the usual stones, shrapnel balls, human heads and diseased meat the earlier dynasties employed.

The heyday of the Xuanfeng must arguably be said to have been during the Tang dynasty. Accounts of the success of this catapult is recounted in various Tang dynasty siege accounts. During the Tang dynasty's founding years, in its siege of the Sui capital in A.D. 617, 300 catapults were said to have been deployed by the Engineer-General Tian Maoguang. Then again in a Tang dynasty siege of Pyongyang in A.D. 668 during the last year of the campaign against Koguryo, it is written again that "XuanFeng" catapults were used to bring the city to its knees. Bombardment of such a massive scale would have been devastating to a beleaguered city. However, the Xuanfeng by the time of the Song dynasty was already becoming obsolete. The rise of both, massive Mongol hinged counterweighted trebuchets and early Song dynasty gunpowder weapons sealed the fate of this "little" catapult.

The wealth of illustrations and persistence of the Xuanfeng in over 1000 years of Chinese records is a testament to the simplicity and effectiveness of this light catapult.

Copyright 2005 Leong Kit Meng All rights Reserved

I think there is no evidence yet for the use of cannons in the early Song. But great article in every other respect!

Thanks Yun. Amended it to "gunpowder weapons" instead of cannon.

Ok, added in new sections on al-Tarsusi's treatise, more development background for Chinese catapults, the derivation of the term Mangonel, catapults in Japanese warfare, additional info on the Avar and Byzantine era introduction of the traction catapult into Europe and an introduction to the "A Brief History of the Catapult".

Did a complete overhaul of the pages I had and arranged them a little more systematically. Added sections based on my model reconstructions and a few new write-ups.

Here's the temporary page until I get a permanent domain for it.

http://authors.history-forum.com/liang_jie...esesiegewarfare

A question for Liang JieMing,
About the Traction Catapults, you say the power for that comes from a team of operators pulling downward on the short arm of the catapult. I don't know much about seige weapons, but it seems unlikely that a team pulling on ropes could generate the power to rotate the arm quick enough throw the stone. Please clarify....

Also, in your articles, you made no mention of Roman torsion catapults. Where these developed independently in Europe? Why was that technology never transferred? Which type is better (more power), the torsion type catapults such as Mangonels Roman Onager or Bow Powered Mangonels? Based only on visual observation it appears that torsion powered or bow powered siege weapons require more effort to construct.

Large Trebuchet
Onager
Bow Powered Mangonel
All Images taken from www.mangonel.com

Traction catapults were powered by teams of pullers. They were very efficient machines and theoretically could reach the breaking limit of the throw arm. But the drawback to the traction catapult is the logistics of fitting large numbers of people underneath the catapult and coordinating the pulling at the exact same moment.

The Persians solved this problem by introducing the counterweight to the catapult. This did away with the group of people pulling and the power of the catapult was only limited to the weight you can hang at the end of the throw arm. The draw back to the counterweight (or the next evolution in catapults, the hinged counterweight catapult) was that reloading became very slow because you needed to pull the arm back down against the weight of the counterweight to reload. The rate of fire was very, very poor but each shot was very, very powerful. There is one European account, that talks about a siege during the Crusades where the catapult they used was only capable of firing 3-4 shots a day due to the slow reload.

It is possible for a group of pullers to rotate a catapult's arms faster than that of a counterweight. The acceleration of an object in free fall (and the counterweight was hardly in free fall due to friction in the axle) is 9.81 metres per second squared. People are certainly capable of pulling with much greater accelerations than that. It's all a matter of placing enough people pulling underneath the catapult.

The picture you have above is not a traction catapult, but a hinged counterweight catapult. This was the granddaddy of catapults, the largest and most powerful history has ever seen.

Torsion catapults only arose first in Greece in the 4th century B.C. These early catapults were rock or javelin ballistas which were adopted by the Romans. The Romans simplified the ballista and invented the mangonel or onager. These torsion weapons were fairly complex machines but inferior to the much simplier lever principled catapults in terms of maximum theoretical range and power. The typical ranges for a Roman ballista was only about 200-400m while a far eastern multiple bow acruballista reached ranges of 300-600 effective ranges. The Mangonel was even worse, with ranges not much beyond the 50-150m while the hinged counterweighted catapult could reach ranges of 300-400m and with much heavier projectiles.

The far east never developed torsion based catapults. Instead, Roman torsion catapults were gradually replaced by the eastern lever principled catapults although some versions of the torsion catapult such as the springald survived into the middle ages as short range defensive weapons. The sinew (and later hair) used in the making of torsioned catapults were it's greatest limitation. The degraded very quickly with age and if left tensioned for long periods, would creep and slowly lengthen, hencing losing it's spring, needing to be tightened again and again. They were also unusable when wet which was why Europeans hardly used catapults on their ships, at least in great numbers.

Bow powered catapults are rare in history. The only persistent references come from Greek or Japanese sources. the Greeks and possibly the Romans did employ bow powered catapults but the torsioned catapults were so much more efficient and easier to construct. In Japan, there are theoretical reconstructions of possible bow powered catapults based on the Japanese Oyumi siege crossbow but no illustrations or complete descriptions have survived to the present day and whatever picture you find today are all reconstructions based in large part on guesswork. Again, bows have an inherent weakness in the bow string. Like the torsioned sinew or hair, it can creep and degrade rapidly is not cared for. Even archers only string their bows just prior to a battle. A bow kept stung constantly is useless after awhile.

Levered principle catapult didn't suffer from these drawbacks. They were simple to construct, operate and very efficient.

Great site, great posts and AWESOME MODELS!!!

Did you build all that yourself?

You should pit the machines against one another and try to bring down a wall.

Hi Naruwan, thanks for the encouragement. Yes, all the models on the site are mine. The next one is the English (tension) springald.

Hey guys, I'm pretty excited with this latest update to the article. It's the earliest reference to catapults I've ever come across, and I'm quite surprised that no one's ever mentioned it before, with Syracuse or Mozi being the main contenders for the "first". I've rewritten the first parts to include this obscure passage from Part 2 of the Book of Chronicles of the Old Testament of the Bible during the reign of King Uzziah.

Hey Liang, have you ever thought of mass producing these siege weapon kits for sale??

^^^

That's actually a great idea. If you ever get to building that Hwacha, I'd buy a kit.

Yes I have. My plan is to first publish a website, followed by a coffee table book on Chinese Siege Warfare. (Anyone want to help me do translations and market to China?)

Then later, I'll take all my sketches and exploded views of my models to a toy maker specialising in wooden-cutout models to see if they would be interested. Don't have a timeline on this yet though... unless one of you here is actually the GM of Tamiya or Revell and would like to reply me on this? hehehehe

But seriously, there are already companies out there who produce model kits of siege weapons like the Ballista, Mangonel or the Trebuchet especially. You could buy those, but no Far Eastern models though.

Hey Liang JieMing, Going back to the subject of Elastic powered Vs Lever Principled Catapults. Ok, I'll buy that the Elastic Powered Onager or Mangonel have its limitations due to degradation of the Skeins, But just from looking at the Large Hinged Counterweight Catapult (or Trebuchet is the equivalent I believe) that machine looks impressive, and seems to be the next step in the evolution from manpowered to Counterweight power, of a Lever Principled Catapult.

And yes, I do see how the Trebuchet can take an immense amount of effort to reload, but did that technology ever traveled to the Far East? Thanks.

Oh, and BTW, there are sites selling European Style catapults, one is www.mangonel.com

Edit: I've just read thru most of your chronology of Seige Weapons of ancient China, Ok you mentioned the Trebuchet was used for short period of time during Song Dynasty (I believe?) after the Mongols brought the Hui Hui Pao from the Muslims. I guess question answered there. Thanks...

Yeah, the entrance of the hinged counterweight treb into China is well documented. It was in the final year of the Mongol siege of Xiangyang in A.D. 1268-1273. When the Hui Hui Pao arrived, Xiangyang defenders gave up pretty quickly.

The HCW treb did see service in Chinese armies well into the early Ming dynasty. There are references to Ming generals declaring that they actually prefer using the HCW treb over the early Ming cannons.


Here are a few more.

http://www.catapultkits.com/
http://www.backyardartillery.com/ <--- check out the rubberband gattling gun! **** cool!

One thing I don't understand about the Greco/Roman ballista is that it seems to do just about the same thing as a Giant crossbow. Why go thru all that trouble with the Skeins construction, as well as the mechanisms of holding them together when a crossbow seems so much more simpler.

Also, Liang Jie Ming, in your Introduction to the Catapult you put the invention of the Greek Ballista at around 399 BCE, but in this site: http://www.mangonel.com/ballista/ they put the origin of Greek Ballista at about 800 BCE. Any ideas on the discrepancy?

To me it looks as both concepts have had their limitations. While the western torsion type suffered from the limited elasticity of its skeins, the eastern traction type made a easy target for itself with the intensive manpower it needed.

Moreover, although I am not an expert, I fail to see manpowered traction catapults having the same accuracy as the Roman ballista. Technically, the ballista is nothing but a giant version of the crossbow which had unsurpassed accuracy well into the gunpowder era, while the traction catapults were pulled by dozens of people.

Caesar himself writes in his 'De Bello Gallico' how deadly precise a Ballista can work when it took out several Gauls, one after another, who were defending a crucial point at the siege of Alesia.

Perhaps you may want to look up a bit of Assyrian history. They were the first in the Middle East to use siege engines on a large scale and a lot of their technology must have diffused to the classical Greeks.

There's a pet theory of mine I once discussed with Thomas Chen over coffee on why they Roman used the torsioned sinew ballista over a simple bow which they obviously knew about. I don't claim this to be the only reason or even one of the reasons but it does seem probable to me. The greatest deficiency of a crossbow is it's superior range. This might sound ridiculous until you try aiming a cross bow at a far object. Unlike a bow, when you elevate the bow to shoot, your view is not obstructed. The crossbow body obstructs your view when you elevate the crossbow to shoot further. This would be a serious problem when you want accuracy from your crossbow or siege ballista. The use of dual and separate bow arms in the torsioned sinew ballista creates a central gap which allows you to sight rather effectively. Of course this is not to say that the ballista body wouldn't block you at certain angles. But I suspect within the effective ranges of a typical ballista, this central gap was more than sufficient to sight along.

There is no references or evidence for the 800 B.C. date and I would discount until I find otherwise. The 399 B.C. on the other hand is well documented and is what is usually presented as the date of invention of the greek ballista.

You're not comparing apples with apples. The traction catapult was a weapon which fired rocks in an arc. A Ballista was a flat trajectory weapon which fired rocks/javelins in a straight (almost) line. If you must, compare the traction catapult with the Mangonel and the Ballista with the Chuangzi Nu. The Mangonel was notoriously inaccurate. The light versions of the traction catapult on the other hand were used as sniper weapons to take out individual people like enemy generals. If you've read my "A Brief History of the Catapult", you'll find a eye witness account from Arab sources on how, on the command of their commander, a light traction catapult team broke a flag pole flying high over an enemy city and so demoralised the garrison that they surrended. The large versions of the traction catapult employed as many as 200 people and you're right, they presented a tempting target for antibattery fire which was probably why far eastern armies fielded huge numbers in sieges numbering in the 100s (compared to the European armies where 10-20 was considered more the norm). These large numbers of catapults were used for fire saturation to completely overwhelm the enemy, including any possible counterbattery fire.

The Ballista was as accurate as the Chuangzi Nu but fails to compare in terms of effective or maximum ranges since there is an absolute upper limit to the amount of stress you can induce into torsioned sinew (and later torsioned hair which was actually a step backward mechanically but a step forward in terms of availability and ease of construction) before they snapped. The Chuangzi Nu similarly suffered from Bow fatigue and from needing a complicated and long construction process to recurve and glue composite materials together. The technological innovative idea in the Chuangzi Nu was that instead of just making bows larger and larger (and there is an upper limit on bow size so they soon became unfeasible), they doubled and then tripled the bows. Arguable, if gunpowder didn't superceed them, they might have come up with quadruple or pentadruple versions. They were only limited by the ability to draw the bowstring, such was the power of the Chuangzi Nu.

The ballista didn't survive into the gunpowder era. They were replaced by arabic "torsion springalds" which were simplifications of the ballista. These torsion springalds were simple boxes that look like tea-trolleys and were only an "improvement" only in terms of portability and construction. They still suffered from the handicap of using torsioned hair (not sinews as later european armies had problems manufacturing sinews). Europeans never adopted the multiple bow acruballista, instead created first the "one-armed tension springald" (not the "torsion springald") which were basic "arrow-slappers" and were really a step backward in siege machinery, then the steel singlebow acruballista. The traditional wooden (composite or non-composite) acruballista just couldn't be scaled up large enough. Steel solved the problem of size for the acruballista.



The Assyrians were around 1170-612 B.C. which was about the time of the event of Uzziah in the Book of Chronicles. However, the reference on the "machines... for shooting arrows and large stones" was written with an implication that it was a novel and imaginative idea unknown at the time. Certainly this account of late 9th century B.C. might have spread or maybe even been learnt from the Assyrians, but Assyrian siege technology as far as I can tell, did not include catapults which is why I have not focused on them at all. They had siege towers, battering rams and "tanks" but nothing beyond the handheld recurved bows of their archers for projectile weapons. No records exist of Assyrian catapults or even oblique references to "machines... for shooting arrows and large stones".

Later when I begin to move into non-projectile siege weaponry will I include in the Assyrians. As yet, I'm still finishing up the write-ups on projectile siege weapons like the catapult, acruballista/ballista and springald.

Ok, I just dated an uploaded more info on the chuangzi nu and the mohist acruballista due to all the confusion on the acruballista.

You're probably going to ask me for references and sources.

Here they are.

Have fun.

References

1. "Archery Traditions of Asia", Stephen Selby, 2003 Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defense

2. "Armies of the Ancient Near East: 3,000 B.C. to 539 B.C.", Nigel Stillman & Nigel Tallis, 1984 Wargames Research Group

3. "Attila and the Nomad Hordes", David Nicolle, 1990 Osprey Publishing

4. "Besieged: An Encyclopedia of Great Sieges From Ancient Times to the Present", Paul K. Davis, 2001 ABC-CLIO Inc

5. "Chinese Warfare - The Paradox of the Unlearned Lesson", Ralph D. Sawyer

6. Expansion of Islam & Military Campaign : http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Article..._al_khattab.htm

7. "Great Ages of Man - Ancient China", Edward H. Schafer, 1977 Time-Life International

8. "Heavenly Creations - Gems of Ancient Chinese Inventions", 1998 Hong Kong Museum of History

9. Jain Texts

10. "Medieval Siege Weapons (1) Western Europe AD 585-1385", David Nicolle, 2002 Osprey Publishing

11. "Medieval Siege Weapons (2) Byzantium, the Islamic World & India AD 476-1526", David Nicolle, 2003 Osprey Publishing

12. National Museum of Pakistan : http://www.caroun.com/Museums/Pakistan/Nat...ofPakistan.html

13. "Samurai", Mitsuo Kure, 2001 Tuttle Publishing

14. "Science and Civilisation in China", Volume 5, Part 6, Section 30, Joseph Needham & Robin D.S. Yates, 1994 Cambridge University Press

15. "Siege Weapons of the Far East (1)", Stephen Turnbull, 2001 Osprey Publishing

16. "Siege Weapons of the Far East (2)", Stephen Turnbull, 2002 Osprey Publishing

17. "Technology and War - From 2000 B.C. to the Present", Martin van Creveld, 1991 Free Pr

18. "The Complete Art of War", Sun Tzu & Sun Pin, translated by Ralph D. Sawyer, 1996 Westview

19. "The Genius of China: 3000 Years of Science, Discovery and Invention", Robert K. G Temple, 1986 Simon and Schuster

20. "The Genius That Was China", John Merson, 1990 The Overlook Press

21. "The Invention of the Counterweight Trebuchet: A Study in Cultural Diffusion", Paul E. Chevedden, 2000 Dumberton Oaks Papers 54

22. The King James Bible

23. "The Warring States (473-221 B.C.) - The Modern Period in Ancient China", Lei Hai-tsung, 1943 War Area Service Corps

24. "Warlords of China 700 B.C. to A.D. 1662", Chris Peers, 1998 Sterling Publishing

25. "Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia, 500 B.C. to 1700 A.D." Erik Hildinger, 1997 Spellmount

26. "Wubei Zhi", Mao Yuanyi, 1621

27. "Wujing Zongyao" Zeng Gongliang & Ding Du, 1043

???!!!! You used this reference for ????

I just found info in the Book of Chronicles. I've written the info into my "A Brief History of the Catapult" in the second section, 1st paragraph.

********
Catapults have been in used by the various cultures throughout history. One very early reference to catapults comes to us from Part 2 of the Book of Chronicles (Chapter 26, verses 14 & 15) in the old testament of the Bible, during the reign of Uzziah of Judea in the late 9th century B.C. in the defence of Jerusalem.

"Uzziah provided for all the army the shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows and stones for slinging. In Jerusalem he set up machines, invented by skilled workers, on the towers and the corners for shooting arrows and large stones. And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped until he became strong."

It is not immediately clear what form these "machines... for shooting arrows and large stones" were but from the distinction the passage makes between these machines and the "bows and stones for slinging" provided to the army, it does seem that they were siege engines of some sort.
**************

Interesting stuff eh?

That's what I find hard to believe: The arc firing traction catapult (= example taken from your Arab source) being as precise as the flat trajectory ballista (= example taken from 'De Bello Gallico'). Hm, don't know.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...pults.html#main

The origins of the catapult are unknown. They appear in the historical record as early as a 9th-century B.C. relief from Nimrud in modern-day Iraq.

Nimrud had been one of Assyria's capitals.

They all fire in arcs............ basic physics tells you that.

In practice the largest stone throwers (be they torsion powered "ballista", rope pulled, or counterweight catapults or even guns) were placed as close as possible to the target so that the missile hit at the peak of it's trajectoty (just over half it's maximum range). Most of these weapons were startingly accurate. One major problem with repeaters (eg Korean ship mouted leaver action ones and Roman chain driven ones) was that they grouped their shots too closely (this is born out by experiments with modern reconstructions), so you don't get the spread of a machine gun.

rgds.
Tom..

Here is a useful page about the three different sources of where we got our knowledge from about Greek & Roman catapults:

http://www.barca.fsnet.co.uk/Catapults.htm


Did anyone ever hear about a "steam canon" made by Archimedes and later described by Cicero? Allegedly, this steam powered catapult has been able to shoot in modern test a 23 kg stone 1100 m:

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/war/CatapultTypes.htm

Interesting but no pictures of this claim? While I do generally trust National Geographic, they are just a prone to sensationalization than say the BBC or PBS when they create documentries. I've seen many pictures of Assyrian reliefs and have yet to see anything that resembles a catapult.

As you can read in the article, again, a very unbalanced view with only European catapults but yet the title is "Catapult Makers: Rock Stars of Antiquity" which implies that it emcompasses everything and every culture, typical of western media articles or documentaries. Mind you, I'm not anti-western but the regularity of western books, articles, shows, documentaries etc. that claim only the European viewpoint as the global viewpoint is just too blatant for me not to discount European sources or at best read them with a large measure of skeptism these days in my research.

Ah interesting links. Thank you. I'll incorporate some of the info into my article, especially the early Greek catapults and this description of the steam catapult.

Ok, another major update to include in the multiple shot ballista by Dionysius of Alexandria, the Steam-powered ballista of Archimedes, the Mohist acruballista and the Chuangzi Nu acruballistas, thanks to TL

I have been thinking exactly the same while reading the article. However, it must be said that the one-sidedness of such articles rarely stems from a European-centric bias, but rather from a simple lack of information about other cultural hemispheres! While the Assyrian history has been integral part of European reserach for well over 100 years (a lot of European archaelogists have been busy in Mesopotamia almost uninterruptedly since the early 1900s), many aspects of Chinese and Indian history have only in more recent times come to the attention of Western scholars.

Why don't you publish for a start your 'Brief history of the catapult' in Wikipedia?

I can only speak from experience of course, but what I've encounter is not a deliberate attempt to be eurocentric but rather a reluctance to bother with anything non-european. I face this rather often in the course of my research.

I ain't done yet.

Just added a short paragraph on tensioned and torsioned springalds.

Thanks for the support!

The reason is rather simple..

Most published work is in English for European and Americal consumption. Very few scholars can read more than a few languages and as the sources for siege eninges are very varied (ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Elamite, Persian etc... Greek, Latin, Arabic Medieval Persian..., Indian sources id sanskrit etc..., Chinese, Korean, etc, etc, etc.........) Thus they have to rely on translations of the relevant documents. As very few Chinese sources are translated into Western languages (basicaly because all historians studying China read Chinese) they are not readily available to those scholars trying to put together a history of siege equipment. add to this that there are far more Western sources and the bias becomes inevitable. Look on the bright side, Chinese sources get far more exposure than Indian ones.

eg: we have a Roman "how to build siege engines" book...
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio: de Architectura, Book X
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roma...ruvius/10*.html

Even if you know that many other cultures had similar equipment, it's simpler when writing a book to use a comprehensive source like this for your basic descriptions..

rgds.
Tom..

It not a problem when books are written more for western consumption but just a quick glance through titles will show what I mean. They tend to claim a global view when only presenting a European one.

Pick any generic topic like "Medieval History" and it'll likely be European with at most token mention of possibilities outside Europe. If what you say is true, should it be labled "European Medieval History" instead?

It's so pervasive that even in an Asian country like Singapore, bookstores carry a separate section called "Asian Studies" while the main areas carry all European books. Can you imagine the reverse in Europe?

Or take our Supermarkets. Same thing. We will have the main section and then a separate smaller section on Asian foods. Go figure.

It is worst in areas like science, technology and medicine. Take the Singapore science centre for instance. There are lots of lists of inventors, scientists etc littering the walls of the interior and you won't find a single non-asian name except for may the token 20th century japanese scientist. Strange for a science centre in an Asian country isn't it?

Movies too reinforce this trend. We had the ad on the movie "Alexander" and they were claiming over radio and in posters the he "conquered the known world". True the world he conquered was the known world for him and what passed for westerners at the time but, geez, I didn't know asians themselves believed they were lost and unknown. Strange that we, the very descendants of these "unknown" peoples, just mouth things like that blindly.

My point is, it's not just the westerners who don't bother with non-european (or rather western) things. It's the asians themselves too.

Middle Ages is a term which only makes sense in conjunction with European history anyway. What exactly has been so 'middle-aged' about China from about AD 600 to 1500? ;-)




Beyond the strictly geographic use, 'Asian' itself is already an artificial term to some extent, there are at least three culturally different Asias in Asia (East Asia, Muslim Asia, South Asia), so the guys in the supermarket should first give historical reasons as to why labeling a whole section as Asian which in fact turns out to be only (South-)East Asian. ;-)

-> What I am trying to say: One may use certainly other terms, but these are not necessarily better or more justified.

It really bothers me how my "Art of Warfare on Land" book has one chapter about "India, China, Japan, and Mongolia", while the rest is strictly European(with Middle Eastern warfare sprinkled here and there, mostly about how they lost). But they should be grateful, the African nations and those in America are completely left out. Fact is, every book leaves somebody out, especially those in Africa and the American Indians.

It extremely pervasive until you realise it, then you start seeing it all over the place. For us its kinda like waking up from the Matrix.

It is all relative. Try being a Westerner who actually WANTS to learn about Chinese history specifics of ancient dynasties. There are plenty of excellent in depth books, a number of which I have purchased.
Shame they are in all in Chinese.
Who do I blame? I dunno. Havent figurted that out yet, so I just sulk.
It is interesting there are less good books than I can count on one hand that are availible for English readers on the subjects of ancient bronze weapons of China.
To make a difference it would help if somebody makes information more accessible.
There isnt any mena spirit in Western historians that doenst want to give Chinese credit where it is due...in fact rather the opposite.
You cant force people to read books on Chinese history though, and it is a buyers market.
I hear sales of Harry Potter are doing very well though.

hahahaha trust Kenneth to rationalise it and throw it right back at you.

Actually my main issue is with Asians themselves. Try publishing a book with a title that says "All about Spaceflight" and all it mentions are the Chinese satellites and 2003 "taikonaut" in a western country and see what happens. Ridiculous isn't it?

But strangely, that's pretty much what happens here. Books are written with titles like that above, but seldom if ever mention any non-western details and we let our children grow up reading and believing that that's the way the world is.

Just try this if you are ever in an Asian country like Singapore. Go into a bookstore with just such a critical eye and pick out at random a few topics with "global" titles like "Greatest Military Generals" or "History of Warfare" etc. Then tell me if I'm wrong.

Hmmm, sounds like an untapped market out there ...

We should consider corporatising CHF with a publication (electronic and print media) arm ...

I can't believe some of the trashy translations I see in some of the books, and they actually pay money to those so-called translators for doing Chinese->English!

Ah... the essence of my lone crusade...

... exactly why I'm so keen on publishing my book on Chinese Siege weapons...

... precisely why I'm so mad when I watch my fellow "countrymen" parrot and parody themselves...

... concisely why the realisation must occur both within and without our societies...

... blah... blah... blah...

Interestingly, the Western publishing houses have recognised the gap and there is a Westernmarket for books on Eastern military history.

so go write the books. Even translations of Eastern sources would probably sell in sufficient quantities to be financially viable.

rgds.
Tom..

I agree, there is a slow but sure change in mindset occuring in the West but Thomas Chen would have lots to say about this. 9 out of 10 books on Chinese military philosophy in English is on Sunzi's (and sometimes Sun Pin's) Art of War to the exclusion of almost everything else.

BTW, I've started on the construction of my model of the 14th century A.D. English One-armed "Tension" Springald (used speculatively during the abortive Scottish siege of Carlise by Robert the Bruce) at ShadowedRealms if any of you are interested. Not posting it in CHF because it's got nothing to do with Chinese history.

In regards to the earlier comment on a lack of Asian food in Singapore shops...probably Yes. (with qualification and relevant analogy to information on siege weapons to follow).
From what I have seen on culinary shows on Singapore, and the well known love of Chinese for food I would expect there will be traditional markets much like anywhere else where there is a Chinese community.
It depends where you look.
In the same way your quest for specific knowledge on siege weapons might be suffering as a result of your location in Singapore but even in my 'city' which has under 150,000 people, and around 5,000 Chinese there are half a dozen Asian stores I know of & 2 supermarkets.
If you see small 'Asian foods' areas in larger foodstalls in Singapore then I can only deduce you shop for your soy milk and fresh tofu at the Seven Eleven instead of a traditional night market!

With regards to a lack of books on specifics to Chinese history...you're probably right in part.
It might not be quite so true if you look outside Singapore to Hong Kong or PRC or ROC but it is still partially right though.
There are books on global history which showed pyramids and Greek architecture rather than Han palace reconstructions or such...but they did have the terracota army in there too.
There are books around that do have reconstructions of ancient Han and huge Tang palaces based on academic research though...but they require a little bit of a search and arent as light reading as a general interest book.
I do agree that ancient Eygpt or such seem to steal the limelight from other ancient cultures almost too often, but just like many things the more specific information on other subjects might be about if needed.
They just dont make it easy for us. Answers to specific questions may never appear, and it may even be that for some there isnt an answer yet.
I spent hours and hours in books shops in each country above and enquired on specific titles. Many subjects might be there, but need to be found. All in Chinese though.
I must admit though there were plenty on Chinese books on Western figures, like General McArthur or such...but I really noticed most of the books on English figures were mainly business people, and finance. Some sort of hoping for insight from some grey haired Western billionare, I saw a number like these.
I dont know about the biographies on Chinese generals and such but my wife reads biogaphies on Chinese almost constantly...mostly ordinary people though, just human drama stuff. The biographies on generals will be around somehwere too I expect.

Thinking about the books I mentioned on ancient Chinese weapons and one of the best used by Westerners is actually Chinese language with hindsight....and I took ages to find it because I had been given an English title but it is not on the web under that name.
No doubt a search for Chinese language texts on the internet for some other subjects might well be rewarded also.
It is a shame...I saw some great books specifically on chariots, or analysis of ancient bronze in laboratories with electron scanning microscopes, and complete accounts of a tombs excavation and every item in it..etc, but if it didnt have enough pictures then I had to realise it would probably be next to useless to me as I can only get parts of text translated as needed, so 200 pages of fine print will no doubt be excellent, but out of reach to me.
Queries on siege weapons and such I expect there will be answers to be found in thesis lodged in Chinese universities, reports published by archaeologists, translations made and obscure documents hidden from sight, people with the relevant knowledge around etc. The trick is to find them...... much like the soy milk and fresh tofu.
They need to be located, and such stuff is not going to be found in most public bookstores unfortunately.
Perhaps you could send out some enquiring e-mails out to a few major musuems in China, or some of the Universites that train archaeologists or in ancient history specifically. I managed to contact a couple of authors on pre-history & paleontology in NZ this way, and got identifications made on extinct animal bones I had found on eroding sites as a result.
Of course, it might not always work out so good, but it is possible to try.
Places like the National Palace museum and such have e-mails for enquiries, and even the Freer Gallery in the US has a curators address for enquiries and they might be able to suggest some obscure title to you.
I have found the locating of out-of-print or rare books via the internet is often the next problem...that and such books that can cost up $US200-300 each.
Just something to consider.
Many of the people I know that I discuss Chinese bronzes and such with I simply contacted in much this way, unfortunately I am limited to a small number number of people since I cant read or write Chinese.


Now rather than hijack the thread I might add that a comment more specific to siege weapon chronlogy since on the 'Rome versus Han' thread it was said;


There was no explanation given for this statement, and the information is certainly erroneous. It is either a mistake for a East Zhou traction trebuchet whose crew might get up to this size, or else it is a mistake with the latter massive Song era seige bolt launching devices used for attacking city walls or attaching scaling equipment. The Song devices did allegedly have crews from 30-100 men I am told, but the Qin bed-crossbow I had described to me seem more like an upscaled crossbow, but 3 or 4 times larger perhaps (based on the bolt head size)and loaded by a mechanical lever winch. Somebody in a museum or a university somewhere will no doubt have more details, even if not all the answers we need.