Mixed Mental Arts

Dr. Ken Chase is the author of Firearms: A Global History to 1700, which legendary historian William McNeill described as "a great achievement." In Firearms, Ken does much more than summarize how firearms develops; he asks why China was the first to develop gunpowder but failed to turn that early lead into an effective gun. Popular explanations tend to focus on culture and race, but Ken has delved deep into the records of the time and in an engaging narrative reveals that not developing the modern gun was a rational response when you realize the Chinese were fighting the Mongols. Unlike modern firearms, early firearms were slow, heavy, lacked range and were ineffective…especially against fast moving Mongol horsemen. That's because a cannon required not only the horses to carry it, but the horses to carry the food to feed the horses that carried the cannon. Then, of course, more horses were needed to carry food for those horses meaning that all in all 200 horses were required to provide support for a single ca