Hongyipao

Name

The term "red barbarian cannon" derives from the weapons' supposed Dutch origins, as the Dutch were called "red haired barbarians" in southern China. However, the cannons were originally produced by the Portuguese at Macau, with the exception of two cannons dredged up from a Dutch ship in 1621. The Dutch ship may have been in fact an English ship and the cannons had English coats of arms. The English ship Unicorn sank near Macau.

The Jurchens renamed the "red barbarian cannon" to "red coat cannon" (Chinese: 紅衣炮; pinyin: hóngyīpào) when it entered their arsenal because they found the term "barbarian" to be insulting, and were known as such in their banner armies.

History

Breech loading swivel cannons from Portugal entered the Chinese weaponry after a Ming fleet defeated the Portuguese at the Battle of Xicaowan in 1521 and captured their guns as war booty. However it's possible that individuals in China had been able to purchase Portuguese style cannons even earlier from pirates.

After the Ming dynasty suffered a series of defeats against the Later Jin, they contacted the Portuguese in Macau to have iron cannons made for them. Attempts were made to bring Portuguese gunners to the north as well, but they were repeatedly turned away because Chinese officials harbored suspicions against them. Yu Zigao, commander of Zhejiang and Fujian, ordered several "red-barbarian cannon" in 1624 prior to his expedition against the Dutch outpost on Penghu Island in the Pescadores.

Several Ming officials who supported the use of the new technology were Christians, among them Xu Guangqi (a convert of the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci), and Sun Yuanhua, the governor of Shandong. The Tianqi Emperor asked a German Jesuit, Johann Adam Schall von Bell, to establish a foundry in Beijing to cast the new cannons. The first pieces produced there could throw a forty-pound shot. In 1623 some hongyipao were deployed to China's northern frontier at Sun Yuanhua's request under generals such as Sun Chengzong and Yuan Chonghuan. They were used to repel Nurhaci at the Battle of Ningyuan in 1626. After the Later Jin captured a Ming artillery unit at Yongping in 1629, they too began production of the hongyipao. The manufacture and use of the hongyipao within the Later Jin Banner armies were carried out by Han Chinese defectors called ujen coohai (heavy troops). The Jurchen forces did not manufacture nor wield the guns themselves. The Later Jin army under Nurhaci's son Hong Taiji used these cannons along with the "generalissimo" cannons (also of European design) to great effect at the Battle of Dalinghe in 1631. Even after the later Jin became the Qing and Jurchens and Han defectors were reorganized into the Manchu Eight Banners, cannons and gunpowder weapons were still restricted exclusively to the Han Banners while the Manchu Banners avoided them. Han Bannermen specializing in artillery and muskets played a major role during Qing sieges of Ming fortifications.

Chinese improvements

Chinese gunsmiths continued to modify "red barbarian" cannons after they entered the Ming arsenal, and eventually improved upon them by applying native casting techniques to their design. Two decades after producing "red barbarian" cannons, Ming foundries merged native casting technology with European cannon designs to create a distinctive cannon known as the "Dingliao grand general." Through combining the advanced cast-iron technique of southern China and the iron-bronze composite barrels invented in northern China, the Dingliao grand general cannons exemplified the best of both iron and bronze cannon designs. Unlike traditional iron and bronze cannons, the Dingliao grand general'rs inner barrel was made of iron, while the exterior of brass. Scholar Huang Yi-long describes the process:

They ingeniously took advantage of the fact that the melting temperature of copper (which is around 1000C) was lower than the casting temperature of iron (1150 to 1200C), so that just a bit after the iron core had cooled, they could then, using a clay or wax casting mold, add molten bronze to the iron core. In this way, the shrinkage that attended the cooling of the external brass would [reinforce the iron, which would] enable the tube to be able to resist intense firing pressure.

The resulting bronze-iron composite cannons were superior to iron or bronze cannons in many respects. They were lighter, stronger, longer lasting, and able to withstand more intensive explosive pressure. Chinese artisans also experimented with other variants such as cannons featuring wrought iron cores with cast iron exteriors. While inferior to their bronze-iron counterparts, these were considerably cheaper and more durable than standard iron cannons. Both types met with success and were considered "among the best in the world" during the 17th century. The Chinese composite metal casting technique was effective enough that Portuguese imperial officials sought to employ Chinese gunsmiths for their cannon foundries in Goa, so that they could impart their methods for Portuguese weapons manufacturing.

Soon after the Ming started producing the composite metal Dingliao grand generals in 1642, Beijing was captured by the Manchu Qing dynasty and along with it all of northern China. The Manchu elite did not concern themselves directly with guns and their production, preferring instead to delegate the task to Chinese craftsmen, who produced for the Qing a similar composite metal cannon known as the "Shenwei grand general." However, after the Qing gained hegemony over East Asia in the mid-1700s, the practice of casting composite metal cannons fell into disuse until the dynasty faced external threats once again in the Opium War of 1840, at which point smoothbore cannons were already starting to become obsolete as a result of rifled barrels. Today there are currently 44 known extant composite metal cannons from the Ming-Qing period.