Firearms spread from China to Europe at some point around the year 1300, and from there to the Ottoman empire around the year 1400. By the year 1500, greatly improved weapons were making their way back toward China. The reverse movement of firearms technology was a momentous event not only for military history: it foreshadowed a reversal in the direction of technology transfer across the Oikoumene. These firearms were the first in a long line of inventions to make their way from Europe to China.

There is some evidence that the Chinese may have encountered Ottoman firearms even before European ones. Certainly, the Chinese were aware of differences between Ottoman and European muskets. The differences were fairly subtle, differences of degree rather than kind, because Ottoman and European firearms belonged to the same tradition, as did Japanese firearms, which were an offshoot of European ones. References to “foreign firearms” in this chapter should be understood to include all these firearms and not merely European ones.

Ottoman firearms reached the Chinese along two routes, by land and by sea. The land route was a series of caravan routes connecting the cities of Transoxania with those of China known as the “Silk Road,” so called because valuable, lightweight, imperishable, unbreakable silk was one of the mainstays of the trade. The sea route of course passed through the Indian Ocean. The Ottomans themselves did not have a presence in the Indian Ocean until they conquered Egypt in 1517, but there was no shortage of possible intermediaries.