1. WORLD HISTORY
SECTION II
Note: This exam uses the chronological designations B.C.E. (before the common era) and
C.E. (common era). These labels correspond to B.C. (before Christ) and A.D. (anno Domini),
which are used in some world history textbooks.
Part A
(Suggested writing time—40 minutes)
Percent of Section II score—33 1/3
Directions: The following question is based on the accompanying Documents 1-9. (The
documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise.) Write your answer on the lined
pages of the Section II free-response booklet.
This question is designed to test your ability to work with and understand historical documents.
Write an essay that:
• Has a relevant thesis and supports that thesis with evidence from the documents.
• Uses all of the documents.
• Analyzes the documents by grouping them in as many appropriate ways as possible. Does not
simply summarize the documents individually.
• Takes into account the sources of the documents and analyzes the authors’ points of view.
• Identifies and explains the need for at least one additional type of document.
You may refer to relevant historical information not mentioned in the documents.
1. Using the documents, analyze the effects of the introduction of gunpowder in
ancient China and Japan
Historical Background: During 850A.D. was the time of invention and the
beginnings of technology in ancient China.
2. Document 1
Bentley, Jerry, and Herbert Ziegler. "Technolical and Industrial Development." Gunpowder.
3rd. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2006. Print.
“Quite apart from improving existing technologies, Tang and Song craftsmen also
invented entirely new products, tools, and techniques, most notably gunpowder,
printing, and naval technologies. Daoist alchemists discovered how to make
gunpowder during the Tang dynasty, as they tested the properties of carious
experimental concoction while seeking elixirs to prolong life. They soon learned that
it was unwise to mix charcoal, saltpeter, sulphur, and arsenic, because the volatile
compound often resulted in singed beards and destroyed buildings. Military officials,
however, recognized opportunity in the explosive mixture. By the mid-tenth century
they were suing gunpowder in bamboo “fire lances,” a kind of flamethrower, and by
3. Document 2
"Firearms and Flamethrowers - Gunpowder Warfare and Weapons." Cultural China. Web. 9
Dec 2010. <http://history.cultural-china.com/en/37H6314H12134.html>.
4. Document 3
"Gunpowder and Explosives - Gunpowder Warfare and Weapons." Cultural China. Web. 9
Dec 2010. <http://history.cultural-china.com/en/37H6314H12136.html>.
5. Document 4
Science and Its Times. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. Vol. 2: 700 to 1449. Detroit: Gale,
2001. p342-345.
“One of the earliest known uses of rocketry in Chinese warfare dates to the fall of the Ch'in dynasty
during the thirteenth century. The great Mongol leader Khan Ogodei had gained power and was
intent on eliminating the Chin and their fierce resistance to his armies. In 1232 the Mongol army
held the Ch'in capital of Pien, also known as K'ai-feng, under siege. While the city did eventually
fall to the Mongols, its inhabitants were able to defend themselves effectively. Indeed, this was one
of the first battles in recorded military history in which firearms were used by both sides. At this
stage of development, gunpowder was used primarily in ceramic grenades that were hurled by
catapults. Used by the defenders of Pien, the grenades proved deadly to the Mongol warriors and
their horses. The defenders of Pien used catapults because, at that point, Chinese cannons, like the
early cannons implemented by the Europeans, had only a limited effectiveness.
The Chinese defenders of Pien used another weapon—the flamethrower—that, unlike early ceramic
grenades, was used primarily by the Chinese and was not widely borrowed by European armies.
Medieval Chinese artisans are credited with the invention of a flamethrower, which was referred to
as the fire lance. In order to form a fire lance, Chinese inventors pasted together nearly 20 layers of
strong yellow paper and shaped these into a pipe over 24 in (60 cm) in length. They then filled this
pipe with iron filings, porcelain fragments, and gunpowder, and fastened the pipe to a lance. Soldiers
who handled these flamethrowers carried with them onto the battlefield a small iron box containing
glowing embers. In battle, the soldiers used these embers to ignite the fire lances. These weapons
produced flames over 9.84 ft (3 m) long. Also, the porcelain shards and iron filings that were packed
into the tube shot out in a deadly cloud of shrapnel.
At the same time that cannons began to appear, the portable handgun was developed by European
armies. The advancements that allowed the handgun to dominate warfare were, for the most part,
European in origin. Gunpowder and early cannons were imported from China, but the Chinese did
not develop or refine their firepower for several centuries. Indeed, by the sixteenth century the
Chinese bought the majority of their firearms from the Portuguese.
This new style of warfare determined more than the dominant type of sailing vessel. The heavy
reliance on the naval cannon also abolished the need for infantry combat between soldiers and
sailors on opposing ships. Prior to the development of the naval cannon, ships carried large numbers
of armed soldiers who attempted to overwhelm the fighting force of the ships they attacked.
The Chinese invention of gunpowder resulted in numerous weapons and applications that
transformed battle. While it took a long time for armies to fully realize the potential offered by
gunpowder, the new weapons made possible by its invention and availability eventually determined
the victors of many important conflicts.”
6. Document 5
Wallace, Robert Daniel. "The Asian Military Revolution." From Gunpowder To The Bomb
45.1 (2010): 8, 173-175. Web. 10 Dec 2010.
“Lorge's primary thesis contends that modern warfare was created in China in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, aided by the development and use of both gunpowder and
combined-arms warfare. Lorge notes that "gunpowder's Asian history does not fit
comfortably into any European schema of historical progression… [and is] severely
truncated or cloaked in the minutiae of purely technical history" (p. 8). Lorge asserts that the
Chinese invented gunpowder, citing the mention of this compound in Daoist literature as
early as the ninth century AD. He does, however, qualify this by noting that a gunpowder
formula did not appear in print until the mid-eleventh century. Primitive guns were invented
by harnessing gunpowder in bamboo tubes containing projectiles (also made of wood or
stone), and by the time of the eleventh-century Song Dynasty, mass production commenced.
Bombs, grenades, and small rockets were developed and used commonly in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, especially in sieges, and by the fifteenth century, gunpowder weapons
became an integral and essential part of Asian warfare.”
