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First, let me briefly describe some background historical info or events that are relevant to the question.Western people are familiar with the common name of China: the Middle Kingdom (中国), or Center of the World. This name ties in with the traditional thinking of ancient Chinese (华夏族) that 华夏大地 or 中原大地, (the Central Plains located in the middle-lower reaches of the Yellow River in what is Henan province today), was the center of Chinese civilization. All the four corners were populated by barbarians, the so-called Four Yi: to the east were Dong Yi (东夷); to the south: Nan Man (南蛮); to the west: Xi Rong (西戎) and to the north: Bei Di (北狄). But of course, this thinking sprang literally from a Sino-centric worldview.We know that the big family of China today comprises 56 ethnicities, with the Han making up the great majority (90+ %). Therefore, by the same token, in ancient times, the "barbarians" did not consist of only the Four Yi, but myriads of other ethnic groups. As regards your question about the various peoples, such as the Yong (庸), Mao (髳), and Wei (微), there is an original source text in classical Chinese whose title is 《尚书·牧誓》, which mentions, among other things:"我友邦冢君、御事、司徒、司马、司空，亚旅、师氏，千夫长、百夫长，及庸，蜀、羌、髳、微、卢、彭、濮人。" Translated into English as follows (Source: Chinese Text Project):"Ye hereditary rulers of my friendly states; ye managers of affairs - the Ministers of Instruction, of War, and of Works; the great officers subordinate to these, and the many other officers; the master of my body-guards; the captains of thousands and captains of hundreds; and ye, O men of Yong, Shu, Qiang, Mao, Wei, Lu, Peng, and Pu."The episode above was about an oath-taking rally on the eve of attack against the last king of Shang dynasty. The attack to overthrow the ruthless Shang ruler, tyrant Zhou (纣), was led by Wu Wang, leader of the later Zhou (周) dynasty （Please note this was Zhou dynasty, as different from the previous Zhou (纣) the tyrant）. In year 1044 BC or 1046 BC, Wu Wang (周武王) led his neighboring tribes and launched the final attack. As mentioned, the tribal allies consisted of Yong (庸), Mao (髳), and Wei (微), among others. And Yong (庸) was a tribe from Hubei province; Mao (髳) was said to have originated from somewhere bordering Gansu and Sichuan; whereas Wei (微) came from Shaanxi Province (But these views are controversial). All these peoples were grouped under the general term "South-west barbarians" (西南夷). But they have long since been sinicized and become a member of the Han family.

In its simplest sense because parliament voted for it.But there is a background to it. A background of monetary policy, central banking and commodity money.The global silver flowIn the mid 16th century the Ming dynasty switched to the silver standard for accounting and fiscal purposes. China which lacks rich silver mines and hadn’t used it extensively for centuries did not have a large supply of silver stored somewhere. Since China had around a quarter of the world population this caused such a demand its effects were felt throughout the globe.Europe on the other hand was relatively rich in silver especially following the 16th century South German mining boom and the discovery of silver in the Americas.Huge pile of silver in one place of the globe and a small pile and huge demand on the other side; you can guess what happened with regards to the global flow of silver. Between 1500 and 1800 China imported around 30% of new world silver which it financed with silk, porcelain and gold.The fact that silver was a medium exchange in both places also had another very important ramification. The European economy ‘backed’ by a large amount of silver had very high silver wages while China had low silver wages. In modern parlance one could say that the ‘euro’ was a very strong currency while the ‘yuan’ was a very weak one. A factor further compounded by differences in real wages. As any modern economist can tell you this affects trade, a weak currency makes it easier to export goods while limiting import while a strong currency is detrimental to export but allows for cheap import.Being on opposite sides of the Eurasian landmass the lands in between represented a gradient with regards to silver price. A kilogram of silver in England might have a 115% purchasing power in the Ottoman Empire, 140% in India and 200% in China. Merchants were keenly aware of this fact and its effects on their bottom line [i.e. profit and return on investment]. The 17th century trade of the English East India Company and the Levant company, which traded with the Ottomans, shows this dramatically.English agents in India noted that it was hard to sell things like English woollen because the people could not afford it. The end result was that English export to India consisted for 70% of specie and bullion while 30% consisted of other goods.In the Ottoman empire during that same time the difference in silver price was smaller which meant that European produce could compete with silver. The Levant company exported 70% English woollen and 30% specie and bullion, in fact Ottoman demand sustained the entire wool industry of several English counties.The high silver value in China also made Chinese gold very cheap. The Portuguese arrived in Macau right around the time of a Japanese silver boom which gave it an exchange rate close to that of Europe. In a time when trade between the two countries was limited the Portuguese were able to export Chinese gold to Japan with a 60% profit margin. For the record; the 15th century Venetians who had a monopoly on European pepper import pocketed a relatively modest 40% profit. While it is not often mentioned along silk and tea the Chinese gold export was also a considerable source of revenue.Another quirk of silver was that, because it was currency across much of the world, it was extremely liquid. The Dutch who managed to corner a very large segment of the spice trade and exported spices to China found that the English were still getting the better of them because their specie was more liquid. Selling all the spices in China took time, sometimes months, whereas the extremely liquid silver could be traded as soon as a stock of tea was available. In a time when getting the first fresh tea to Europe resulted in higher profits this was important. Furthermore interest rates were commonly above 10% annually which meant that having goods for sale for any period of time (having ‘dead stock’) was tantamount to burning money.Already in the 17th century one Dutch employee mentioning trade with India recommended selling goods at a loss if it did not sell quick enough simply because keeping ‘dead’ or slow selling stock was even worse.A final note would be that especially Spanish coins were valuable. The face of a Spanish king and some latin inscription on itself were not particularly interesting in Asia (though they did lead to them getting funny local names such as ‘fat Buddha’). Because these Spanish coins were well known for being of reputable quality with regards to weight and silver content they became the de facto currency of global trade. In the 17th century an English employee in India already noted that they were more liquid than other European silver coins and it traded several percent above remelt value.In short, it was incredibly profitable to export silver to Asia and this fact was not lost on European merchants. While there were some reservations early on the East India trading companies of Europe were granted exemptions on general bans on bullion export in the 17th century. Not doing so would have hurt their bottom line or profit which was not acceptable. The fact that the owners of these companies were often the same people running the government probably helped this.A note on government salariesWe briefly have to look at the Ming Dynasty.The founding Hongwu Emperor was a fan of tax cuts.He reduced government tax to roughly a fourth of what it had been during the Song dynasty. This despite the fact that Ming China would grow to have a larger population and larger government apparatus. To cut cost some checks and balances on government employees were removed which lead to officials having combined functions such as administrator, tax collector and judge. Government wages were also massively reduced below previous levels and became fixed. In some cases wages simply weren’t paid at all.By the 15th century, about half of salaries were paid in grain, and half in commodities such as silk fabrics, cotton cloth, pepper and sapanwood. By 1434, however, it was estimated that the value of the commodity payments was only 4% of the scheduled amount. In 1432, some officials were paid with confiscated garments and salvaged materials, and in 1472, peas were used as payment. In the following year in Nanking, it was found that the peas were suitable only for feeding horses (Huang, 1974, p. 48). From this account, it is apparent that salaries steadily fell over the course of the Ming and by the mid-1400s, half of the salaries was effectively unpaid!…In 1012, nominal annual salaries for Sung civil servants ranged from 96 kuan for low-level to 4800 kuan for top-level officials (Wong, 1975). This is considerably higher than Ming salaries in 1392 of 60 piculs of grain for low-rank to 1044 piculs for the top-rank officials (Huang, 1974). Comparing the Sung to the Qing, Deng (1999, pp. 302–3) reported that the First Rank Sung official was paid about 10 times his Qing counterpart. Although this latter number may be too high to be taken literally, it is clear that Sung officials were paid much higher than Ming and Qing officials.Now you might imagine that making government officials much more powerful while simultaneously reducing their official pay would lead to massive corruption but for this the first few Ming Emperors had a solution. Corruption was sought out and punished, officials were flayed alive, had their skins stuffed with straw and displayed as a warning. Other favourites were Lingchi (death by a thousand cuts) which saw a thirty fold increase in its application and Nine familial exterminations which, while not always applied entirely, did entail executing much of the immediate family of the corrupt official.However subsequent emperors were a little more relaxed in their application of such measures which caused corruption to grow. The Qing Dynasty who displaced the Ming in the 17th century largely kept the Ming tax and salary institutions. Though an attempt was made to limit corruption by increasing salaries threefold this did not reverse the course;Official salaries were raised significantly during the Qing in the hope of curbing corruption. In the early Yung-cheng period (1727), allowances called yang-lien (honesty nourishment) were instituted to supplement regular salaries. Key provincial and local officials, as well as military officers, also received an additional allowance known as kung-fei (administrative expenses). Chang (1962, p. 38) reported from Qing records that the total legal annual income to all officials amounted to about 6.3 million taels of silver including 1.4 million in salaries, 4.3 million yang-lien, and 0.6 million kung-fei. On average, the extra allowance intended to curb corruption was over three times regular salary. It is not surprising that the salary reform had little impact on curbing corruption because even though the salary increases were generous, compensation was still negligible compared to incomes from corruption. The Ming and Qing economies were much larger than the Sung economy. Increases in population (fivefold) and expansion of cultivated land (threefold) during the Ming and Qing increased the potential gain from corruption, especially among the top rank of the government. Chang (1962) estimated that around 1880, aggregate extra-legal income was about 115 million taels of silver, shared among 23,000 Chinese officials, with more than half of the income shared among 1700 top officials. In other words, corrupt income was 18.3 times legal income! This extraordinary amount came from office-holding alone and did not include the officials’ income through land-holding and other activities in commerce, where they also enjoyed advantages over common citizens.This widespread supplementation of official salaries is rather important with regards to the Canton trade. Prohibitions issued in Beijing often turned into regular items of trade thanks to the payment of ‘extra legal taxes’. Both Chinese and European merchants knew full well that sometimes a ‘gift’ was needed to make trade happen.The Canton tradeDuring the Qing dynasty trade was concentrated in the city of Canton where a number of Chinese (Hong) merchants gained a government licensed monopoly on trade with European merchants. Their number varied from 5 to 26 but was often around the 10–12 mark. While many items were traded between these groups of merchants the most important one was the tea trade which saw Spanish coins being traded for tea.The Thirteen Factories in CantonNow as mentioned earlier this silver import was rather important as it was the bulk of the Chinese silver supply. Furthermore the case of coins is worth mentioning. The Ming Dynasty, while on the silver standard so to speak, didn’t actually mint silver coins and the later Qing dynasty did make some attempt but those coins never really found much popularity in the coastal provinces, de facto the coastal provinces of China were ‘on the dollar’.This effectively meant that a handful of European companies were the money supplier of southern China, or in other words; the central banking function of the Qing had been outsourced to European merchants supplying Spanish dollars.This was not without problemsIn 1783 the British went to war in Europe and this caused the their silver export to China to be reduced to exactly zero kilograms for four years and then the next year it was only around 4000 kilograms. This sudden contraction in trade seems to have caused deflationary forces in southern China and caused the British East India Company a loss of revenueFurthermore war between Europeans could not only cause trade to halt but also resulted in more silver being used to pay for wars. Both the European merchantsWhen ships did not show up, Chinese were left with bulging inventories and no funds to meet obligations. And because war consumed silver reserves, ships that arrived in China during war years were often lacking sufficient capital to purchase return cargos. Some of these private commission merchants such as the Armenians, Muslims, Parsees and Americans operated outside the nationalistic companies and colonies so they were not usually embroiled in these conflicts. Because of their 'neutrality', they were often sought by everyone in China who needed a loan.The Seven Years' War (1756-63) provides a good example of how war affected the China trade. In these years, Suiqua's (Cai Ruiguan) house [Hong merchant] accumulated large debts when the French ships did not arrive. Poankeequa's (Pan Qiguan) Manila trade was interrupted when the English attacked the Spanish there and occupied the place from 1762 to 1764. Hunqua, Monqua and Chetqua were forced to pay higher interest on their loans because of a lack of silver coin arriving in China. The war drained the EIC of silver making it difficult for supercargoes in the early 1760s to get enough money for the advances needed for tea orders. The depleted silver supplies from English and French ships in China gave the Dutch, Swedish and Danish companies a strategic advantage in negotiating loans and trade with their merchants. By January 1764, the EIC had become so drained of funds from financing the war that supercargoes had to run to private financiers in Macao for an emergency loan of 72,000 Spanish dollars. As we saw in the last chapter, this was the same time that the opium trade became more competitive and widespread. Other war years were no different. In the early 1780s, Tsjonqua's (Cai Xiangguan) house, which was already in a poor state, was forced into bankruptcy when the VOC ships were lost to enemy attack and did not arrive in China. As Plates 3 and 6 reveal, private commission merchants were often the only source of funding for Hong merchants and foreign companies during years when capital was short. An emergency loan could help them through difficult times, but resulted in some Chinese becoming deeply indebted to these financiers.The fickle nature of the flow of silver and thus a highly liquid currency hurt the bottom line of European and Chinese merchants on multiple occasions.This is where Opium comes in.You see the Emperor had banned it already in 1729 when it was barely used but since his court was roughly 2000 kilometers from the port of Canton and since most officials supplemented their salary with gifts such a ban amounted to nothing. Prohibitions on the trade of some European luxury goods and export of gold and certain silk had been widely skirted since the beginning of the Canton trade.However initially the large chartered European companies avoided Opium like the plague because they feared it might hurt their trade;The Swedes, English, French, Dutch and Danes clearly acknowledge in their records that opium was a forbidden article in China. The companies' ban on the drug seems somewhat contradictory, given the fact that many of them traded regularly in other forms of contraband such as gold and illegal silk. Opium was a regular and legitimate item of trade for the English, Dutch and Danish companies in other Asian ports, but not China. For large companies, the tea trade was far too important to risk for the sake of a few chests of opium. In 1750 security merchants for the EIC were perturbed to learn that a private English trader had tried to market the drug in Canton. Chinese merchants were also worried that they would incur the Hoppo's wrath if the attempted trade was reported. The supercargoes immediately inquired into the matter and issued instructions to all EIC officers to 'use the most effectual means to prevent its [opium] being landed hereThe Hoppo is perhaps also worth mentioning as he was effectively the person in charge of handling customs duties. Unlike many other officials he was somewhat less corrupt in that he actually send the revenues directly to Beijing rather than having it go through channels where some of it was skimmed off.His job, in short, was to get as much revenue directly to the Qing court as possible. This meant that promoting trade was in his interest and it put him in something of an awkward position when the silver supplies were interrupted and when opium started to become an increasingly more useful item.Essentially a perfect storm occurred.As the downsides of the limited silver supply became more obvious while the ability of opium to replace it more acknowledged there wasn’t much to stop it. The Hoppo keen on seeing an expansion of trade, the mandarins who lined their pockets, the Europeans who saw their profit margins rise and the Chinese merchants who saw its advantages.Dealing opium was a way for Chinese merchants to produce quick capital and much needed silver. They needed silver to purchase opium, but they sold it for silver as well so like tea, it could increase their capital reserves. With tea, they had to give silver payments in advance so it might be six months or more before they saw returns on their investments. But opium, in good years, could be sold within days of its purchase [i.e. it was very liquid] so silver supplies could be replenished very quickly. A few quick sales of opium at the beginning of a season gave Chinese merchants more silver to buy tea and less need to take out high-interest loans from foreigners. Except for a few bribes to the Mandarins, no duties had to be paid to the government. Thus, opium had the unique characteristics of producing profits in its own sale, expanding tea sales and reducing usury costs both of which increased tea profits, and it did all of this without creating new debts (duties owed). The minimal risks involved in trading opium in China in the 1760s meant that there was much more to be gained in selling it than lost in avoiding it so the trade continued to expandIt was also around this time that the British realised they possessed the land in India which produced the highest grade opium;The EIC continued to ban opium on company ships going to China, but encouraged private traders to purchase the drug from the company in India and then smuggle it to the delta. The EIC benefited from this commerce in two ways: from the profits on the sales in Bengal and from the silver that it received for the opium that was sold in China. Large quantities of silver were needed to purchase tea, and opium was about the only commodity that could be readily exchanged for that specie. The EIC sold its opium and such articles as Indian textiles to the country traders in exchange for silver, which it then used to buy tea.Rather than having to bring their own silver or taking out loans the company could now rely on silver provided by private traders who could sell their opium within days rather than having to wait months for other goods to sell. In fact once the opium trade really got going the flow of silver started to reverse.…bribes were fixed amounts that did not change from one year to the next, which reduced risks and made it easier to project profits and attract investors. Connivance procedures for products such as gold and illegal silks were already well established by the early decades of the eighteenth century. The normalisation of smuggling enabled contraband traders to anticipate their expenses and calculate their profits with as much clarity and reliability as legitimate tradersIn fact, in some aspects, the contraband trade was less risky than the legitimate trade in tea. Unlike tea, which could lose 50 percent of its value if held over for a season, opium was less prone to deterioration if properly stored. Moreover, the sales of Chinese exports were often tied to the purchase of foreign imports, such as cotton and textiles (a practice known as 'truck'). Plate 19, for example, shows the SOIC supercargo Charles Irvine exchanging cochineal and cloth in 1744 with the Hong merchant Tan Suqua (Chen Shouguan) for chinaware. After the Chinese merchants made the agreements, they took the import goods into their factories in September or October and sold the items before mid November or December when the new tea arrived.Revenues from the sale of imports were used to purchase tea and porcelain, which meant that goods had to be sold at a time when the market was saturated and prices were at their lowest level. Merchants could not always afford to warehouse their import goods until prices had recovered, so this was a precarious situation for them.Chinese merchants could not contract tea unless they agreed to buy a certain amount of textiles and other imports, and they could not pay for the tea until those products were sold. By the early nineteenth century import duties also had to be paid by late October or early November, so imports had to be sold immediately. There was no way of knowing how many ships would arrive each year or how much of one commodity would be dumped onto the market. Larger merchant houses in Canton tried to bring a little more security into these arrangements by buying up all the supply of a certain product to control its price. But this also required an enormous outlay of capital, which most merchants could not produce. Thus, for many of the Chinese merchants in Canton, the tea trade was risky business.If prices plummeted, all that merchants could do was to sell their import goods at a loss and hope to recoup their outlay with tea sales. The tea market, however, was also highly competitive, which meant that profit margins were extremely slim even in good years. Moreover, tea sales required huge advances, often with high interest rates. Thus, it was not likely that profits from tea would make up for losses from imports. Opium, on the other hand, was a cash-and-carry commodity. If the markets were saturated, opium could be stored until prices recovered because it was not tied to the sale of exports.…By the 1810s and 1820s the smuggling procedures were so established, indeed, commonplace, it was no longer necessary to sell the goods aboard the ships at Whampoa. Foreigners could arrange for all contraband to be shipped direct to Canton, where they began warehousing such contraband items as opium and selling them directly out of their factories. Chinese buyers could go there and sample the goods instead of having to travel to Whampoa, as in the example of the Disco [a ship]. The contraband trade was, by degrees, becoming almost as secure and stable as the legal trade. The legal trade was protected by Chinese imperial decrees and policies, and the contraband trade was protected by long-established local practice and procedures.Brokering houses were set up in Macao and Canton to arrange the sales and pay all the connivance fees. These commission merchants dealt in legitimate items as well which is why they were allowed to stay in China. It is probably safe to assume that without the funds generated from the contraband trade, the legitimate trade would not have grown as fast, as extensively or as consistently as it did for 140 years. Thus, it was in the interests of the Hoppos to tolerate these illegal activities so that the tea trade would not be affected. Toleration was perhaps the easiest and most effective way to ensure that the flow of revenues sent to Beijing was uninterrupted. If no unnecessary ripples were made in the system, such as launching a campaign to wipe out corruption and opium, then the revenues from the legitimate trade might even increase during each of the three years that a Hoppo was in office. This was the optimum outcome.Something even more profitable, more elastic in supply and locally available supplanted silver. It caused a massive increase in the tea trade which the Hoppo and Chinese merchants were all to happy with. The British for their part could use a little additional revenue too, wars had left them deeply indebted. The surge in the tea trade was exactly what was needed.In the minds of company officials, the tea and porcelain trades were too important to be allowed to diminish or go to ruin for the sake of a lack of silver. There was not enough of a deterrent in Canton or the delta to discourage private traders or government officials from benefiting from the trafficking, so pressures of supply and demand for silver encouraged the continual expansion of the opium trade. In this way, the growth of opium trade went hand-in-hand with the growth of legitimate trade in tea.…This blending of legal and illegal trade, the willingness of Chinese on all levels to accommodate smugglers, the uniformity in connivance fees and practices, and the need for large quantities of silver to exchange for tea, all contributed to a flourishing opium trade. Because the illicit trade supported the legitimate trade, it was easy to justify or, at least, to tolerate. As a result, the efforts that the government made to stamp out smuggling before 1835 were always too little and too late, and often ill-matched to the situation.However the fact that silver started being used increasingly less and the fact that opium was increasingly bought and consumed resulted in silver actually moving out of China.By the early 1830s, the outflow of silver was putting severe strain on administrative budgets to the point that Chinese officials in both Canton and Beijing began considering legalizing the opium trade as a means of curbing it, on the one hand, and taxing it on the other. The government could generate new revenues from its sale, and it was suggested that the trade could be controlled if the distribution and use of opium were tightly regulated. At the heart of these discussions, of course, was the silver problem. Many suggestions were put forth to limit the amount of opium purchases to one-third silver, or to only allow bartering where opium was exchange for other goods.In this new environment where officials in both Beijing and Canton were now more open in considering alternative measures of controlling the contraband, a very accurate and comprehensive report was handed to the emperor of the extent of smuggling and effects it was having on the empire. After better understanding the situation, and after realizing the large number of officials who were involved in the smuggling, it was decided that controlling it was impossible. Legalization would only lead to more problems and would not solve the silver crisis. The emperor then began sending a series of edicts to Canton to put an end to the opium trade.Some today mention an abstraction like a ‘trade deficit’ but I hope the above shows such a thing is rather complicated when talking about commodity money. The import of tea was covered by the export of silver, both of which are obviously commodities rather than money in abstraction. Ready cash, rather than money, formed an obstacle which opium was to overcome.An unholy trinity of tea, silver and opium blew up too such proportions that when the crackdown came the British backed most of their tea with the opium trade. A trade that was now almost four times the size it had been when silver was predominantly used.Thus the destruction of (what amounts to several billion in today’s money) worth of opium combined with the prospect of not being able to use opium to buy tea but having to revert back to silver made those involved in the Tea trade rather afraid. The private fortunes of individuals came to depend on the newly expanded trade and a contraction could entail reduced income or even bankruptcy.To get back to the vote in Parliament.A lot had become pinned to the opium trade, not just profits on its sale in India but the fact that it allowed the tea trade to grow exponentially. This must have weighed heavily on those who had little qualms about opium in the first place.Yet for all of this the vote was only carried with 50.84% in favour and 49.15% against, a narrow margin.Thomas Macauley, the Secretary of State for War, argued in parliament, “I beg to declare my earnest desire that this most rightful quarrel may be prosecuted to a rightful close. . . . that the name not only of English valour but of English mercy may be established”. William Gladstone, a member of Parliament who had tried and failed to cure his sister of opium addiction, responded to Macauley’s flag waving speech by focusing on the high moral ground:“Does [Macauley] know that the opium smuggled in to China comes exclusively from British ports, that is, from Bengal and through Bombay? . . . That we require no preventive service to put down this illegal traffic? We have only to stop the sailing of the smuggling vessels . . . it is a matter of certainty that if we stopped the exportation of opium from Bengal and broke up the depot at Lintin and checked the cultivation of it in Malwa and put a moral stigma on it we should greatly cripple if not extinguish the trade in it. They [the Chinese] gave you notice to abandon your contraband trade. When they found you would not do so they had the right to drive you from their coasts on account of your obstinacy in persisting with this infamous and atrocious traffic . . . justice, in my opinion, is with them; and whilst they, the Pagans, the semicivilized barbarians, have it on their side, we, the enlightened and civilized Christians, are pursuing objects at variance both with justice and with religion . . . a war more unjust in its origin, a war calculated in its progress to cover this country with a permanent disgrace, I do not know and I have not read of. Now, under the auspices of the noble Lord, that [British] flag is become a pirate flag, to protect an infamous traffic”The Canton Trade, 1700–1842 - Paul A. Van DykeHigh corruption income in Ming and Qing China - Shawn Ni, Pham Hoang VanThe East India Company and the Export of Treasure in the Early Seventeenth: K. N. Chaudhuri

Looks like grenades be came standard infantry weapon inWW1.Rudimentary incendiary grenades appeared in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, not long after the reign of Leo III(717–741).Byzantine soldiers learned that Greek fire, a Byzantine invention of the previous century, could not only be thrown by flamethrowers at the enemy but also in stone and ceramic jars.Later, glass containers were employed. The use of Greek fire spread to Muslim armies in the Near East, from where it reached China by the 10th century.In China, during the Song Dynasty (960–1279AD), weapons known as Zhen Tian Lei (震天雷, "Sky-shaking Thunder") were created when Chinese soldiers packed gunpowder into ceramic or metal containers. In 1044, a military book Wujing Zongyao ("Compilation of Military Classics") described various gunpowder recipes in which one can find, according to Joseph Needham, the prototype of the modern hand grenade.The mid-14th-century book Huolongjing (火龍經, "Fire Dragon Manual"), written by Jiao Yu (焦玉), recorded an earlier Song-era cast iron cannon known as the "flying-cloud thunderclap cannon" (飛雲霹靂炮; feiyun pili pao). The manuscript stated that (Needham's modified Wade-Giles spelling):In the American Civil War, both sides used hand grenades equipped with a plunger that detonated the device on impact. The Union relied on experimental Ketchum Grenades, which had a tail to ensure that the nose would strike the target and start the fuze. The Confederacy used spherical hand grenades that weighed about six pounds, sometimes with a paper fuze. They also used 'Rains' and 'Adams' grenades, which were similar to the Ketchum in appearance and mechanism. Improvised hand grenades were also used to great effect by the Russian defenders of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War.The lack of an effective hand grenade, coupled with their danger to the user and their lack of utility meant that they were regarded as increasingly obsolete pieces of military equipment. In 1902, the British War Office announced that hand grenades were obsolete and had no place in modern warfare.William Mills, a hand grenade designer from Sunderland, patented, developed and manufactured the "Mills bomb" at the Mills Munition Factory in Birmingham, England in 1915, designating it the No. 5. It was described as the first "safe grenade". They were explosive-filled steel canisters with a triggering pin and a distinctive deeply notched exterior surface. This segmentation was thought to aid fragmentation and increase the grenade's deadliness, but later research showed that it did not improve fragmentation. Improved fragmentation designs were later made with the notches on the inside, but at that time they would have been too expensive to produce. The external segmentation of the original Mills bomb was retained, as it provided a positive grip surface. This basic "pin-and-pineapple" design is still used in some modern grenades.The Mills bomb underwent numerous modifications. The No. 23 was a variant of the No. 5 with a rodded base plug which allowed it to be fired from a rifle. This concept evolved further with the No. 36, a variant with a detachable base plate to allow use with a rifle discharger cup. The final variation of the Mills bomb, the No. 36M, was specially designed and waterproofed with shellac for use initially in the hot climate of Mesopotamia in 1917, and remained in production for many years. By 1918, the No. 5 and No. 23 were declared obsolete and the No. 36 (but not the 36M) followed in 1932.The Mills had a grooved cast iron "pineapple" with a central striker held by a close hand lever and secured with a pin. A competent thrower could manage 15 metres (49 feet) with reasonable accuracy, but the grenade could throw lethal fragments farther than this; after throwing, the user had to take cover immediately. The British Home Guard was instructed that the throwing range of the No. 36 was about 30 yards with a danger area of about 100 yards.Approximately 75,000,000 grenades were manufactured during World War I, used in the war and remaining in use through to the Second World War. At first, the grenade was fitted with a seven-second fuze, but during combat in the Battle of France in 1940, this delay proved too long, giving defenders time to escape the explosion or to throw the grenade back, so the delay was reduced to four seconds.