For a general overview of
the Chinese Dynasties see:
Consolidation
Under Qin
While
power politics and administrative efficiency became paramount during the Warring States period the
discursive milieu in which it occurred suggested a common goal for that pursuit
of power. Any revolutions that occurred after Confucius and during this period
were indeed substantial, but only reinforced trends that had been in place
before Confucius during the rise of Qi. During the Zhanguo
period a declining Jin state and a rising Chu state were pitted against each other with many of the middle
states playing decisive roles in the war between them. Out of these initial
battles other states began to rise. The first of these was Wu. The Jin state broke apart during a period of civil strife into
three separate states: Han, Wu, and Zhao. Of them Wu remained the most vital.
Wu was succeeded by Wei and finally by Qin. Each of these only realized a very
brief sort of dominance and nothing resembling the ba
system that had existed previously. In each of these states their ascendance
was formed in the same way that Qi had realized its dominance: through
administrative innovation to improve their ability to rule over a territory
that they already recognized as unitary whole. In Wei, for example, large-scale
feudal farming was replaced by small-scale farming with lands allocated to
households.
This
allowed for increased production with decreased control which further increased the efficiency of the state. Competing states
would quickly copy the innovations of the rising state in
order to manage and restrain each other’s ability to dominate. Over a
relatively short period of time administrative
capacities to manage the various subsystems changed and improved at a
remarkable pace. The sovereign principle remained more or
less totalizing though: centralize all power, remove challengers, and
increase efficiency. Whether proto-Confucian, Confucian, or Legalist all of these philosophies reinforced the pre-existing
sovereign principle. It was really a matter of finding the proper set of
administrative tools to realize the new efficiency principle embedded in this
Qi sovereign principle. In many ways Qin’s rise to dominance was surprising.
Where Chu was large and wealthy, Qin was smaller and relatively poor. Where Wu
formed a central part of the Chinese core states, Qin languished on the eastern
periphery. Where Wei and Qi were contemporary innovators with much greater
power and wealth Qin was ignored, under constrant
threat and in a strategically inopportune place. All of that began to change
around under the ministrations of Shang Yang. Shang Yang was chief minister to
the Qin duke Hsiao around 358 BC.1
While
minister he was equally formidable and despicable; he was a leader cut in
Machiavellian cloth. It was his internal reforms that allowed Qin to gain the
strength and momentum necessary to conquer the whole of the Zhou order even
after his execution. We can focus simply and briefly on the three reformations
that had the most profound consequences on Qin’s fortunes: agricultural reform,
abolishing slave labor, and the creation of a written and stable set of laws.
Beginning
with last, the Book of Law, which Shang Yang introduced created what Li Yu-Ning
has referred to as a principle of collective liability.2 Anybody associated
with a lawbreaker was equally culpable. The draconian punishments ensconced in
the law had a profound effect on the relationship between the gentry and the
aristocracy, “an important purpose of this [law] was to strike at the resistance
of the declining slave owner-aristocrats, in order to safeguard the interests
of [the] newly rising landlord class, and thereby consolidate its regime.” 3
The laws, which threatened death to those that abetted criminals in any way,
worked to encourage compliance with the other reforms that Shang Yang
undertook. In so doing Shang Yang was able to erode the economic base of
aristocratic power. Shang Yang’s agricultural reforms put farms into the hands
of peasant farmers and removed them from aristocratic control. In tandem his
agricultural and legal reforms encouraged greater production while
simultaneously removing levels of governance between the central bureaucracy
and the masses. The policy of collective liability was similarly applied to the
productive efforts of the masses. Lack of production was grounds for
punishment. Feudal tithing was eliminated at the same time
that command and control functions of the bureaucracy were extended and
deepened. This level of despotism and cruelty would continue to define Qin even
after its victory and the establishment of the Qin dynasty.
Shang
Yang was known as a capable general, but it was primarily after his death that
Qin began the process of shifting from a defensive development phase to an
offensive consolidation phase.4 In 316 BC Qin began conquering the states in
its immediate vicinity.5 Besides evidencing the superior strength that was
developing in the state of Qin it provided a practical strategic advantage.The local consolidation during this period
allowed Qin to remove its immediate geopolitical threats and provide a secure
base from which it could strike out at neighboring states. Its new territory was well-protected from most barbarian
incursions and had secured an important breadbasket—the states of Shu and Ba
that bordered Qin to the south.6/3
This
strategic advantage would prove decisive in securing further political
advantages. Subsequent rulers would draw heavily upon Shang Yang’s
administrative innovations, but would also develop their own methods of conquest
and consolidation. Influential in the consolidation process was a Legalist
philosopher named Han Feizi. Disregarded in his own
state, his teachings were ironically used by the king of Qin, Qin Ying Zheng,
who later conquered Han Feizi’s home state. Burton
Watson says of Han Feizi, “He is not the inventor of
Legalism, buts its perfecter, having left us the final and most readable
exposition of its theories.”6
Inasmuch as it
was Qin Ying Zheng who would come to conquer the six other major states and consolidate
China under imperial rule we ought to be particularly interested in what Han Feizi had to say about the nature of power, politics, and
rule. The core concepts that he supported were deception and control. This was
not an overt form of deception, but rather one that poker players might call
‘keeping it close to the vest’. Among ministers, allies, and enemies the chief
imperative for the leader was to never reveal what he wanted. Doing so allowed
ministers to curry favor and build private cliques and it allowed other states
to prepare for one’s advances— diplomatic or otherwise. The core of this idea
is that the ruler should act as a unitary ruler. As Han Feizi
puts it:…the Way itself is never plural—therefore it
is called a unity. For this reason the enlightened
ruler prizes solitariness, which is the characteristic of the Way. The ruler
and his ministers do not follow the same way. The ministers name their
proposals, the ruler holds fast to the name, and the ministers come forward
with the results. When names and results match, then superior and inferior will
achieve harmony. The way to listen to the words of the ministers is to take the
statements that come from them and compare them with the powers that have been
invested in them. Therefore you must examine names
carefully in order to establish ranks, clarify duties in order to distinguish
worth. This is the way to listen to the words of others: be silent as though in
a drunken stupor. . . . Let others say their piece—I
will gain knowledge thereby. 7
This
passage espouses a new and final evolution of the prior sovereign principle.
Where prior rulers had progressively removed lesser nobility from the offices
of power in favor of what some have termed a meritocracy they still allowed too
much of what Han Feizi might term a ‘plurality’. Left
to their own devices the ministers— while more loyal than the aristocracy—would
still plot to gain power, curry favor, and generally improve their standing. By
gathering as much information as possible while not revealing any of his own
information or preferences, the ruler was thus able to consolidate power within
the state and initiate actions surreptitiously outside the state. Subsequent
writings by Han Feizi suggest that the ruler ought to
build bridges with other states rather than arbitrarily maintain adversarial
relationships with powerful opponents and ought to exploit those advantages
where necessary. 8 The state had finally become a unitary thing in the minds of
rulers and philosophers alike. It was neither ministers, nor rulers who were
the state, but the reason of the state, the Way, that represented the state.
The ruler was now entreated to make decisions solely on the
basis of relative power. The Ten Faults warns against using increased
power towards decadent ends.
Outside
the state the traditional balancing strategies of lianheng
(horizontal balancing similar to bandwagoning)
and hezong (vertical balancing similar to balancing)
became tools to be used when advantageous and spurned when disadvantageous. While
other states debated the superiority of one strategy over the other and only
changed reluctantly Qin was notable because of the alacrity and fluidity of its
strategy. This manner of administrating the state and interstate relations was
aided in large part by Qin Pin Zheng’s ability to comprehend and act upon Han Feizi’s admonitions. In 221 when Qin Ping Zheng became Qin
Shi Huangdi (First Emperor of Qin) the Zhou system had finally and
fundamentally shifted under the weight and efficiency of this new ascendant
sovereign principle; a sovereign principle far closer to modern absolute
sovereignty.
Strong
leaders weak armies
How
were the social subsystems evolving during this period? This is, of course, a
central question. It is thus, beneficial to proceed with a brief examination of
the state of the subsystems at the beginning of the Western Zhou period.
There
is some disagreement regarding the nature and scope of the Western Zhou
security subsystem. Without a doubt, it was founded upon the technology of the
chariot, but the centrality of the chariot to actual battlefield tactics is
somewhat unclear. Lewis contends that chariot warfare was largely ornamental,
in much the same way that combat between knights in Europe was during the
Middle Ages, but Hsu and Linduff argue that it was
the combined superiority of Zhou tactics over broken ground and the ability of
the Zhou to use the chariot as a command and control structure that led to
their early triumphs over the Shang.9
This
difference of opinion suggests that in spite of the
technology available at the time certain norms of warfare existed beforehand
which limited the organization and extent of warfare. Regardless of whether one
believes Lewis or Hsu and Linduff we ought to be
struck by both the small size of the armies-usually smaller than 30,000
strong-and the odd centrality of chariots given the plethora of hills,
mountains, and rivers. The Zhou superiority in tactics was thus a marginal one.
We can infer from this a number of things about the
centrality of warfare and the scope of the security subsystem. The most
important of these was that there was a concerted effort to limit the art of
war to a specific class. This limitation had a profound effect on the ability
of the Zhou to exert their power over great distances. The logistical abilities
that a larger army provides that were missing from the Western Zhou period. The
nature of the chariot, an offensive weapon, and the small size of the armies
forced the security subsystem into a secondary role. While one could
communicate with one’s neighbors because of the horse one was also unable to
exert coercive control over them from a distance.
Zhou
territory was vast; from the capital the king was limited in his ability to
enforce any peace among his vassals or the barbarians. The Zhou population was
not small by any means and we can thus attribute a good deal of this limitation
to the structure of the security subsystem. Military honors and battlefield
successes were largely reserved for the elites. Foot soldiers were present, but
were artificially limited in their unit size and prescribed role during this
period. The material for an expansive security subsystem had probably existed
from early on in the Zhou dynasty, but during the
Western Zhou period this type of expansion did not take place with any regularlity.
Over
the course of the eight centuries from the rise of Zhou to the rise of Qin the
security subsystem underwent remarkable changes. By the time Qin Ping Zheng
came to power armies had shifted to massive infantries. The chariot was almost
entirely displaced. The aristocratic norm of calling out one’s opponent and
engaging in individual combat had been replaced by massive engagements with
hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sometimes hundreds of thousands of
casualties. The new principle of absolute sovereignty accelerated the process
of creating new, better, bigger, and faster armies.
In
the Art of War Sun Tzu speaks of armies numbering a hundred thousand.10 Of them
he notes the cost and the social upheaval, remarking that spies are far
superior because they limit the length of war and improve tactics during the
engagement. As Sun Tzu remarked, “Only the farsighted rulers and their superior
commanders who can get the most intelligent people as their spies are destined
to accomplish great things. Intelligence is of the
essence in warfare—it is what the armies depend upon in their every
move.”11/300 The evolution of warfare after Sun Tzu may be
seen as attempts to reduce the cost of massive armies, increase their
efficacy, and improve their ability to assert control abroad over time. Sun Tzu
saw the value in limiting the number and extent of engagements. Subsequent
rulers attempted to overcome the costs that led Sun Tzu to those conclusions.
Contrary
to Victoria Hui's claims that the logic of domination was not inevitable, the
nature of the Zhou world order always bound the Zhou feudal states together in
important ways. The origins of transborder
sovereignty and the shift to absolute sovereignty followed logically-and more or less efficiently-from the changing nature of the
social subsystems and the changing priorities placed upon each of them
individually. Through it all the Chinese world order had effectively delineated
those who were bound, by kith or by kin, and those who were merely barbarians.
Though the specific content of this unity might change over time, the
overarching linkage provided by a shared ideology provides important clues
about when, why and how sovereign principles in ancient China evolved over
time.
From
the ascendancy of King Wen to the beginning of the Chunqiu period the relative
scope of the security subsystem remained the same. It had a
central role in aristocratic identity, but a subsidiary role to the
control of the dynasty. While wars were rather frequent, engagements were
limited, and the art of conquering and occupying territory was even more
limited. However, around the time of Sun Tzu we know that armies began to
expand rapidly and that the centrality of the chariot to warfare began to
decline as well. This shift happened rather close to the period in which the
sovereign principle shifted from transborder to
absolute. The trade subsystem was limited as well. For example, we know that
while more advanced and developed than other early civilizations-because of the
prevalence of iron in the area-that the Zhou dynasty did not cultivate land
much beyond its network of interlinked cities. The abundance of iron allowed
for improvements in agriculture that the west would not experience for quite
some time.
However,
the feudal system of regulating the farms ensured that the productive
capacities of the farmers were arbitrarily limited. China was growing cities
and states at a remarkable rate. The growth and dominance of the Zhou dynasty were
aided by their agricultural techniques and limited by their inability to profit
from it efficiently. The role structure of this trade subsystem was based
largely on slavery and serfdom. Free farmers were only small parts of the
system during the Western Zhou period. The diffuse network of fiefs meant that
the amount of land being tilled was correspondingly small. The serfs and slaves
would work near the fief, but much of the intermediate frontiers between the
fiefs was left to barbarians and was only mildly integrated into the economic
system of the Zhou dynasty.
Trade
Subsystem
The
trading subsystem was limited as well. For example, we know that while more
advanced and developed than other early civilizations-because of the prevalence
of iron in the area-that the Zhou dynasty did not cultivate land much beyond
its network of interlinked cities.12 The abundance of iron allowed for
improvements in agriculture that the west would not experience for quite some
time. However, the feudal system of regulating the farms ensured that the
productive capacities of the farmers were arbitrarily limited.13 China was
growing cities and states at a remarkable rate. The growth and dominance of the
Zhou dynasty was aided by their agricultural techniques and limited by their
inability to profit from it efficiently.
The
role structure of this trade subsystem was based largely on slavery and
serfdom. Free farmers were only small parts of the system during the Western
Zhou period. The diffuse network of fiefs meant that the amount of land being
tilled was correspondingly small. The serfs and slaves would work near the
fief, but much of the intermediate frontiers between the fiefs was left to
barbarians and was only mildly integrated into the economic system of the Zhou
dynasty. The trade subsystem was limited relative to the ideological subsystem.
Near
the middle of the Chunqiu period coinage began to appear in the Zhou empire.
The first coins to be found throughout the Zhou states were those of Jin.14 Jin held the ba from 632 BC to
roughly 550 BC. We can attribute this shift in technology and the increasing
scope of the trade subsystem to this period. Perhaps coins had originated prior
to this period, but they had not found wide circulation in the way that Jin’s coinage had. The use of coinage in place of other
alternatives had two profound effects on the trade subsystem. First, it
disrupted the linkage between feudal lords and peasants. It was no longer
necessary to have a slave class and an overlord class. Control could be exerted
through taxation. By releasing the peasants from the control of the
aristocracy-and often then forcing them towards small household
farming-subsequent rulers were able to vastly increase the size of the land
being tilled. Large populations farming small plots close to the city were
becoming obsolete. By the time Shang Yang began implementing changes the goal
had shifted broadly to cultivating as much as area as possible and directly
monitoring and taxing the product of the peasants.
The
change in the trade and security subsystems is therefore nearly identical.
Their relative scopes had always been quite similar to
each other, but had been outstripped by the ideological subsystem. During the
Chunqiu period both began to shift rapidly outwards. The declining viability of
the Mandate of Heaven was foretold by the rising importance of infantry armies
and currency based economies. Once Jin began to use
coinage widely the mandate was effectively defunct. The state of Qi’s
ascendance to hegemon started the process by which these other events began to
unfold.
Ideological
Subsystem
it
is notable that during the long period of
consolidation no state had to undertake an extensive program of Sinicization in the way that Romans and the French had to
undertake nation-building projects. This ought to highlight to us the extent
which the Zhou empire during this period was a consolidated state waiting to be
realized. This is not to imply a teleological inevitability to the rise of the
Qin dynasty-the aristocracy could have responded differently, the barbarian
incursions could have had more or less profound
consequences-instead it suggests that the ability of one state to dominate the
others was informed by an understanding of all the states as inherently linked.
Where the security and trade subsystems changed and grew rapidly in the middle
of the Chunqiu period, the ideological subsystem seems to have been rather
stagnant. China, during this period, did not grow substantially, but its
internal unity rapidly increased. The shift from transborder
sovereignty to absolute sovereignty was a case of the state catching up to the
nation rather than, in the European case, the nation catching up to the state.
Mark Lewis noted of this shift that:
The
new style of polity that appeared in the Warring
States period was both an expansion and a contraction of the old Zhou model. It
was an expansion in that it developed a full-blown territorial state in place
of the city-based state of the Zhou world, but it was a contraction in that it
concentrated all power in the court of the single monarch. .
. . The foundations of these changes were laid in the Spring and Autumn
period, when the pressures of war which had led both rulers and ministerial
households to increase their armies through the recruitment of the rural
populace. 15
It
would take some time for the shift in sovereign principles to be fully realized
by the rulers who invented it, but it was an idea which grew firmly and solidly
out of the ba system which had preceded it.
The
essential structure of the ideological subsystem at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty
was built on a two-fold distinction. One tenet held the centrality of king and
the Mandate of Heaven to legitimize his rule. The second tenet held the
centrality of law and order variously derived as the overarching legitimating
factor for any given ruler. This sounds more beneficent than it actually was, but among elites it provided the justification
for both their overthrow of the Shang dynasty and the stability of their rule
during theWestern Zhou period. Working together the
first rule created a center of gravity within the international order while the
second rule expanded the scope of the subsystem to new states and new peoples.
The moralistic underpinnings of the mandate provided compelling leverage for
negotiations with barbarian peoples as the Zhou began to develop the frontiers
inside and outside their empire.
After
the shift to Luoyang and the formation of the ba
system the first tenet of the ideological subsystem, the centrality of the
king, began to weaken fundamentally. Without the centralizing force of the king
the second part of the ideological subsystem continued to function, but lost
much of its coherence. The intellectual milieu that developed during the end of
the Chunqiu period reflected much of this problem. Zhou elites were struggling
to form a legitimate basis for rule absent a consistently legitimate ruler. The
resulting uncertainty caused by this loss of a center caused the ideological
subsystem to stagnate. Many of the roles remained the same; the relationship of
the states to each other and the hierarchy among nobles remained more or less consistent. Other roles changed significantly.
The relationship between feudal lords and royal ministers changed fundamentally
after the Legalist philosophies came to dominate the political and social
realms.
The
ideological subsystem stagnated because many of the policies of development
were turned inwards on the states themselves. The content of Zhou identity was fairly stable, but the organization, the social hierarchy,
that it implied underwent drastic changes. The shift from kinship-based
aristocracy to a meritocracy created profound upheavals in Zhou society. The
ultimate effect was to increase the density of relationships in a stable area
rather than expand that area. The growth of the Zhou order during the period
was rather slow. A few states on periphery did come to play a
major role in the politics of the time- Chu and Qin, chief among
them-however the relative growth of this subsystem slowed substantially during
the Eastern Zhou period. It should come as no surprise then that the relatively
large size of the ideological subsystem as the
beginning of Western Zhou period began to a have a smaller and smaller impact
on Zhou sovereign principles during the Chunqiu period.
Contrary
to Victoria Hui's claim that the logic of domination was not inevitable, the
nature of the Zhou world order always bound the Zhou feudal states together in
important ways. The origins of transborder
sovereignty and the shift to absolute sovereignty followed logically-and more or less efficiently-from the changing nature of the
social subsystems and the changing priorities placed upon each of them
individually. Through it all the Chinese world order had effectively delineated
those who were bound, by kith or by kin, and those who were merely barbarians.
Though the specific content of this unity might change over time, the
overarching linkage provided by a shared ideology provides important clues
about when, why and how sovereign principles in ancient China evolved over
time.
Transborder
sovereignty evolved because the Zhou king was able to establish a broad kinship
network, over a thousand fiefdoms, over the whole of ancient China, and keep
those fiefs linked through fealty to the Mandate of Heaven. Even when the number
of states had dwindled drastically to around one hundred fifty by the beginning
of the Chunqiu period the mandate was still a compelling linkage between the
remaining states. The mandate was strong, but the ability to develop and
control the internal regions of the state was very limited. Even up through the
beginning of the Spring and Autumn period non-Chinese peoples lived in the
lands between the fiefs and were outside the immediate control of the feudal
lords and largely excluded from the trade patterns that were developing.16
During
the Chunqiu period Zhou’s policies of expansion turned inwards. Many of the
social and technological improvements were focused on growing the individual
states. The ideological subsystem became dedicated to the expansion and
improvement of the individual states. This allowed for the absorption and
expulsion of the non-Chinese peoples and also allowed
for a dramatic increase in productive capacity. In so doing the states
increased the population from which they could draw troops for the incessant
and internecine wars in which they were engaged. Furthermore
they increased their capacity to fund those wars and provide the logistical
support necessary to sustain the wars over great distances. The inward focus of
the ideological subsystem was countered by the expanding importance of the
trade and security subsystems. By the time we reach the Zhanguo
period the sovereign principle had already shifted to absolute sovereignty.
Within the context of the warring states each had realized what was at stake
and the basic process by which one might achieve dominance. The rapid and
successive improvements in the bureaucracies’ extractive and organizational
capacities represent competitive attempts be the first to unite the seven
states and to be the first to reclaim the Mandate of Heaven. Sima Qian, the Grand Historian of the Han Dynasty, who
compiled much of what we know about ancient China, quotes Qin Ping Zheng’s
advisors as saying, “But now Your Majesty had raised troops to punish the evil
and remiss, brought peace to the world, made the entire area within the seas
into provinces and districts, and insured that laws and rulings shall proceed
from a single authority. From highest antiquity to the present, such a thing
has never occurred before, nor could the Five Emperors equal it.”17
This
implies of course that the seven states considered themselves a bound group,
“the world”, and that such a goal had been the aim of prior kings and emperors,
“such a thing has never occurred before.” We can therefore accept that absolute
sovereignty, as a principle, had existed prior to the first Qin emperor. The
shift from transborder sovereignty to absolute
sovereignty presents us with a distinctly different story than what we have
traditionally accepted. We tend to accept without question the existence of the
state before the nation, of the bureaucracy before territoriality, and of a
heteronomous feudalism before an ordered and comprehensible anarchy. Instead,
ancient China shows us a highly structured feudalism, a territorially bound
state that struggled to develop a bureaucracy to govern it, and a nation rich
in tradition before a state could grow powerful enough to govern it. These
variations on feudalism lead us back to the basic premise of this dissertation.
Sovereign principles are more complex, more fluid, and more varied than we tend
to realize. Furthermore, it does not seem that technology or war or wealth by
themselves dictate the course of this sovereign evolution and instead it seems
to reinforce the claim that we have made earlier, that it is the relative scope
of the underlying subsystems that dictates the timing and nature of sovereign
shifts.
1.
Mark E. Lewis,Warring States
Political History. In The Cambridge history of ancient
China: from the origins of civilization to 221 B.C, edited by M. Loewe and E.
L. Shaughnessy, 1999, pg. 635.
2.
Yu-ning Li, Introduction. In Shang Yang's reforms and
state control in China, edited by K. u. Yang and Y.
Li, 1977.
3.
Ibid. pg. 36
4.
phase 292 Sun Tzu refers to Lord Shang as a talented general, but not all that
skilled. Ibid.
5.
vicinity 293 Lewis. Warring States Political History.
6.
Burton Watson, Introduction. In Han Feizi: basic
writings, edited by F. Han and B. Watson, 2003, pg. 4. (Burton Watson,
Introduction. In Han Feizi: basic writings, edited by
F. Han and B. Watson, 2003, pg. 4).
7.
Fei Han and Burton Watson. Han Feizi: basic writings,
Translations from the Asian classics, 2003, pp. 37-8.
8.
This is suggested in ‘The Ten Faults’. Ibid.
9.
Hsü, and Linduff. Western
Chou civilization. pg. 85 Lewis. Warring States Political History. pg.620
10/299
Sunzi, and Clausewitz.
11/300
Ibid. pg.125
12.301
Hsü, and Linduff. Western
Chou civilization.
13.302
Shaughnessy.
14.
Hsü, Cho-yün. Ibid. The
Spring and Autumn Period.
15.
Lewis, Mark E. Ibid. Warring States Political History. pp. 597-8
16.
Hsü, Cho-yün. Ibid. The
Spring and Autumn Period.
17.
Qian Sima and Burton Watson, Records of the grand
historian, Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 42-3).