Part VI. Iron Age China

In this section we are going to explore Chinese politics and philosophy from the late Chou, the Warring States Era through the Ch’in dictatorship, into the Han dynasty. Basically Northern China had centralized around the Yellow River watershed under the Shang, the original Middle Kingdom. Under the Western Chou the centralization continued with an expansion of their sphere of influence to the east and south. During the first part of the Eastern Chou, the Spring and Autumn Era, under the influence of feudalism, China began splintering politically. This was a period of decentralization. During the next period, the Warring States Era, the more powerful states began gobbling up the weaker ones. This culminated in the Ch’in state and dictatorship, at which time an expanded China was united under a single emperor again. This was a period of increasing centralization. The Han dynasty replaced the Ch’in and continued the process of the unification and expansion of the Chinese political system. After about 400 years their dynasty crumbled and China disintegrated politically. This section will examine the section of the Chinese political cycle that included unification and consolidation, i.e. from the Warring States Period to the Han. This political crystallization will be examined in three distinct sections, examining the influence and development of the different political philosophies including: Taoism, Confucianism, and an influential offshoot Legalism. This coagulation will be considered as a whole.

Chapter 39: Warring States Era (403-221 BCE)

The last two hundred years of the Chou dynasty was marked by such turmoil that it was called ‘the Warring States Era’. During this era the larger states began gobbling up the smaller ones. This was opposite of the previous Spring and Autumn Era, when the Chou empire was splintering into many smaller states.

A Change in the Rules of War

In part this was due to a change in the rules of war. During Spring and Autumn era the Chou states, while engaged in constant warfare, engaged in polite warfare. During the next few centuries the warfare became rude. By the last few hundred years of the Chou the Ch’in and others of the Chinese states had changed the Chou rules of war. During the middle Chou, as in Renaissance Europe, war had become more of a game for most of the Chou principalities. Small amounts of land would change hands, to change again soon. Treaties were signed, negotiations were made, alliances were confirmed and broken, but the rulers, all coming from a similar class and even similar families, fought politely according to their own rules of war.[1]

Etiquette of war

As examples, in 638 BC the Duke of Sung refused to attack an army that was crossing a river. In 594 BC the King of Ch'u when besieging a city, found out from a negotiator that they were eating their children. He was impressed by their honesty and so went home.[2] The warrior mentality seeks out war as a way of testing a man’s strength and courage rather than as a way of acquiring more possessions. In some ways the acquisition of power and positions would get in the way of being a warrior. Ruling takes a lot of time away from battling, which is the real love. Hence winning was secondary to the battle.[3]

From the fringes of the Empire, the Ch’in State fought to win, to conquer, and to vanquish. They did not enter battle for the sake of battle itself, but instead entered battle to increase their power. They fought to expand their land holdings, which might entail enslaving and/or slaughtering their enemies. They gobbled up more and more land, executing the old nobility of the Chou as they went. They wanted no threats to their leadership. With the passing of the old nobility went the warrior culture replaced by the power culture. In many ways the Duke of Chou with his concern for the citizenry was an aberration in-between the warrior and power cultures. It was during this time of transition in warfare that Sun Wu wrote his famous book, “The Art of War”, based upon Taoist principles.

A mechanism constantly in play throughout World history is the softening of a culture followed by its being conquered. In this case, the Chou-Shang culture intellectualized the warrior mentality. Battle was for nobility and honor rather than for raw power. The culture begins cultivating the arts. The soldiers are more interested in fitness and looking good and less interested in actual battle. The barbarian from the fringes, one who is not participating in the peaceful culture, or perhaps is not allowed to, with nothing to lose, comes barging in, destroying the tea party. This was the Ch’in state.

Causes of change: 1. Nomads on horses

What caused the big change in style of warfare?

There were two technologies, which challenged the traditional Chou culture. First the nomadic tribes on the northern and western borders of China had developed a new superior military technology based upon an archer with a compound bow mounted on a horse. His horse could easily out-maneuver a chariot, and the arrows from his compound bow were powerful enough to pierce armor. The horses could travel large distances quickly.

“Mounted on horseback and using the compound bow, the nomads were more than a match for the Chinese troops, who were finally forced to abandon the chariot and copy both the methods and the weapons of their attackers. The influence of the nomads on the Chinese did not end with warfare.” [4]

Armies with mounted horsemen quickly made the chariot military technology obsolete. In many ways the military technology of the mounted horseman was the dominant military technology through until the advent of motorized vehicles in the 20th century. The knight on his charging horse, the cavalry, whether in Europe or in the United States, are all manifestations of the mounted horseman of the nomads of Central Asia.

The Chou princes of the Spring and Autumn Era had been employing chariot military technology for close to 1000 years to dominate their countryside and fight amongst each other. As mentioned, charioteering became institutionalized as a necessary talent of the Chinese aristocracy. This emphasis upon charioteering was eventually extended into Taiji, especially the horse stance, with its attendant focus upon balance, rooting and military training. Over this long period of time the forms of fighting had become ritualized. With these nomadic barbarians attacking the provinces in the west and north, these provinces, as a means of survival, had to adapt or perish.

While the inner provinces could easily maintain their Chinese illusions because they had not been challenged, the provinces upon the borders of the west and north were forced to adapt. Remember the Chou also came from the Western borders, but then moved east. Hence the internal provinces held onto the past while the external provinces had to move into the future. Their mind-set was shattered.

To understand the eventual consolidation of China under the First Emperor, let us explore the Chinese conception of boundary. The Chinese notion of boundary was not something set, but something that could be extended or contracted depending upon circumstances. For the Chinese of the Western Chou dynasty, China was the center of the universe and the barbarians on the exterior were merely uncivilized parts of the Empire, which would eventually become assimilated through proper rites.

When the mounted horse technology of the barbarians proved superior to their chariot technology, it was not only an embarrassment; it also challenged their worldview. The provinces in the interior could easily maintain their unchallenged illusions, while the boundary provinces had to learn the superior new military techniques from the ‘barbarians’ on their border in order to survive. They were then able to use this technology against their neighbors to conquer and dominate them.

Prior to the advent of the warrior on horseback, a military parity had been reached between the proliferating states of the Spring and Autumn Era. While one might be stronger, alliances between the weaker states would neutralize the threat, leading to a virtual stalemate between the multitudes of states. This stalemate was maintained because everyone was using the same military technology and forming alliances with provinces of similar cultural background.

The transmission of the superior military technology to the border-states gave them a technological advantage, which could not be simply neutralized through mutual alliances. If the internal Chinese provinces could have formed alliances with the nomadic border cultures, this could have neutralized the power of the border-states, but the internal mind-set placed these nomadic cultures in a sub-human status. Thus making alliances with these barbaric sub-humans made as much sense to the ‘civilized’ Chinese as making bargains with a wolf pack. This cultural blindness was to continually plague Chinese policy making throughout their history, unto the 20th century.

2. Iron farm implements & Irrigation

Combined with the superior mounted horse technology was the new agricultural technologies based around iron. The durable iron tools allowed for a greater agricultural yield. Simultaneous with the iron tools were new irrigation techniques assisted by these hard iron tools. While this new agricultural technology was available to everyone, it needed intentionality to work. The interior states were happy just the way things were. They had enough food to wage their petty wars. They liked their chariots. Why change when the traditional ways had proved adequate since antiquity. The new ways of iron making and irrigation needed large-scale centralization to work. Just as centralization was needed to control the flooding of the Yellow River in antiquity, now centralization was needed to take advantage of the new agricultural technology based upon iron.

“All these innovations could only be properly developed by large-scale social organization with unified central authority. The hereditary aristocrats with their vested interest in their small-scale feudal authority, their endless squabbling among themselves, and their concern for the fixed and unchanging feudal code of conduct and of ceremonial were neither willing nor able to make use of them. But in states such as Ch’in on the frontiers of this feudal world, where the old order was not so firmly established, the king was able to carry out sweeping social reforms and establish a unified central control. The new techniques in agriculture and water-control brought in greatly increased revenue, which could pay for a more powerful army. This in turn led to territorial conquests and more resources to exploit.”[5]

Thus the exterior states were able to dominate the inner states through superior military techniques learned from the nomads of the steppes. Then when they seized their land they were able to use the new agricultural techniques to irrigate large areas of land. During this period “a tributary of Yellow River was harnessed to irrigate over half a million acres.”[6]

Thus the unwillingness of the interior Chinese provinces to adapt to the new technologies because they were content with their old technologies led to their eventual demise. The frontier states which were less rooted in tradition were able to more easily exploit the new technologies to dominate, swallow up their neighbors and further expand their holdings. With this increased prosperity they were able to expand their army and dominate more states. Their willingness to use the new technologies was the key to their success, just as the unwillingness to change led to the demise of the more ‘civilized’ states. This mechanism led to the increasing centralization of China, which eventually culminated in the Ch’in Empire.

While alliances were successful at neutralizing military threats during the Spring and Autumn Era, they were helpless against the advantages of centralization during China’s Iron Age. Indeed as China centralized five states in the northeast allied themselves unsuccessfully ‘against the power of the semi-barbarian Ch’in, now looming dangerously on the western horizon’.[7]