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THE FIRST EMPIRES of CHINA a Review Article by RAFE DE THE FIRST EMPIRES OF CHINA A review article BY RAFE DE CRESPIGNY The Australian National University The Cambridge History of China [General editors, John K. Fairbank and Denis Twitchett]: Volume1: The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C.-A.D. 220, edited by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe, Cambridge University Press, 1986, xlii + 981 pages: US $ 110.00. This most recent volume of the Cambridge History of China is a welcome addition to the series and marks a major development in the study of early imperial China. It gives a summary of Western scholarship of Qin %t and Han and it provides a point of de- parture for future research and analysis in that field.' Indeed, the nature and scope of this volume are delicately bal- anced. As the general editors of the Cambridge series observe in their preface, recent discoveries in archaeology have produced such a quantity of new information and material that the earlier history of China, and notably that of the Zhou JSj period in the first millen- nium B.C., is now in such a state of flux that it is effectively impos- sible to present an interpretation of the pre-C,?,in period that will be widely accepted in the scholarly world. It is for this reason the present volume is numbered as the first of the series: and one may well feel that the four and a half centuries of Qin and Han are just barely capable of being controlled inside their designated format-even if that format is one thousand pages long. Treatment of the Sul rpj and Tang * dynasties has been al- located two volumes, and if one considers the extent and detail of those which deal with more modern history, as for example the two volumes on nineteenth century China and the two on Republican China, then one may appreciate the compression that has been required to bring the essential historical material and analysis on Qin and Han within the scope of a single book. It is true that there is more material available on later periods, but there is still a considerable amount that can be known about 264 the Han, and there is room and need for a great deal of analysis and debate. Let us, however, first consider briefly the various con- tributions to the collected work. The introductory pages include an editors' preface, and then a set of tables of official titles,2 weights and measures,3 and useful lists of the emperors of Former Han and of the emperors and their empresses of Later Han. There fol- lows an essay by Michael Loewe on the sources of the history, written and archaeological, on the ancient and recent scholarly treatment of those materials, and some discussion on the nature of the early empires.4 The first substantive chapter is that by Derk Bodde, writing on "The State and Empire of Ch'in". Appropriately, Professor Bodde provides an account of the early history of the the rising state of Qin and its position in the structure of China during the Zhou period. He follows with an account of the success and the failure of the Qin empire, and a discussion of the political developments and the philosophy of the period. An appendix provides a useful bibliographical essay and a discussion of some special topics. His whole work is balanced and sensible, and he has useful comments on such controversies as the burning of books and the "burying" of scholars, on the exaggerated size of armies recorded by early texts, and on the alleged "barbarous" nature of Qin. The next four chapters present a narrative history of the Han .
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