War, Politics and Society Inearly Modern China, 900-1795
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795 In this new take on China’s early modern history, Peter Lorge presents a fresh overview of the repeated recreation of the Chinese empire through military force. Emphasizing the relationship between the military and politics, and China’s power as an empire, Lorge argues that the strength of the territorial claims and political impact of each dynasty were determined primarily by their military capacity rather than by their cultural characteristics. Using a chronological narrative, War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795 breaks free of the dynastic boundaries that shape much scholarship in this area, focusing instead on the growing power of local elites. This power eventually led to a system of loose central control – to the sacrifice of real, centralized power over local affairs. Ideal for students of military and Asian studies, War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795 is essential reading for anyone interested in the military history of China. Peter Lorge is Senior Lecturer in Chinese History and Film at Vanderbilt University. WARFARE AND HISTORY Series Editor: Jeremy Black Professor of History, University of Exeter AIR POWER IN THE AGE OF TOTAL WAR MODERN CHINESE WARFARE, 1795–1989 John Buckley Bruce A. Elleman THE ARMIES OF THE CALIPHS: MODERN INSURGENCIES AND MILITARY AND SOCIETY IN THE COUNTER-INSURGENCIES: GUERRILLAS EARLY ISLAMIC STATE AND THEIR OPPONENTS SINCE 1750 Hugh Kennedy Ian F.W. Beckett THE BALKAN WARS, 1912–1913: PRELUDE MUGHAL WARFARE: IMPERIAL FRONTIERS TO THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND HIGHROADS TO EMPIRE 1500–1700 Richard C. Hall Jos Gommans ENGLISH WARFARE, 1511–1642 NAVAL WARFARE, 1815–1914 Mark Charles Fissel Lawrence Sondhaus OTTOMAN WARFARE, 1500–1700 EUROPEAN AND NATIVE AMERICAN Rhoads Murphey WARFARE, 1675–1815 Armstrong Starkey THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR: A MILITARY STUDY EUROPEAN WARFARE, 1494–1660 J.F. Lazenby Jeremy Black SAMURAI, WARFARE AND THE STATE IN EUROPEAN WARFARE, 1660–1815 EARLY MEDIEVAL JAPAN Jeremy Black Karl F. Friday THE FIRST PUNIC WAR SEAPOWER AND NAVAL J.F. Lazenby WARFARE, 1650–1830 Richard Harding FRONTIERSMEN: WARFARE IN AFRICA SINCE 1950 THE SOVIET MILITARY EXPERIENCE Anthony Clayton Roger R. Reese GERMAN ARMIES: WAR AND GERMAN VIETNAM POLITICS, 1648–1806 Spencer C. Tucker Peter H. Wilson THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE THE GREAT WAR 1914–1918 AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF Spencer C. Tucker AMERICAN SOCIETY Harry M. Ward THE IRISH AND BRITISH WARS, 1637–1654. WAR AND THE STATE IN EARLY TRIUMPH, TRAGEDY, AND FAILURE MODERN EUROPE: SPAIN, THE James Scott Wheeler DUTCH REPUBLIC AND SWEDEN AS FISCAL-MILITARY STATES, 1500–1660 ISRAEL’S WARS, 1947–1993 Jan Glete Ahron Bregman WARFARE AND SOCIETY THE KOREAN WAR: NO VICTORS, IN EUROPE, 1792–1914 NO VANQUISHED Geoffrey Wawro Stanley Sandler WARFARE AND SOCIETY IN EUROPE, 1898 MEDIEVAL CHINESE WARFARE, 300–900 TO THE PRESENT David A. Graff Michael S. Neiberg MEDIEVAL NAVAL WARFARE, 1000–1500 WARFARE AT SEA, 1500–1650 Susan Rose Jan Glete WARFARE IN ATLANTIC AFRICA, 1500–1800: WAR AND SOCIETY IN IMPERIAL MARITIME CONFLICTS AND THE ROME, 31 bc–ad 284 TRANSFORMATION OF EUROPE Brian Campbell John K. Thornton WARFARE AND SOCIETY IN THE WARFARE, STATE AND SOCIETY IN THE BARBARIAN WEST BYZANTINE WORLD, 565–1204 Guy Halsall John Haldon WAR IN THE MODERN WORLD SINCE 1815 WAR IN THE EARLY MODERN Edited by Jeremy Black WORLD, 1450–1815 Edited by Jeremy Black WORLD WAR TWO: A MILITARY HISTORY Jeremy Black WARS OF IMPERIAL CONQUEST IN AFRICA, 1830–1914 WARFARE IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST, Bruce Vandervort TO c. 1600 bc William J. Hamblin WESTERN WARFARE IN THE AGE OF THE CRUSADES, 1000–1300 John France War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795 Peter Lorge First published 2005 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2–4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2005 Peter Lorge All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN10: 0–415–31690–1 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–31691–X (pbk) ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–31690–3 (hbk) ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–31691–0 (pbk) Contents Introduction 1 1 Unity through war, 900–1005 17 2 Empires at peace, empires at war, 1005–1142 39 3 Three empires and a century of war, 1142–1272 58 4 A Chinese empire, 1272–1355? 78 5 The Chinese conquest dynasty, 1355–1435 98 6 The politics of imperial collapse, 1435–1610 119 7 A people created for war, 1610–1683 139 8 The Old Man of Ten Complete Military Victories, 1684–1795 158 Conclusion 175 Index 185 vii Introduction For in war it’s experience of action that matters. The so-called Seven Military Classics are full of nonsense about water and fire, lucky omens and advice on the weather, all at random and con- tradicting each other. I told my officials once that if you followed these books, you’d never win a battle . All one needs is an inflexible will and careful planning. The Kangxi emperor (1654–1772), Emperor of China1 There is no such thing as “China.” In the same sense, there is also no such thing as “Europe.” By this I mean that the terms “China” and “Europe” do not refer to specific, unchanging territories, or static, monolithic cultures. And while there are places and aspects of culture that are undeniably Chinese, in whatever sense we wish to understand this, there are also places, and aspects of culture, that have less clear pedigrees. This is not to say that the term is useless or meaningless, only that it is not neutral and needs to be defined. A given dynasty’s territorial and cultural claims were political statements and must be understood as such. The extent to which those claims corresponded to what a government actually controlled was a military question. In every dynasty since the Qin (221–206 bce), “China” was an inherently imperial term, defined politically and enforced militarily.2 The traditional Chinese state (after 221 bce) has not been commonly charac- terized as martial or even imperial in the sense that it encompassed diverse lands and peoples who did not share its culture. It has most usually been portrayed as a civil-oriented bureaucracy, staffed by scholar-officials who qualified for their positions by passing rigorous exams, dominated by Confucian beliefs, and held together at the most basic level by a common Han Chinese culture which spanned most of the Chinese ecumene.3 While this picture is substantially correct in its particulars, it is incomplete and does not explain how the Chinese empire was repeatedly reconstituted in the last millennium of imperial history. By contrast, empires were more sporadic in South Asia, as shown by the Mauryan (322–184 bce), Gupta (320–550 ce) and Mughals (1526–1857);4 or in Europe, where, after the Romans, no one was able to build an empire of 1 WAR, POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN EARLY MODERN CHINA comparable territorial or cultural span for the lifetime of even a single con- queror. Rather than attempt to explain why South Asians and Europeans were so inept at South Asian and European empire building respectively, I will attempt to explain instead why the Chinese, Mongols and Manchus were so skilled at Chinese empire building. First and foremost, all of the successful imperial Chinese dynasts were extremely skilled in the use of war in state formation and maintenance. Chinese empires were not created by the cultivation of virtue, a fundamental cultural orientation to political order, or ideological pleas for ethnic unity; they were created by decades of war and political strife. Organized violence was applied toward political goals intelligently and ruthlessly, with the targets of that violence almost exclusively the power elite, the men and women who held significant political, military, cultural or economic power. (The actual effects of that violence, however, fell most often upon the farmers and ordinary people in the path of armies.) Although this has been most apparent during the rule of “alien” conquerors like the Mongols or Manchus, it has been equally true of the Han Chinese dynasts as well. All imperial dynasties were conquest dynasties. What Chinese dynasties did better than any South Asian, Middle Eastern, or European would-be conquerors was to centralize the control of military means under a single ruler, without leaving local strongmen the possibility of raising their own legitimate military forces. There was nothing like the feudal Euro- pean nobility, who, at least originally, owed their king military service with a certain force of men for a certain time, in return for their lands. The Tang dynasty (618–907) had come to grief by delegating too much military and civil authority to border commanders; the Southern Song (1127–1279) border fell to Mongol entreaties aimed at the Lü family; the third Ming emperor (though he counted himself the second) usurped his position from his base as military commander on the northern border.