The Culture of War in China The Culture of War in China Empire and the Military under the Qing Dynasty JOANNA WALEY-COHEN I.B.Tauris Publishers LONDON • NEW YORK Contents List of Illustrations vii List of Maps ix Preface xi 1 Military Culture and the Qing Empire 1 Wen and Wu 3 The New Qing History 5 The Militarization of Culture 13 The Phases of the Qing Imperial Project 17 The First Phase, 1636-1681 17 The Second Phase, 1681-1760 19 The Transition Years, 1749-1760 20 The Third Phase, 1760-1799 21 2 Commemorating War 23 Stelae Inscriptions 26 Rituals as Commemoration 38 War Illustrations, Portraits, and other Commemorative Paintings 41 The Documentary Record 45 Conclusion 46 3 Religion, War, and Empire-Building 48 Religion under the Qing 49 Qing Emperors and Tibetan-Buddhism 51 The Second Jinchuan War 55 Magic and War 57 After the War 61 Conclusion 65 vi THE CULTURE OF WAR IN CHINA 4 Military Ritual and the Qing Empire 66 Grand Inspections (DayueDayue) 71 Dispatching Generals Embarking on Campaign (MingjiangMingjiang) 75 Welcoming a Victorious Army upon Return (JiaolaoJiaolao) 77 The Presentation and Reception of Captives (xianfuxianfu, shoufu) 80 The Autumn Hunts at Mulan 83 Documenting and Disseminating Military Ritual 84 Conclusion 87 5 Changing Spaces of Empire 89 The Qing Promotion of Martial Values 90 Militarizing Government Culture and Institutions 93 The Eight Banners 97 Militarization of the Landscape 99 Conclusion 106 6 Conclusion 108 Notes 113 Bibliography 137 Index 149 List of Illustrations Cover The Qianlong emperor hunting, accompanied by a female attendant. Anonymous handscroll. Palace Museum, Beijing. Fig I Fu Heng’s Tomb (front) 27 Fig II Fu Heng’s Tomb (back) 28 Fig III Temple of True Victory 31 Fig IV Jinchuan Tower, Xiangshan 59 Fig V Hall of Great Administration, Shenyang 102 List of Maps Map I The Qing Empire, circa 1820 xiv Preface This book brings together more than a decade’s work on different aspects of mili- tary culture in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China, a period generally regarded as having represented the high point of the Manchu Qing dynasty (1636- 1912). Thus by now my argument has become familiar, but when I began research for the project, scholars had yet to consider the idea of military culture, or the mili- tarization of culture, in Qing China. The main body of the book consists of four essays (Chapters Two, Three, Four, and Five) earlier versions of which have already appeared in scholarly journals and in anthologies. I have added a new introduction and a conclusion, so that it is possible either to read each chapter on its own or to read the whole series cumulatively. In publishing updated versions of my earlier work in a single volume, it is my intention to make these studies of Qing military culture accessible to a much wider audience, because as an analytic device it seems to account for so much of everything else. Work on this study began at a time when what is now a substantial body of scholarship known as the “new Qing history” was still in its infancy; over the years it has both contributed to, and been infl uenced by, that work. The new his- tory has thrown a completely new light on our understanding of the past two or three centuries, as I explain in the next chapter. Not least, in tandem with other scholarship on the rise of nationalism, it has made us refl ect much more care- fully on what we mean by “China,” and “the Chinese,” and how the meaning of these terms constantly shifted, including under Manchu rule. Although it has remained diffi cult in this book not to use such terms as a form of shorthand, the usage is not intended to imply anything fi xed or monolithic. The study focuses on the period from 1636, when the Qing fi rst proclaimed their new empire, to the end of the eighteenth century, which is generally consid- ered to mark the beginning of the end for Qing rule. After a century and a half of extraordinary territorial expansion under three emperors, 1799 saw the death of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-95), who three years earlier had abdicated because he did not wish to appear unfi lial by surpassing in the length of his reign his illus- trious grandfather, the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662-1722). In fact Qianlong, a com- xii THE CULTURE OF WAR IN CHINA petitive man, hoped to outshine his grandfather in almost every respect, including conquering more territory, governing more people, collecting more art, building more palaces, writing more poetry, and so on. It was his particular talent and ambi- tion to excel, to take matters a little further, to go the extra mile—and so, although he was not the initiator of the Qing campaign to transform culture in a manner fully consonant with and reiterative of the martial triumphs that led to unprec- edented imperial expansion, it is he who is its true protagonist, and hence whose utterances and actions are the most prominent in the pages that follow. Like it or not, writers are often infl uenced by their subjects, and I have often had occasion to think of Qianlong’s close attention to issues of translation between languages and cultures in trying to fi nd the words to describe what I refer to as the “militarization of culture.” There is no really appropriate, unencumbered term in either Chinese or English to express this concept. I have used “culture” to refer to the broad cultural environment, in the sense of ways of thinking and patterns of understanding, as well as more specifi cally to the fi ne arts, architecture, writ- ten texts, religion and ritual, and so on. “Militarization” refers to the injection of military and imperial themes into almost every sphere of cultural life, broadly con- ceived. It should be clear that my discussion of the Qing “militarization of culture” is not intended to denote an absolute change. Rather, it is intended to express the recasting of culture by introducing a more military spirit, or ambience, than before, without suggesting that as a consequence some or any of the more familiar forms of cultural life fell into abeyance. This shift often occurred as the direct result of deliberate imperial policy, but sometimes it was a more serendipitous consequence of that policy. It arose in the context of emperors’ quest for universality, which at its simplest meant that they tried to be all things to all their diverse subjects and thereby to rule them all. I have accumulated enormous debts of gratitude in bringing this project to fruition. I am grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John M. Olin Foundation for funding crucial portions of the research on which this work is based, and to librarians and archivists at the First Historical Archives, Beijing; the National Library, Beijing; the Stone Carvings Museum, Beijing; the Cultural Relics Bureau, Beijing; the Institut de France, Paris; Yale University Library; and at Bobst Library, New York University. For comments on various versions of this work as it developed, I thank participants and audiences from the many different fora in the United States, Europe, and New Zealand to whom I have presented it in different guises; and my colleagues and students, past and present, at New York University. I acknowledge permission to draw on the following already-published essays of mine, as follows: “Commemorating War in Eighteenth-Century China,” Modern Asian Studies 30.1 (October 1996, Cambridge UniversityUniversity Press);Press); “Religion,“Religion, War,War, and PREFACE xiii Empire-Building in Eighteenth-Century China,” International History Review XX.2 (June 1998); “Changing Spaces of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Qing China,” in Nicola di Cosmo and Don J. Wyatt, eds., Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History (London and New York: Routledge/Curzon (Taylor and Francis), 2003); “Military Ritual and the Qing Empire,” in Nicola di Cosmo, ed., Warfare in Inner Asian History (Leiden: EJ Brill, 2002); “The New Qing History,” in Radical History Review (Winter 2004, Duke University Press); and “On the Militarization of Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Qing Empire,” in Common Knowledge 12.1 (Winter(Winter 2006, Duke UniversityUniversity Press)Press). I am indebted for advice, support, and assistance in matters small and large to Kristin Bayer, Richard Belsky, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Michael Chang, Michael Crook, Nixi Cura, Dai Yingcong, Nicola di Cosmo, Brad Gallant, Isabel Gallant, Kit Gallant, Jonathan Hay, Anne Higonnet, Ji Yaping, Rebecca Karl, Paul Kennedy, Cary Liu, Liu Yuan, Iona Man-cheong, Susan Naquin, Nie Chongzheng, Geoffrey Parker, Peter Perdue, Evelyn Rawski, Moss Roberts, Jonathan Spence, Don Wyatt, Louise Young, Marilyn Young, and Angela Zito. Dungjai Pungauthaikan typeset the text. Special thanks also to Maggie Clinton for crucial help with the manuscript in its fi nal stages, and for preparing the index. This book is dedicated to my teachers, who at every turn, like Qianlong, have done so much more than was strictly necessary. In particular I should like to men- tion Michael Loewe and Denis Twitchett, who introduced me to the intricacies of Chinese language and history when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and Jonathan Spence and Yu Ying-shih, who when I was in graduate school at Yale showed me, in so many ways, how to pursue my interests and stay on course. I hope that this dedication will compensate in some measure for my inability to convey adequately in mere language my gratitude to them all.