Introducing China
Founding an Empire: The Transformation of the Chinese State
E Bruce and A Taeko Brooks
(estimated publication date: 2010)
This wide-audience work follows the transformation process that led to the Chinese Empire, not from the viewpoint of the philosopher-advisors who presented their theories to the various rulers of the Warring States, but from the top: the rulers and their technicians. It extracts from its parent work, The Emergence of China, the parts that deal with practical statecraft, and links them by further examples and additional analysis. It is lean and mean, and serious readers have been waiting for something lean and mean for a long time.
1. The Second World War was decided at the Battle of Kursk, and the Battle of Kursk was decided by the Russian T-34 tank. There were the German armored divisions, moving out at dawn, and suddenly over the ridge the T-34 tanks came swarming: tough and nimble and fought to the last shell. By the end of the battle, the previously invincible German armies had been shattered. They would never again regain the initiative in the years that remained to them. It is very satisfyingly dramatic.
Fine, says the cold-eyed adult reader, but where did all those T-34's come from? What industrial process, what design prescience, delivered this medium tank at the time and place, and in the quantities needed to defeat hundreds of the newest German heavy tanks? The answer begins with an American race car driver, Walter Christie, whose new suspension design was rejected by the American army in 1928. A fast off-road tank with that suspension, the BT-2, was tested by the Russians in 1932. Further design modifications beyond the original Russian army specifications, supervised by Mikhail Koshkin and approved by Stalin over the opposition of Koshkin's colleagues, led to the T-34 medium tank, still with Christie's suspension, and first produced in September 1940. That design was frozen when war was declared with Germany in June 1941, and the T-34 went into mass production. Thousands were thus available for Kursk when that battle opened in July of 1943. The rest is history of the usual kind. But the real history of Kursk is an industrial history, supported by a typical backbiting political history, and it runs back for fifteen years before the first shots were fired at Kursk. Understanding those fifteen years is how you understand the battle.
2. Turning to the case of ancient China, we find that the usual account of the conquest of Shang by Jou centers on standard Bad Last Ruler atrocity stories, retailed happily by book after book (and Hansen's is not necessarily more condescending than the rest). The usual account of the overthrow of Jou is taken up by a moralistic tale of the concubine of the last Jou ruler, in a Bad Last Woman scenario. As for the immediate pre-Imperial period, the Warring states, most survey histories (and Roberts is not necessarily more supine than the others to the NeoConfucian stereotypes) see it too as a moral victory. They spend time on the human nature controversy, and make a point of siding with Mencius against Sywndz, as is the virtuous and also the polite thing to do (Mencius thought that people were basically nice). But none of them notice that what is at issue here is not some philosophical speculation, pursued for its own sake in a political vacuum, and in the interest of abstract intellectual curiosity. No. The human nature issue is a question of social engineering. It arose in this way: by the architects of the new state asking How can the common people be kept in line by law in peacetime, and induced to risk death in the army in wartime? What are the limits, and what are the methods, of changing people's natural inclinations, and fashioning them into a sufficiently effective killing machine? We here have the feudal Chinese state catching up fast to the Napoleonic state, complete with lawcodes and elaborate legal procedures (which, despite Skosey, were not inherited from antiquity, but were crafted on the spot, and on the run, within the Warring States period).
3. The geostrategy of Chin, in first conquering non-Sinitic Shu, before proceeding against the Central States, was exactly that of Hitler, who first doubled his armaments base by unopposed conquests of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, and secured his flank by an equally unopposed conquest of Norway, before starting his opposed and long expected attack on France. But does anyone point out this parallel? No, they retail invented stories of famous Warring States diplomats who, unfortunately, never existed, and they do not consider the armaments base at all.
4. Why did Ai-gung, the ruler of the third-rate power Lu, institute a land tax in 0483, four years before the death of Confucius? What exactly were the eastern statecraft theorists of the 04th century talking about, with their maxims of secrecy? What so frightened the other states about the disturbances in Yen in 0315? What was the big deal with the crossbow, and with iron swords rather than bronze swords? No standard history of the period gives those answers, or even asks those questions. This book does both.
The story of the Chinese Empire and the social transformations that preceded it has never before been told in this way. Readers of all ages will come away with a grownup understanding of something important, but something that before now has been treated at the level of traditional anecdotes and didactic interpretations. It is recommended for the general reader, but also, and perhaps especially, for statecraft professionals and comparative political scientists; for anyone who has not time to work through our comprehensive study, The Emergence of China, but who wants the gist of the matter, and wants it straight.
17 May 2007 / Contact The Project / Exit to Publications Page
