Military Thought in Early China

244 Pages·2017·4.14 MB·English

by  Christopher C Rand

Military Thought
in Early China

Military Thought
in Early China
Christopher C. Rand
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2017 State University of New York
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Printed in the United States of America
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Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rand, Christopher C. (Christopher Clark), 1950– author.
Title: Military thought in early China / by Christopher C. Rand.
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York Press, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016031409 (print) | LCCN 2016044927 (ebook) | ISBN
9781438465173 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438465180 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Military art and science—China—History. | China—Intellectual
life—History. | Militarism—China—History.
Classification: LCC U43.C6 R44 2017 (print) | LCC U43.C6 (ebook) | DDC
355.001—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031409
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
Prologue 1
Chapter 1
The Emergence of the Wen/Wu Problem 5
The Achievement of Balance 5
The Western Zhou Solution 11
Evolution in Chunqiu Times 16
New Solutions in the Zhanguo Era 22
Militarism 22
Compartmentalism 25
Syncretism 26
Conclusion 29
Chapter 2
The Metaphysics of Generalship 31
The General as Sage 31
Psychical Power 36
M etaphysical Dynamics 44
The Ultimate Battle 53
Conclusion 56
Chapter 3
The Practical and Meta-Practical 59
Organizational Models 60
Training and Administration 69
Military Law 71
vi Contents
War Preparedness 75
Intelligence Measures 78
Collection and Analysis 79
Deception and Covert Action 91
Views of Military Thinkers 93
Conclusion 96
Chapter 4
The Moral Dimension of War 97
Laozi 97
Kongzi 99
Yanzi 100
Mengzi 103
Xunzi 111
Mozi 115
Songzi 120
Military Thinkers 123
Conclusion 128
Chapter 5
The Permutations of Western Han 129
Realignment of Solutions 129
W en/wu and Foreign Policy 137
A Double Paradox 143
Effects of Social and Institutional Changes 151
Conclusion 158
Epilogue 161
Notes 163
Bibliography 209
Index 223
Preface
The writing of this brief history of military thought in early China began
more than forty years ago as the topic of my doctoral dissertation in
the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard
University. At that time, in the mid-1970s, the Cultural Revolution in
the People’s Republic of China was drawing to a close and archeological
excavations throughout China were just beginning to reveal entirely new
facets of cultural life in the early Sinitic realm. It was an exciting time to be
studying early Chinese intellectual history (as it continues to be today), and I
was eager to examine how these new findings, particularly regarding military
affairs, fit with our previous knowledge of how early Chinese philosophers
thought about their world and society.
Under the guidance of Professors Benjamin I. Schwartz, Yu Ying-shih,
Yang Lien-sheng, and others at Harvard, I succeeded in completing my
PhD thesis in May 1977 on the role of military thought in early Chinese
intellectual history. I began writing journal articles based on my thesis and
looked forward to obtaining a suitable position in academia where I could
teach Chinese history and literature, as I had already done as a teaching fellow
for Professors John K. Fairbank and James R. Hightower, and continue my
research into Chinese intellectual developments. However, destiny changed
that hoped-for trajectory. Rather than obtaining an academic position, I
became an employee of the United States government, where I continued
to work on Chinese affairs for most of the next thirty years.
After retirement, I decided to resume my study of China in the role
of an independent scholar. One of my projects has been to reassess my
dissertation of long ago to see whether my conclusions were still valid in the
wake of continuing archeological revelations in the intervening years and new
examinations by other researchers of the development of military thought in
China. There have undoubtedly been many excellent achievements in this
vii
viii Preface
field in the decades since I left Harvard, including publications by those who
were my fellow graduate students in the 1970s, such as Professor Robin D.S.
Yates at McGill University and Professor Victor H. Mair at the University
of Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, I felt that the approach and conclusions
of my forty-year-old study, if thoroughly updated and succinctly recast,
might still make a small contribution to a general understanding of this
unique strain of Chinese philosophical inquiry. For that reason I proceeded
with a total revamping of my earlier work, sharpening my arguments and
adding new evidence in order to make a more complete history of the ideas
underpinning military strategy in early China.
I can only hope that the reader will find my efforts worthwhile.
Prologue
For a long time, both inside and outside China, relatively little scholarly
attention was given to military thought in early China beyond consideration
of the best known of Chinese military treatises, Sunzi’s Military Methods
(Sunzi bingfa 孫子兵法). This was chiefly because of the Chinese traditional
bias in the imperial era against the value of military affairs in comparison to
civil affairs, as well as a limited number of extant primary source materials
on warfare from the early period of China’s history. Scholars have long
been aware from the fifty-three titles compiled by Liu Xiang 劉向 (79–8
BCE) and his son, Liu Xin 劉歆 (ca. 50 BCE–23 CE), and placed by Ban
Gu 班固 (32–92 CE) in the military book section (“Bingshu lüe” 兵書
略) of the “Treatise on Literature” (“Yiwen zhi” 藝文志) of the Hanshu 漢
書 that there was a wealth of works devoted to martial affairs in the Han
and earlier periods of Chinese history. However, most of these works were
presumed permanently lost.1
Since the 1970s, however, several previously unavailable documents
devoted to military strategy and tactics or related lore—some perhaps
versions of works listed in the Hanshu “Treatise on Literature”—have been
unearthed from widely dispersed archeological sites dating to the Western
Han 西漢 dynasty (202 BCE–8 CE) and earlier. The most prominent of
these are works addressing military lore and theory that were found in
Western Han tombs in Yinqueshan 銀雀山, Shandong Province, in 1972–
1973; Mawangdui 馬王堆, Hunan Province, in 1972–1974; Dingxian 定
縣, Hebei Province, in 1973; Shangsunjiazhai 上孫家寨, Qinghai Province,
in 1978; and Zhangjiashan 張家山, Hubei Province, in 1983. In addition,
the Shanghai Museum acquired in 1994 a previously unknown political-
military treatise centered on the state of Lu 魯.2
As a result of these finds, scholars are now in a position to build a more
comprehensive picture of military thinking in the Han and pre-Han periods
1