EXCURSIONS IN CHINESE MILITARY HISTORY

Abstract

It was John K. Fairbank who, in his preface to the pioneer collection of articles on Chinese military history, edited by Frank A. Kierman (1974), called attention to military historiography as a discipline so far largely ignored by Western Sinology. To this day nothing much has changed, as David A. Graff and Robin Higham noted lately: English-language literature on Chinese military history, ancient and modern, is extremely limited; for premodern China in particular, there is only a handful of books, several of which are now out of print (2002, pp. 1-2). l The state of research on Chinese military history in other Western languages unfortunately is in no better shape. The current level of research in English is outlined by the authors of the anthology edited by Graff and Higham (2002). The historic significance (Geschichtsmachtigkeit) of military activities in China is reflected in an enormous and many-faceted corpus of sources in context with nomadic and sedentary tribes beyond the borders, ethnic minorities within these borders, rebellions of millenarian and social provenance, military revolts, civil wars, campaigns against bandits and pirates as well as conflicts with other states. The importance of the armed forces in China is exemplified by two quantifications: for the period from 210 B.C. to 1900 a total of 222,887 uprisings, about 105 per year, among them 1,440 greater peasant uprisings, and between 215 B.C. and 1684 at least 1,109 military conflicts with nomads of Central Asia of greater or lesser significance (Deng 2000, p. 7). Hans van de Ven cautions against a blanket condemnation of the military and militarization and the assumption that they play a purely destructive role. Redistribution of resources on a large scale, management of large economic entities, indus-