Iron and Steel in Ancient China by Donald B. Wagner

Abstract

Book Reviews Iron and Steel in Ancient China. By Donald B. Wagner. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993. Pp. xiv+573; illustrations, tables, notes, appendix, bibliography, index, f 320.00; $183.00. “Ancient China” in this book signifies the time span from the more or less prehistoric “Neolithic and Shang” to the third century b.c.—that is, the beginning of the Han dynasty. After a summary of the more familiar bronze age in China, the narrative text occupies 146 pages, another 100 being devoted to “a survey of early iron artifacts,” 138 pages to “metallographic studies,” and 126 pages to tables and supporting material (including English translations from Chinese sources). Twenty pages are given to a political-geographic survey of ironworks and ironmasters. Donald Wagner tells us that his “real innovation” is the subordination of the historical narrative to “a discussion of the methodological problems” involving “the sources,” which are written reports and material remains. These sources are identified and meticulously de­ scribed. Thus, the narrative text is a kind of conclusion to a formidable collection of specialist research—to the benefit of the nonspecialist— and the book can be recommended to a spectrum of readers ranging from the specialist in both sinology and the history of metallurgy to anyone curious about that fundamental anthropological conception, the “iron age.” The historical importance of iron has been universally recognized since 1819 when C.J. Thomsen devised a scheme for organizing “prehistory” into three “ages”—stone, bronze, and iron—in the course of classifying the ancient tools in the Danish National Museum. Each of these “ages” has been the subject of an immense literature. In 1988 the iron age, now held to have begun about 1500 b.c., was evaluated in The Coming of the Age of Iron, edited by T. A. Wertheim and J. D. Muhly, a virtually worldwide survey including practically everybody—“each soci­ ety . . . came to [iron] almost independently” (Wertheim and Muhly, p. xvii). But the Wertheim and Muhly book, although it includes a substantial chapter (164 pages) on “iron and steel technology in East and Southeast Asia” byJoseph Needham, was centered, so far as origins are concerned, on the ancient Near East. Needham’s essay followed his earlier publication, TheDevelopment ofIron and Steel Technology in China (London, 1958), and both were “pre­ views” of the still unpublished “Section 36” (mining and metallurgy) Permission to reprint a review from this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 605 606 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE of his monumental Science and Civilisation in China, as were his few remarks in the introductory volume (1954) of that work. He said there that “there can be little doubt” that the use of iron began about the middle of the Chou period (this would be about 700 b.c.) and quickly spread, that it was an important factor in the disintegration of the Chou dynasty (after about 500 b.c.), and that “iron working” was particularly associated with the Ch’in (221-207 b.c.), “the first state to achieve hegemony.” Far from contradicting these generalities, Wagner tends to confirm them and naturally to elaborate. He finds the earliest certain evidence of “well dated” iron artifacts in the ancient state ofWu (centered on the Yangtze near its mouth). They are dated about 500 b.c. and gain literary support from textual references to “Yu the Great.” Once one of the founding deities of China, Yu, who separated the earth from the waters, has been brought down by skeptical modern scholars to about 700 b.c. but left as one of the earliest Chinese to concern themselves with technology—he is the founder of “civil engineering” for his waterworks. And the beginning of iron technology continues to hinge on Yu’s uncertain date. If Needham’s “Section 36” follows the examples of earlier sections of his great work it will be massive and exhaustive. One also assumes that it will be wide-ranging in time and space—but not that it will supplant Wagner’s book, whose nearly 600 pages deal only with iron, and end, chronologically, about 200 b.c. Magnificent as it is, Needham’s Science and Civilisation may be a foundation...