Military Culture in Imperial China (review)

Reviewed by: Military Culture in Imperial China Peter Worthing Military Culture in Imperial China. Edited by Nicola Di Cosmo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009. 456 pp. $45.00 (cloth). Like many edited volumes, this book has its origins in an academic conference. In 2001 a group of scholars specializing in Chinese military [End Page 500] history convened at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and offered their views on the topic "Military Culture in Chinese History." The conference produced papers dealing with many aspects of Chinese military culture, fourteen of which appear as chapters in this book. In his introduction, Nicola Di Cosmo provides a multifaceted definition of "military culture," which can include the system of conduct and behavior that regulated the actions of members of the military, the cultural forces that shaped strategic decision making of both civil and military elites, the values and traditions that determined a society's willingness to engage in war, and the presence of a literary or aesthetic tradition that deals with military events and personalities. In short, the essays, which range chronologically from the Zhou to the Qing, explore the manner in which the wu (military) has influenced the wen (civil) in Chinese history, and vice versa. The efforts of the editor and the contributors are successful for multiple reasons. First, several of the chapters shed important light on the issue of Chinese military history and culture, in particular by breaking down traditional barriers between the cultures of China's civil and military elites. Second, each author carefully links his or her research to the editor's introduction and the major themes of the work. This reflects an excellent job of editing and lends this collection of essays a coherence and continuity that is sometimes lacking in edited volumes. Third, while some regard the study of military history as an archaic tradition dominated by a "swords and saddles" approach, this volume reveals the broad research agendas of the contributors, whose studies of China's military tradition touch on literature, economics, politics, foreign relations, religion, and the law. A few examples will suffice to demonstrate the skillful and diverse manner in which the authors explore these definitions of military culture. In his chapter "Law and the Military in Early China," Robin D. S. Yates examines the close connection between the military and the development of civil law in China. Indeed, military officials typically meted out punishment to civilian transgressors as the military doubled as a police force. Dating back to the Warring States era, intellectuals and officials borrowed methods designed to promote military discipline and order among the increasingly large military units of the time and applied them to the growing populations of their states. The Legalists who built the powerful Qin state, which would unify China in 221 b.c., borrowed heavily from the military when devising methods to control the population at large. Well-known systems of collective responsibility and mutual protection, such as Lianzuo and Baojia, had their origins in military law. A period of important change on many fronts, [End Page 501] the Warring States era saw the expansion of military law into the realm of the administrative law of civil officials. Yates sees strong continuity throughout imperial China, with military law deeply embedded in civil law all the way through the Qing. David A. Graff's contribution, "Narrative Maneuvers: The Representation of Battle in Tang Historical Writing," takes a different approach by analyzing Tang dynasty texts in order to understand the attitudes of the men who wrote these histories. Sifting through battle descriptions from a variety of literary sources, Graff determines that the authors of these works, Confucian scholars with no military experience, showed scant interest in tactics, weapons, formations, or the experiences of the soldiers. Instead, they extolled the intelligence of the victorious commanders and attributed their success to cunning, craftiness, and ability to outsmart the enemy. According to Graff, the pervasive emphasis in Tang sources on the intellectual capabilities of the commander, rather than the technical details of combat, reflects in part the weight of literary tradition in China, but also the Confucian preference for the intellectual and abstract over the specialized skills of...

Reviewed by: Military Culture in Imperial China Garret Olberding (bio) Nicola di Cosmo, editor. Military Culture in Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. vii, 445 pp. Hardcover $46.50, ISBN 978-0-674-03109-8. In current scholarly circles, the perceived influence of premodern military culture is often eclipsed by the manifold contributions of contemporary literati, those who composed the civilian corps of bureaucrats and court advisors. In comprehensive assessments of Chinese cultural history, military culture has sometimes been given such short shrift that one might conclude that issues of warfare were almost irrelevant. Di Cosmo’s masterful compilation of essays will go far in rectifying any such impressions, for it reveals, among other things, the indelible coloration of militaristic sensibilities in court culture, a keen understanding among civil administrators of the complex problems involved in military administration, and an enduring commitment to the intermingling of literate and military cultures within various strata of society. As di Cosmo explains in his introduction, the concept of culture can incorporate numerous irregularly overlapping social features, from the pragmatic to the theoretical, the concrete to the strategic. Di Cosmo explicitly acknowledges several: systems of conduct and behavior, strategic decision making, a set of values determining a society’s propensity for warfare and the organization of its military, and the aspects of aesthetic and literary traditions that valorize military events (pp. 3–4). Correspondingly, the essays range widely in topic and period. Some, such as Michael Loewe’s, Robin D. S. Yates’s, Jonathan Karam Skaff’s, Yingcong Dai’s, and Peter Perdue’s, detail carefully the composition and structure of armies, the laws that govern them, the economics that sustained them, and the external influences bearing on their evolution. Others engage with historiographical representation, whether of military battles and campaigns, of important figures, or of the personal records of war, such as the essays by the late Edward Dreyer, Rafe de Crespigny, David Graff, Don Wyatt, and Grace Fong. And still others by Ralph Sawyer, Kathleen Ryor, S. R. Gilbert, and Joanna Waley-Cohen address more intellectual issues, such as the interpretation and use of literary texts in the education of military men, the increased militarization of an era’s total culture, or the recondite application of theoretical notions to the pursuit of war. In sum, there is something for scholars and educated readers of almost every stripe. One hopes that the topics addressed will broaden perspectives and the conceptualization of the structure and influence of the military in premodern China. In the remainder of this review, I raise several perspectives introduced by the essays that, while by no means comprehensive of what the volume provides, should allow readers a sense of its distinction. Instead of depicting briefly each contribution, I will instead more extensively limn a single essay illustrative of each topic represented above. My selection is not tied to any evaluative metric but to what the pieces of each of my constructed groupings can highlight of the volume’s merits. I recommend that [End Page 430] interested readers use these representative synopses only as an incomplete guide; each piece presents matters of consequence and general interest. Heading the collection is Robin Yates’s engrossing essay on the imposition of religious ritual norms in military codes, and, just as significantly, the profound influence of early military codes on civilian organization and conduct, even in much later eras (p. 23). Indeed, the fusion of legal and military culture in early China was so close that, “in the view of Han intellectuals, criminal law originated in military law. . . . There was, practically speaking, no distinction between warfare and punishment (bing and xing)” (p. 25). This fusion meant both that military norms were deeply embedded even in civilian law and, conversely, that civil bureaucrats were the masters, at least in law, of military power. Because of the demands enforced by penal and administrative codes, “soldiers were obliged to achieve a minimal degree of literacy,” primarily for daily recordkeeping, but also for keeping cognizant of the prohibitions that could lead to certain punishment, or even death (p. 40). However, the laws pertaining to military life were not merely punitive. Success in military ventures could have...

* Acknowledgments * Introduction Nicola Di Cosmo * Law and the Military in Early China Robin D. S. Yates * Martial Prognostication Ralph D. Sawyer * The Western Han Army: Organization, Leadership, and Operation Michael Loewe * The Military Culture of Later Han Rafe de Crespigny * Military Aspects of the War of the Eight Princes, 300--307 Edward L. Dreyer * Narrative Maneuvers: The Representation of Battle in Tang Historical Writing David A. Graff * Tang Military Culture and Its Inner Asian Influences Jonathan Karam Skaff * Unsung Men of War: Acculturated Embodiments of the Martial Ethos in the Song Dynasty Don J. Wyatt * Wen and Wu in Elite Cultural Practices during the Late Ming Kathleen Ryor * Mengzi's Art of War: The Kangxi Emperor Reforms the Qing Military Examinations Sam Gilbert * Writing from Experience: Personal Records of War and Disorder in Jiangnan during the Ming-Qing Transition Grace S. Fong * Militarization of Culture in Eighteenth-Century China Joanna Waley-Cohen * Military Finance of the High Qing Period: An Overview Yingcong Dai * Coercion and Commerce on Two Chinese Frontiers Peter C. Perdue * Notes * Glossary * Bibliography * Contributors * Index

Collected Essays:Military Culture in Imperial China

<i>Military Culture in Imperial China</i>, edited by Nicola Di Cosmo. and, <i>The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing</i>, Yingcong Dai.