Book Review: War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe by Victoria Hui (1)
Reviewed
by You-Sheng Li 5/11/2009
In
2005, Victoria Hui published her book, War and State
Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe, which is regarded as a rare
endeavor in the field of sinology and world politics. It represents an important
contribution to social science and is valuable reading for those who are
interested European and Chinese history. She compares ancient China
from 656 to 221 BC with modern Europe from 1495 to 1815.
She concentrates her analysis on the dynamics of interstate systems and state
formation, aiming to answer the question: Why did China
end with a united empire but not Europe? Both China
and Europe had numerous independent states interacting
in an interdependent system of security relations, which means that one state’s
security depended on other states. Barry Buzan and
Richard Little argue that “a set of states that cannot
pose each other military threat fail to constitute an international system.”
(International Systems in World History: Remarking the Study of International
Relations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) Therefore, Hui chooses 656 BC when State Qi
came to invade State Chu, and 1495 when the French
invaded Italy as the starting points, since both ended with an international
treaty, the Treaty of Venice and the Treaty League headed by State Qi.
Traditionally
the professional circus of social sciences holds a common view that the system
of sovereign territorial states and the roots of liberal democracy are unique
to European civilization and alien to non-Western cultures. War and competition
among states eventually gave birth to democracy. Hui’s
work shows that the political situation of ancient China
was almost identical to that of modern Europe. In fact,
pressed by security issues, ancient Chinese state governments also adapted more
democratic and people-friendly policies. They also made efforts to balance
power against domination. But China
and Europe still ended with opposite results.
In the same
year, 2005, in the book A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy, I
compared the Axial China with modern Europe and found
amazing similarities between the two. I focused on the history of culture and
social/political thought but Hui focused on the
mechanism of state formation and world politics. My starting points were when
the authority of the Pope or the Chou dynasty was formally challenged, and my
ending point was the same, 221 BC for China
but 1945 for Europe.
There
are three essential elements in the process of state formation: 1)
monopolization of the means of coercion, namely the state only has the right to
commit violence, 2) nationalization of taxation, and 3) bureaucratization of
administration. Both ancient China
and modern Europe went through dramatic yet successful
social transformations which finally delivered the three elements to form the
first state.
To Hui, states were
motivated to dominate and thus achieved balance against neighboring states in
both China and Europe.
Domination means swallowing up other states and balance was achieved when
neither state could swallow the other. During this warring period, every state
had to seek self-strengthening strategies, which eventually led to the
emergence of the modern state with the above three elements.
According
to Hui, the difference between ancient China and
modern Europe was that ancient China was always able to strengthen itself by
national conscription, national taxation/productive promotion, and replacement
of aristocracy by meritocracy while Europe tended to rely on self-weakening
strategies such as loans and credits to build mercenary troops, the sale of
public offices to private capital holders and so on.
After
Europeans sailed to Asia, Jesuits took great pains to
learn about Chinese civilization. A book by Matteo
Ricci, a pioneer of the Jesuit mission to China,
appeared in five European languages by 1648. Chinese influence was particularly
strong in Prussia,
which became the first state to establish a centralized hierarchy of salaried
officials and a national conscription in the late 1600s and early 1700s. The
complete adaptation of Chinese self-strengthening strategy was achieved during
the French Revolution, especially during the Napoleonic era. A hierarchy of meritocratic and salaried officials under the central
control was established, and universal conscription was introduced. The French
army quickly swelled from about 200,000 before the Revolution to 650,000 in
1973 but there were 2.4 millions in the period 1804-1813. For the first time,
the French army was able to become self-strengthening by exploiting the vast
conquered land. For years, the French
Army was ever-victorious and invincible. If conquest always leads a more
powerful state, a universal empire would eventually appear in Europe,
just like in China.
Unfortunately
the French army finally met some impassable obstacles. The Spanish guerrillas
turned Spain
into a nightmare to France.
The French occupying army could not get supplies locally but had to transport
them from home at a cost of one billion francs. To achieve a similar effect,
the Russians did not fight but let Napoleon’s troops in while adopting a
“scorched earth” tactic. Unable to access the local supplies because of the
vast burned land, Napoleon was forced to retreat in October19, 1812. Because of
heavy snowstorms, the retreat became another nightmare.
Thus
the defeat of the French army was technical or accidental. Instead of following
a fixed pathway dictated by social evolution or the balance of power, history
is also often determined by accidents. The same applies to the unification of China
by State Qin.
Seven major states and a dozen smaller states had been balanced to a
relatively stable political coexistence though war and fighting were
continuous. The turning point was 284 BC when an accidental event happened.
States Qin and Qi, located
at the west border and the east coast respectively, were the two major rival
states to balance against each other with their own allies. State Qi once invaded State Yan when Yan was in an internal tumult. Yan
and its people kept hatred toward Qi for years. State
Yan sent a spy to persuade Qi
to conquer its neighbor Song, a medium sized state. The elimination of State
Song alarmed all other states and they formed an allied army to devastate the
land and army of State Qi in 284 BC. From now on, the
only superpower left was State Qin, and Qin sensibly adapted the most ruthless strategy: aiming at
killing the men of the other states. At one incident, a Qin
general buried 400,000 captive soldiers alive and only let some 240 children
soldiers go. Qin made the decision to unite China
by force in 237 BC. Thus, the process of uniting China
lasted barely more than a decade while the seven major states coexisted for
more than two hundred years. To make their success a more accidental one, the Qin deployed the most shameless diplomacy: bribing other
states’ ministers and assassinating those who refused the bribe.
The
realization of the importance of strategic amorality, ruthlessness, and cruelty
during the long process of war and conquest was critical, though many scholars
deem this a provocative argument. Among those who came to this realization are
such notable political philosophers as Niccolo
Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes in Europe and Fan Sui, Han Fei in China.
Like a situation in which several men are holding guns to each other, the first
one who shoots most indiscriminatingly and with the most deadly accuracy will
be the only survivor, though everybody knows they are all nice people who hold
guns only for defense.
There
were many factors that contributed to the different outcomes of ancient China
in comparison with modern Europe, which Hui failed to
mention or discuss in detail: The original united force was a cultural
institution, Christianity for Europe but a political authority, the Chou
Dynasty, in China; The European citizens or peasants formed strong alliance to
the vassals and other middle class powers while Chinese peasants lived mainly
in villages; The French Revolution was the driving force for social reform
while Chinese social reform was carried out by kings and ministers; Ancient
China and modern Europe were at different stages of cultural evolution, and
Europeans had much broader and clearer minds. In the analogy of several men holding
guns, if a society has a clear understanding or even develop a moral code
regarding such a situation, everybody would be more likely to hold back their
guns.
To
me, the most critical difference was that ancient China
was a relatively isolated world while modern Europe was
connected with and opened to the outside world. As in the situation where a
group of men hold guns and point to each other, if there are many people
surrounding them, they will then be much more reluctant to shoot
indiscriminately, since nobody could shoot all the surrounding people dead and
the surviving shooter will be subjected to the judgment of the surrounding
people. Compared to Napoleon France,
the Nazi Germany was much more like State Qin in
cruelty. That’s why my comparison of the two ended with the years 221 BC and
1945.
**********
**********
Book Review: War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe by Victoria Hui (2):
Britain Played a Critical Role in Modern European
History
Reviewed
by You-Sheng Li 27/11/2009
If a set of
states cannot pose a military threat to each other and thus fail to constitute
an international system, then such a system of states tends to accelerate into
an amoral anarchy with victory going to whoever wields the cruelest and deadly
strategy. Like a group of men pointing guns to each other, the one who shoots
first and fastest will be the only glorious survivor. Any slight moral
consideration may turn out to be fatal. If there is someone who is somewhat
immune to the shots, the outcome will be quite different. His cruelty will be
subjected to punishment or revenge delivered on behalf of those murdered by
him. In the European system, this immune man was Britain,
the United Kingdom
that was uniquely immune to conflagrations of war on the continent. In the
Chinese system, there had never been a state like Britain.
To me, Britain
played an irreplaceable role in European history, serving as the major checking
power to balance against the dominant powers that were trying to build a united
European empire.
Britain
is an island that makes it much more difficult for either Britain
to occupy Europe or a European power to conquer Britain.
For its own safety, Britain
built the most powerful navy in the world, which offered the relative immunity
to conquest by other European powers. In the warring age of dominance and
conquest, Britain
directed its interest to explore other worlds such as the Americas,
Asia, Africa, and Australia.
Their exploration started with commercial trade backed by imperial domination.
As to the origin of democracy, some scholars point to military democracy during
war, and some point to commercial trade. In a trade, both sides are on equal
terms. Bordered by much less developed ethnic groups, ancient China
never had the industrial and commercial base of modern Europe
to strengthen itself by exploiting those ethnic groups through trade. As the
result, there was no opening to the isolated Chinese world. They stayed with
themselves in their early history.
It is no
accident that the origins of the modern concept of prime ministerial government
go back to Britain
(1707 - 1800) and the Parliamentary System in Sweden
(1721 - 1772). They coincided with each other. During the reign of King George
I, as he could not speak English, the responsibility for chairing cabinet fell
on the leading minister or the prime minister. The gradual democratisation
of the parliament with the broadening of the voting franchise increased the
parliament's role in controlling government, and in deciding who the king could
ask to form a government. Other countries gradually adopted what came to be
called the Westminister Model of government, with an
executive answerable to the parliament, but exercising powers nominally vested
in the head of state.
The Seven Year War,
which began in 1756, was the first war waged on a global scale in human
history, fought in Europe, India,
North America, the Caribbean, the
Philippines,
and coastal Africa. When the war ended in 1763, Britain
defeated the European continental power France
everywhere around the globe. But Britain
allowed France
to remain as a major power in Europe as Britain
had no intention to turn the continent of Europe into
its territory. The American Revolution and the subsequent French Revolution
served as compensatory measures to restore the balance between France
and Britain.
During the
French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic era, Britain
was the only European country that was neither subdued by nor allied with France.
Britain was
literally immune to the all-conquering power of Napoleonic France, which once
controlled the whole continent of Europe.
In
any sense, World War I and II carried forward the same dream of Napoleonic
France, to unite Europe by force. Along the road of
cruelty and amorality, the two world wars went much further, especially Nazi
Germany. Unlike Napoleonic France that started as a revolution to voice liberty
and human rights, Nazi Germany sought only revenge and expansion. So did State Qin that united China
in 221 BC. The Nazis have been condemned by the world ever since but it remains
a controversial issue how to judge State Qin in
Chinese history. I joined those who condemn the Qin,
and regard Qin as the Chinese counterpart of Nazi
Germany but not of revolutionary and Napoleonic France, as Hui
suggested in her book.
The
bible story of Adam and Eve and the Christian concept of original sin well
illustrate that Western and Chinese civilizations started differently: The
former began as a chaotic secondary society while the latter, an orderly system
of primary society. As the warring chaos required the sacrifice of human nature
in the name of God, subsequent Western history was a process to restore human
nature, or humanism. Chinese history went almost an opposite way. It started with
a primary society system that was based on human nature while subsequent
Chinese history has veered sharply away from human nature.
In
ancient China, the emergence of secondary society during the late Axial Age was
greatly influenced and limited by the cultural tradition inherited from the
period of the super state of primary society from 2200-476 BC. An important
assumption of a secondary society is that human nature is not trustworthy and
therefore a society cannot trust humans themselves. Due to such a belief, the
system of parliament and voting were developed. The voice of the ordinary
people was also eventually heard, for nobody could stop his rival party from
enrolling peasants and workers for support. As a primary society is based on
human nature, the Chinese lacked the concept that the social order of a
secondary society had to be based on law. Lao Tzu’s advocacy of the separation
of primary and secondary society, namely the separation of the ruling elites
from their peasants in Chinese history, prevented any strong connection between
the two. The only way for Chinese peasants to enter the horizon of the
secondary society was often through uprisings.
In
modern Europe, the First and Second Peace Conferences
were held at Hague, Netherlands
in 1899 and 1907, respectively. The Hague Conventions were signed. It was only
a few years before the First World War but long after modern states had
emerged. It was because the
parliamentary system allowed people to voice their concern, and they did not
care much which state was going to conquer Europe. What
about China?
Two similar international peace conferences were held in 579 and 546 BC. It was
long before states in modern terms emerged. It was because the elites were able
to think from human nature, or from all of humanity. When the states
accelerated into an upward spiral of ever expanding war, no such conferences
were held again, as the Chinese had said goodbye to human nature by that time.
Everyone may cite their own reasons for this difference, but I think the
presence of Britain
was critical. Britain
was the inerasable connection of warring Europe with the
outside world. Without a country like Britain,
the seven ancient Chinese superpowers all had to think and act as quickly as
those men who were pointing guns at each other, “Remember, only one of us will
survive, and nobody can judge the winner except himself.”