Bibliographical Essay

Violence as a separate topic has been carefully excluded from discussions of state power and society in Middle Period Chinese history (750-1550). This is due to two intersecting and reinforcing interests within historical studies, the desire to take as a given the ‘natural’ cohesion of the Chinese state and Chinese society, and the sometimes active hostility of researchers to confront directly the uses of violence in Chinese culture.

Chinese history is usually broken up by dynasty, stressing the centrality of the political unit. The early part of China’s Middle Period begins in the middle of the Tang (618-907), with the An Lushan Rebellion (755-63) studied so thoroughly by E.

G. Pulleyblank, The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-Shan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955) and ‘The An Lu-Shan Rebellion and the Origins of Chronic Militarism in Late T'ang China', in John Curtis Perry and Bardwell L. Smith (eds.), Essays on T'ang Society: The Interplay of Social, Political and Economic Forces (Leiden: Brill, 1976). More generally, David Graff, Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900 (New York: Routledge, 2001) is indispensable for the military aspects of this period, and Jonathan Skaff, Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors: Culture, Power and Connections, 380-800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) is critical for understanding the ethnic interconnections between ‘China' and the steppe people.

For the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (907-60), Richard Davis has written two biographies, From Warhorses to Ploughshares: The Later Tang Reign of Emperor Mingzong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015) and Fire and Ice: Li Cunxu and the Founding of the Later Tang (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016), that emphasise the ethnic distinctions in the place and uses of violence in northern China.

A general overview of the period from the end of the Tang dynasty through 1550 is Peter Lorge, War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900-1793 (New York: Routledge, 2005). The important study by Elad Alyagon, ‘Soldier Mutinies and Resistance during the Northern Song', in Patricia Ebrey and Paul Smith (eds.), State Power in China, 900-1323 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016), is critical for understanding the use of force against soldiers to keep them obedient.

For the Ming dynasty there are two relevant books by David Robinson, Bandits, Eunuchs and the Song of Heaven (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001) and Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). Kenneth Swope's A Dragon's Head and a Serpent's Tail (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010) shows not only the clash of different military approaches between states, those of China, Korea and Japan, but also the differences between northern and southern Chinese troops.