Historical Background
Since the period under study stretches over eight centuries, it is essential to set the scene by providing a brief outline of the historical development and certain relevant geographical details.
In the third century bce the region known in modern times as China proper (China minus Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan) was divided between seven major kingdoms and a handful of small polities. The number of states had been shrinking since the preceding centuries as a result of incessant warfare, in which strong states expanded territories at the expense of their weak neighbours. Violence in the form of warfare escalated and grew larger in scale from the fifth century bce onwards when the seven major states came into direct and fierce military confrontation with small buffer countries, which they removed. The name coined for this era is the Warring States period, a name that clearly reveals its salient epochal feature. Qin, the westernmost of the seven powers, gradually achieved an incomparable military advantage and threatened the existence of the other states.In 232 bce the young king Zheng of Qin (d. 210 bce, r. 246-210 bce) launched massive campaigns of conquest. In a decade he had wiped out the rival states and established the first unified empire in the Chinese realm; in so doing he was entitled to become emperor, and he is known in Chinese history as the First Emperor. To ensure the stability and perpetuity of his nascent empire, the First Emperor attempted to monopolise the use of violence by confiscating private weapons, melting and then forging them into bronze musical instruments and twelve gigantic bronze statues to be installed in the capital. Nevertheless, warfare did not end. In fact, the emperor continued mobilising troops and laboured to expel the barbarians along the northern borders and to conquer new lands in the south, thus throwing the people who had survived decades of inter-state warfare and who were hoping to lead stable lives into onerous military operations once again.
The untimely demise of the First Emperor left an empire full of discontents for his immediate successor, who made the situation worse by imposing more stringent control over his subjects. Hence, quite contrary to the First Emperor's wish of establishing an everlasting empire, the Qin collapsed shortly after popular uprisings broke out. Even more ironic was the fact that the rebels first rose up with improvised wooden weapons as a result of the prior sanctioned confiscation. The uprisings released widespread violence, which turned into a five-year civil war.It was Liu Bang (d. 195 bce, r. 202-195 bce), a commoner riding the anti-Qin tide, who finally outmatched other contenders and established the Former or Western Han dynasty (202 bce-9 ce). Unlike the shortlived Qin, the Former Han lasted for over two centuries and consequently became an ideal of unified empire which would be invoked frequently as a pretext to justify so-called wars of unification in Chinese history. The Former Han first focused on internal warfare, but later, with the increasing threat posed by the steppe warriors, it not only adopted defensive measures inland but also launched a series of expeditions into Inner Asia. These expeditions marked the first attempts of the Chinese Empire to conduct military operations far beyond its borders, in which the Han armies adapted and modified their way of warfare, including the strategies, tactics and types of armed forces being used. Military successes translated into territorial gains, and the Former Han reached its pinnacle with the consolidation of a vast empire.
Both the Qin and the Former Han were empires with political centres located in the north-western region, an area of high strategic value. The two regimes therefore laid strong emphasis on the defence of their northern frontiers, from which they projected their power into Inner Asia.[533] However, the centre of gravity shifted eastwards in the first century ce when Liu Xiu (5 bce-57 ce, r.
25-57 ce), a self-proclaimed descendant of Liu Bang, defeated other claimants to the throne in a civil war following the downfall of the regime that had usurped the Former Han and ruled from 9-23 ce, establishing the Later (sometimes given as Latter) or Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 ce). Though claiming to be a restoration of the (Former) Han empire, the Later Han was quite different from its predecessor. To fit with the vested interests of the eastern-based founding members of the dynasty, the Later Han moved the imperial centre to the east. As a consequence, the military presence of the Later Han also retreated from where the Former Han had deployed in the north-west.[534] Furthermore, partly because of the lessons learned from the civil war, Liu Xiu abolished the universal military conscription practised in the preceding centuries with the aim of strengthening the state monopoly on the use of violence. The abolition, however, was blamed by later generations for the dynasty's military inferiority as compared to its predecessors.[535] Whether this argument is valid or not is open to discussion, but the Later Han indeed faced very different international and domestic circumstances and was an embattled empire troubled by political infighting and foreign foes from various frontiers since its early days.[536] The Later Han finally ended with its territory divided up into warlord domains, which marked the beginning of a long era of political disunion.[537]Prior to the end of the Later Han the political, cultural and economic centres of the early Chinese empires were all located in the north and particularly along the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, whereas southern China had been seen as a remote and barbarous country since the Archaic period. But the disintegration of the empire gave the south an opportunity to become another centre of gravity. Several of the warlords who tried to succeed the Later Han based themselves in the south along the Yangtze River, and two of them finally divided the south and established their own kingdoms, facing a rival regime which managed to control the whole north.
The stalemate between these three states lasted for half a century, and the era was well known as the Period of Three Kingdoms (220-65 ce). This period inspired much fascinating popular literature and folk stories of violence in China, as well as in Japan and Korea.[538]The Three Kingdoms period was ended by a latecomer - the Western Jin dynasty (265-317 ce). The unification achieved by the Western Jin, however, was ephemeral. A civil war instigated by imperial princes who were also military governors threw northern China into chaos,[539] and mercenaries of foreign origin who were called in took advantage of the chaotic situation to pursue their own interests. A cluster of so-called ‘barbarian kingdoms' emerged - the period is traditionally known as ‘Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms' - while the Jin government-in-exile, now called the Eastern Jin (317-420 ce), found a haven in the south. A series of succeeding dynasties also established themselves in the south until the early seventh century when the north, once again under a strong centralised regime - the Sui dynasty (581-618 ce) - was able to conquer the south.
The period between the fourth and the seventh centuries was a turbulent era during which violence seemed to permeate various aspects of the state and society. There was not only protracted warfare between the northern and southern dynasties but also internal military confrontations in every state. Ethnic conflicts also happened, particularly in the north between the foreign conquerors and their native subjects, with a few extreme cases of ethnic massacre recorded. Incessant warfare and ensuing dislocations made violence a part of people's daily lives right down to the communal level. Different states in this period tried different tactics to reassert their monopoly over the use of violence, but achieved only partial and gradual success. It was not until the early seventh century that sanctioned and non-sanctioned violence was once again under the control of a single imperial state.