Organizer: David A. Graff, Kansas State University
Chair: Edward L. Dreyer, University of Miami
Discussant: Joanna Waley-Cohen, New York University
Though few today would concur with the historian Lei Haizong’s characterization of China as an "a-military culture" (wu bing de wenhua), imperial China is still commonly represented as a society dominated by civilian scholar-officials who despised martial accomplishments and were generally successful in relegating military leaders to a subordinate position. This panel aims to question this time-honored picture of the relationship between civil and military elites in imperial China; the papers, covering the period from mid-Tang to early Qing, argue in favor of a more balanced and nuanced understanding of civil-military relations. All of the papers are concerned with the triangular pattern of interaction between civil elites, military elites, and the ruler. They bring to light a number of instances in which emperors bestowed special privileges on military leaders or otherwise favored them over their civilian counterparts. These cases indicate that whatever the literati may have said or believed, military elites were neither universally despised nor were they always clearly subordinated to the civil bureaucracy. On the contrary, they were often seen by China’s rulers as an important resource contributing to the stability and strength of the ruling dynasty. While the Tang case illustrates the dire consequences that could follow from mismanagement of the military, the other papers offer more positive examples of harmonious cooperation between civil and military elites, with evidence of mutual respect and even some blurring of the distinction between the two different types of leadership role.
Barbarians at the Gates? The Tang Frontier Military and the An Lushan Rebellion
Jonathan K. Skaff, Stetson University
Edwin Pulleyblank has argued that during the mid-Tang there was a sharp division between civilians and a "barbarized" frontier military. He believes that when the Tang emperor Xuanzong placed non-Chinese in charge of the frontier commands in 747, this "more than anything else . . . set the stage for the (An Lushan) rebellion."1
This paper uses alternative sources, such as reports of tomb excavations and funerary epitaphs, to present a more nuanced view of the frontier military in the first half of the eighth century. It shows that the army was composed of Chinese and non-Chinese of heterogeneous origins with the non-Chinese assimilated to varying degrees into Chinese culture. When the rebellion broke out, loyalist and rebel forces included a mixture of Chinese and non-Chinese troops.
Lacking evidence of a sharp division between Chinese and non-Chinese, we need to look at institutional failures for the cause of the rebellion. By the middle of the eighth century, it was becoming common to assign multiple commands to Military Commissioners. At the time of the rebellion An Lushan controlled three contiguous regions in the northeast, which gave him the potential to challenge the court. Another problem was that rules of avoidance were ignored. During the Tang higher ranking officers were restricted to four years of duty in one place, but An Lushan had control over two of his commands for more than a decade, allowing him to create a personal satrapy. Finally, the censorial system was allowed to deteriorate, denying the court the ability to monitor the frontier army.
1. Edwin G. Pulleyblank, "The An Lu-shan Rebellion and the Origins of Chronic Militarism in Late T’ang China," in Essays on T’ang Society: The Interplay of Social, Political, and Economic Forces, ed. John C. Perry and Bardwell L. Smith (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), 40.
Whose Dynasty Is It Anyway? The Northern Song Military Aristocracy and the Royal Family
Peter Lorge, Academia Sinica
This paper will examine the relationship between military families and the emperor during the Northern Song dynasty. Starting from the seldom discussed but not unknown fact that a majority of empresses were chosen from families with military backgrounds, I will demonstrate that a select group of families defined by their military contributions to the dynasty maintained a highly privileged position of power and prestige during the Northern Song. While the literati worried about maintaining the status and privilege of lineage over several generations, this small group of military families kept their status and power without studying and passing competitive examinations or navigating the treacherous political waters of the bureaucracy. The existence and behavior of this aristocracy makes it clear that the scholar-officials’ views on the questions of who should wield power, what the attainment of high bureaucratic rank meant, and how the dynasty was formed and maintained were not universally accepted outside of their ranks. While the literati debated the substance of "This Culture of Ours" the military aristocracy more practically held their grip on "This Dynasty of Ours."
Civil-Military Coordination in the Bozhou Campaign of the Wanli Era
Kenneth M. Swope, University of Michigan
The long reign of the Wanli Emperor (r. 1573–1620) is generally perceived as the last hurrah of Ming rule in China. During his tenure as monarch the Ming experienced a brief revival of fiscal solvency and military strength. Thus the Ming state was able to not only maintain the political status quo in East Asia, but also to expand its frontiers and pursue military goals to a degree largely unseen since the early fifteenth century. The most famous military actions of the early Wanli period were the so-called Three Great Punitive Campaigns (San Da Zheng), conducted from 1592–1600. Ming success in these endeavors was due to their use of talented civil and military officials in tandem. The final campaign, and the subject of this paper, was the conquest of the Bozhou native chieftainship of Yang Yinglong.
Li Hualong, a jinshi degree holder, embodied the perfect balance of wen and wu as he served first in the Korean campaign and later as Supreme Commander of Sichuan, Huguang and Guizhou in charge of suppressing the revolt of Yang Yinglong. Li made use of spies, local tribespeople and the talents of his military subordinates to wipe out the rebels and formally incorporate their territories into the regular Ming administrative structure. This paper shall examine civil-military coordination in the Bozhou campaign in order to move beyond mere numbers and generalizations and see how the Ming military and its support personnel operated in the field. This approach can be illuminating both for students of the late Ming and military history in general.
To Nourish a Strong Military—On Kangxi’s Innovative Treatment of His Military Officials
Yingcong Dai, William Paterson University
Having built their empire upon the ruins of the Ming dynasty, the founders of the Qing dynasty spared no efforts to avoid the pitfalls which led to the collapse of the Ming. For them, one of the most important and direct causes of the downfall of the Ming was its failure to sustain an efficient military system. Therefore, the Qing rulers endeavored to construct a different mechanism to keep their military forces in form. As one of the chief architects of the early Qing policies, the Kangxi emperor played a critical role in establishing this new system. This paper explores the origins and development of Kangxi’s philosophy which underlay his different treatment of military officials and civil officials, and discusses his implementation of this philosophy during his long reign. Kangxi gave a high priority to guaranteeing the morale and fighting capacity of his military forces. He chose to be more lenient towards his military officials than his civilian officials, and was especially flexible towards his frontier military commanders. The selection and appointment of military officials did not follow the regular appointment procedure, and military officials were allowed or even encouraged to seek extra incomes other than their regular salaries through involvement in commerce and other unconventional activities. By examining Kangxi’s philosophy and practice in this area, this paper suggests that the successes of the early Qing empire had a great deal to do with its efficient military system, and that a strong military owed much to the special treatment it received from the Kangxi emperor, whose policies were producing a de facto military aristocracy.