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.

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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.”