20 - Violence in Early Chinese History

Summary

This chapter examines depictions of violence in the early period of Chinese history up to the second century BCE. Violence is widely present in works of history, literature and intellectual history from the period. What is distinctive about the Chinese case is the negative tone of most of these depictions. Early sources show violence, including martial violence, in at best equivocal and often unfavourable ways. This chapter explores depictions in classic texts such as the Book of Songs, which contains poems that pass over battle to deplore the loss and separation that war entailed. Prose descriptions of violence, whether in the Book of Documents or in bronze vessel inscriptions, tend to record fighting, its aftermath and the victors’ rewards without much celebration. Thinkers including Confucius and Mozi explicitly criticise violence, especially warfare. Sunzi, famous for his Art of War, considers the strategy and tactics of its topic, yet decries fighting as inferior to other methods of achieving victory. Even the proposals of Shang Yang, who is commonly seen as a proponent of government through force, have considerable non-coercive elements to them. Just one form of violence, namely revenge, gets much positive attention, and that comes relatively late.