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Chinese Society: An Historical Survey1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Karl A. Wittfogel
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Traditional China was an agrarian society which experienced a significant development of handicraft and commerce. In this respect, China was similar to medieval Europe and to certain pre-Hellenistic civilizations of the northern and western Mediterranean. However, while these Western agrarian civilizations ultimately lost their societal identity, Chinese society perpetuated its basic features for millennia. And while medieval Europe saw a commercial and industrial revolution that led to the rise of an industrial society, traditional China never underwent such changes.

Obviously, when characterizing societal structures, it is not enough to speak of agriculture, handicraft, and trade in general. We must consider their ecological and institutional setting and the specific human relations involved in their operation.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , May 1957 , pp. 343 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1957

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References

2 Most of the phenomena discussed in this essay have been systematically treated in Wittfogel 1957. I therefore ask the interested reader to consult this volume for fuller analysis, argument, and documentation.

3 Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 372 ffGoogle Scholar. It was essentially through the classical economists that these concepts entered into the thinking of Marx. From the early 1850's to his death in 1883 Marx, following Richard Jones and John Stuart Mill, assigned to “Asiatic society”—and the “Asiatic mode of production”—an important part in his multilinear scheme of development (ibid., pp. 373 ff.).

4 See Alexander, W. D., Brief History of the Hawaiian People (New York, 1899), pp. 42 f., 83Google Scholar; Bennett, Wendell Clark, Archaeology of Kauai, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin, No. 80 (Honolulu, 1931), pp. 9, 50 ff.Google Scholar

5 See Willey, Gordon E., Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Viru Valley, Peru, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 155 (1953), pp. 346 ff., 354 ff., 361 ff., 381, 395 ffGoogle Scholar., and especially 400 ff., 410 ff.

6 The divination texts of Shang suggest a slightly warmer climate for late Shang, but a seasonal pattern of rainfall and aridity similar to that existing today. See Wittfogel, , “Meteorological Records from the Divination Inscriptions of Shang,” Geographical Review, XXX (1940), 121 ff.Google Scholar

7 Richthofen complicated his analysis of the hydraulic conquest of the Great North Chinese Plain by relying on a relatively late source, the Yü kung. But his statement that the alluvial lowlands of the Northern Plain could be settled only after the completion of comprehensive dike works (see von Richthofen, Ferdinand Freiherr, China, Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien [Berlin, 1877], I, 354 ff)Google Scholar, expresses an elementary geo-agricultural truth which is valid independently of the date of origin of the Yü kung. (Cf. Wittfogel 1931, pp. 281 ff.)Google Scholar

8 The pioneer decipherer of the Shang inscriptions, Wang Kuo-wei, found in these in scriptions most of the names of the Shang rulers given in the Shih chi and the Bamboo Annals. Where differences appeared, he found the “suspect” Bamboo Annals more accurate than the Shih chi (Wang Kuo-wei, Kuan-t'ang chi-lin, 9.15a). Such facts, taken in conjunction with the manifestly high development of Shang culture and parallel situations in the prehistory of the Near East, suggest that the references to pre-Shang hydraulic activities in the Bamboo Annals and the Shih chi may also reflect, though perhaps with exaggerations, actual historical events.

9 Legge, , I, 215.Google Scholar

10 In the twenties, Ku Chieh-kang considered Yü a mythological figure who was first mentioned in the mid-Chou period. In the thirties he placed Yü much earlier, and eventually viewed him as the divine ancestor of the Hsi Jung, one of the tribes that supposedly participated in the creation of China's early civilization (Yü kung, VII, No. 6–7 [1937], pp. 81 ff., 90 ff.Google Scholar). Significantly, one of Ku's coeditors, Feng Chia-sheng, suggested that Yü may have actually carried out hydraulic works in the lower valley of the Fen River in Shansi (Yü kung, No. 2 [1934], pp. 12 ff.Google Scholar). In the summer of 1923, a heavy flood in that region inundated more than 110 villages (ibid., p. 13).

11 Ganshof, , pp. 64 ff.Google Scholar; Bloch, , I, 351.Google Scholar

12 See Ganshof, , pp. 79 ff.Google Scholar; Bloch, , I, 340Google Scholar; II, 21.

13 See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 175, 273 ff., 280 ff., 284 f.Google Scholar

14 Franke, O., Geschichte des chinesischen Reiches, I (Berlin and Leipzig, 1930), 111.Google Scholar

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16 It was for this reason that, in my earlier writing, I also spoke of Chou feudalism, although, being aware of the need for hydraulic action in the North China lowlands, I noted that early Chou was “colored” by the presence of public waterworks which in later Chouradically modified the societal order. See Wittfogel, 1931, pp. 418, 425 ff.Google Scholar; idem, “The Foundations and Stages of Chinese Economic History,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, IV (1935), 40 ff.Google Scholar

17 See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 378 ff., 391 ff., 395 ff.Google Scholar

18 See Wittfogel, 1931, pp. 411–415, 433 ff., 446 ff.Google Scholar

19 Wittfogel, 1931, pp. 187–300, 410–456.Google Scholar

20 Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 166 f.Google Scholar

21 Brown, Delmer M., “The Impact of Firearms on Japanese Warfare, 1543–98,” FEQ, VII (1948), 236 ff.Google Scholar According to a communication from Dr. Marius Jansen (University of Washington) on this topic, “the first integrated treatment of the subject [the art of war] comes in a work by Takeda Shingen [1521–73].”

22 Kuo yü (Shanghai, 1935), 2, 22 f.Google Scholar

23 In Japan an incipient—and frustrated—early hydraulic development produced elements of an orientally despotic system of communications and census-taking. But the rising feudal order prevented the growth of these elements. Like the art of war, they gained in vigor only after the close of the feudal period. See Wittfogel 1957, pp. 198 ff.

24 Kuo-ting, Wang, Chung-kuo t'ien-chih shih (Nanking, 1933), pp. 51 ff.Google Scholar

26 Han shu (Po-na ed.), 24A.14b.

28 T'ung-tsu, Ch'ü, Chung-kuo feng-chien she-hui (Shanghai, 1937), pp. 200 f.Google Scholar

27 Legge, , I, 310.Google Scholar

28 Legge, , I, 138.Google Scholar

29 Legge, , I, 270.Google Scholar

30 Por this concept, see Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 128 ff.Google Scholar

31 Peking Gazette, 10 11, 1898.Google Scholar

32 As contrasted with the dominant state religion. See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 115, 121.Google Scholar

33 de Groot, J. J. M., Sectarianism and Religious Persecution in China (reprinted 1940), I, 109–116.Google Scholar

34 Schurmann, Herbert Franz, Economic Structure of the Yuan Dynasty, Harvard-Yen-ching Institute Studies XVI (Cambridge, 1956), p. 6.Google Scholar

35 Wittfogel, and Feng, , pp. 217 f.Google Scholar

36 Wittfogel, and Fêng, , pp. 505 ff.Google Scholar

37 Wittfogel, , “General Introduction” in Wittfogel and Fêng, pp. 15 ff.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., p. 10. For the bureaucratization of the Manchus in the course of the conquest of China, see Michael, passim.

39 “Introduction,” Wittfogel and Fêng, pp. 5–14.Google Scholar

40 Wittfogel, and Fêng, , p. 568.Google Scholar

41 “History of Chinese Society, Ch'in-Han,” MS (in preparation by the Chinese History Project).

42 Franke, O., Geschichte des chinesischen Reiches, IV (Berlin, 1948), 561 ff.Google Scholar

43 Michael, , pp. 66 ff.Google Scholar

44 “Introduction,” Wittfogel, and Fêng, , p. 14.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., p. 15.

46 The fallacy of this argument has been stressed by Walker, Richard L., China under Communism: The First Five Years (New Haven, 1955), p. 293.Google Scholar

47 “Introduction,” Wittfogel, and Fêng, , pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

48 Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 79 ff.Google Scholar

49 See Chang, passim. In 1931, during the only major open discussion of the Asiatic mode of production, held in the USSR, a spokesman of the “feudal” party line rejected in a crude manner the bureaucratic interpretation of the Chinese gentry maintained by the author (see Wittfogel, 1957, p. 402).Google Scholar

50 Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 105 f., 345.Google Scholar

51 Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 356 f.Google Scholar

52 Chang, , p. 115.Google Scholar

53 For a statistical survey of the social background of middle and higher officials under the major Chinese dynasties prior to, and after, the establishment of the examination system, see Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 348 ff.Google Scholar

54 Chang, , pp. 165 ff.Google Scholar

55 The institutional meaning of the Indian “examination life” becomes fully apparent when we realize that even the members of the warrior class, the customary rulers of Hindu India, were expected to study at least one Veda, and that many Brahmins served in the government.

56 Wittfogel, 1957, p. 338.Google Scholar

57 He went beyond Morgan, and he restated an idea of Marx, when he contrasted the “work slavery” of Greek and Roman antiquity and the domestic slavery of the Orient (Engels, p. 162). With this remark Engels once more underlined the thesis that Oriental society did not pass through the “stage” of work slavery, which Marx and he considered characteristic of European antiquity.

58 See Engels, , pp. 154, 162.Google Scholar

59 Mill had predicted such a transformation for Oriental society in general. See Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political Economy (London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, 1909), pp. 696 f., 701.Google Scholar

60 Karl Marx, article in New York Daily Tribune, 06 25, 1853Google Scholar. Italics in original.

61 Fischer, Louis, The Soviets in World Affairs 1917–1929 (Princeton, 1951), I, 391.Google Scholar

62 Laqueur, Walter Z., Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East (New York, 1956), pp. 208 ff.Google Scholar

63 Lang, Olga, Chinese Family and Society (New Haven, 1946), pp. 110 f.Google Scholar; Lampson, Herbert Day, Social Pathology in China (Shanghai, 1935), p. 564.Google Scholar

64 Michael, Franz and Taylor, George E., The Far East in the Modern World (New York, 1956), pp. 402 ff.Google Scholar

65 See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 420, 422.Google Scholar

66 Constitution of the First Chinese Soviet Republic, adopted under Mao Tse-tung's chairmanship (see Yakhontoff, Victor A., The Chinese Soviets [New York, 1934], p. 221, of. pp. 276 f.)Google Scholar. Mao repeated this promise in 1936 (see Tse-tung, Mao et al. China: The March Toward Unity [New York, 1937], pp. 40 f.).Google Scholar

67 For direct and indirect admissions that the national minorities bitterly resent their treatment by the Communists see New China News Agency (Kunming, 09 7, 1956)Google Scholar and Chinese Home Service (Peking, 12 1 and 17, 1956).Google Scholar

68 Weber, Max, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Grundriss der Sozialökonomik (Tübingen, 1921–1922), III, pp. 667 f.Google Scholar

69 See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 301–368Google Scholar, passim.