
Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur |
Review of Jane Portal [with the assistance of Hiromi Kinoshita],
ed., The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2007. Pp. 240. ISBN
978-0-674-02697-1. |
This handsome and lavishly
illustrated book accompanied an exhibition of archaeological finds
from areas surrounding the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi, First Emperor of
the Qin Dynasty of China (r. 221-210 BC). The massive man-made
mound that is the mausoleum of the First Emperor is purported to
contain huge amounts of treasures and remains unexcavated. In 1972 a
farmer digging a well near the tomb mound (in a suburb of
present-day Xi'an city near the Qin capital Xianyang) hit
upon some pottery fragments. Further investigation revealed a huge
underground pit containing over 7,000 life-sized pottery
infantrymen, war chariots, and cavalry, lined up in battle formation
with some 10,000 real, mostly bronze weapons. To date, six hundred
smaller pits have been found; they hold horse and human armor made
of cut stone pieces, as well as officials, entertainers, birds,
horses, and other items made of pottery, stone, and bronze.
Excavations continue and more pits associated with the mausoleum may
still lie undiscovered.
The unexpected discovery of
these underground pits containing items to serve the First Emperor
in the next world is one of the most important archaeological finds
of the twentieth century, because no record of their existence has
survived. It generated worldwide excitement comparable to the 1923
discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamon, pharaoh of Egypt (r. 1352-1344
BC). Many exhibitions of the terracotta army and other
artifacts associated with the First Emperor's tomb have toured
museums in major cities around the world. This, the most recent, at the
British Museum in London, is the largest and most comprehensive, and
is accompanied by a catalog of pictures, line drawings, and five
chapters of text by historians, art historians, curators, and
archaeologists from Britain, the United States, Canada, and China.
The most important
accomplishment of the First Emperor was the military unification of
China after several hundred years of wars among the feudal states.
It ended the Warring States era (403-221 BC) in Chinese history
and began the imperial age that lasted until 1911. Since Qin's
military achievement made possible his other considerable feats, and
since the largest pit at the site of his mausoleum was filled with
replicas of a huge army and real weapons, this archaeological find
has stirred great interest among military historians. Chapter One
of The First Emperor, appropriately titled "The Rise of Qin
and the Military Conquest of the Warring States," by Robin Yates
(McGill Univ.) uses evidence both from this excavation and from
other recently discovered Qin-era tombs to confirm, enlarge upon, or
discredit previous theories that explained the success of Qin. For
example, Yates debunks an idea espoused by some earlier experts that
Qin's triumph over its rivals was due in part to its adoption of
iron as opposed to bronze weapons. But in fact most of the weapons
found in the pits associated with the First Emperor are bronze, while
very few are iron. (Whereas the soldiers, chariots, and horses are
made of fired clay, the weapons were used by real soldiers in
battle.) Evidence found in these pits and documents found in other
Qin tombs, however, show a strict system of command as well as
enforcement and quality control in the manufacture of weaponry and
everything else produced in the government workshops. While there is
no proof that Qin's rival states lacked the needed raw materials or
were slack in the way they supervised the fabrication of their
weaponry and other manufactures, the meticulous control system in
effect in everything associated with the Qin government ensured
especially high quality products.
Intense and brutal warfare
characterized the late Warring States era as the seven surviving
states fought for supremacy. Each created vast armies
toward that end. According to historian Chun-shu Chang,[1]
"By the third century BC, each of the contending Seven States had
built up a huge army: the Ch'in [Qin] army had 600,000 to 800,000
(and possibly up to one million) men, Ch'i had over 400,000, Yen had
over 310,000, Ch'u had 800,000 to one million, Wei had over 400,000,
Chao had over 450,000, and Han had over 300,000." These enormous
armies were the result of the draft universally adopted by the
states of the Chinese world. The goal of the wars between the states
was to annihilate the enemy and annex his territory. Yates concludes
by asking what, since the major Warring States possessed the same
technology and adequate resources, accounted for Qin's final
success? He suggests a combination of factors, adding that
excavated evidence, including contemporary written records will
further our understanding, but concludes that perhaps we shall never
know.
Chapter Two, "The First Emperor
and the Qin Empire," is by eminent Qin and Han historian Michael Loewe
and three experts from the British Museum who contributed sections
on coins, palaces and architecture, and gold and jade to explain
specific artifacts in the exhibition. Loewe succinctly summarizes
the institutional innovations that enabled Qin to consolidate its
power, centralize its institutions, and expand its economy. As all
historians agree, the First Emperor's reign was the culmination of
the groundwork laid by his ancestors centuries before. Founded in
777 BC under the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1050-256 BC) as a frontier
state to guard against nomadic groups to the west, the early Dukes
of Qin ruled a land less advanced and cultured than the feudal
states to its east, somewhat like Macedonia in its relationship to
the classical Greek city-states. As the ruling Zhou Dynasty declined
after the eighth century, the various feudal states asserted their
de facto independence and warred against one another, eliminating
the smaller and weaker ones. In the fifth century, the larger
states, including Qin, called themselves kingdoms, formed unstable
and shifting coalitions, and began warring for supremacy.
Like all historians of this
era, Loewe gives Shang Yang, also known as Lord Shang (chancellor of
Qin from 359 to 350 BC), most credit for reforms that facilitated
Qin's rise. He institutionalized a merit-based bureaucracy, freed
serfs, promulgated uniform laws applicable to all, and supervised
the conquest of two states, Shu and Ba, to the south in the upper
Yangzi River valley in modern Sichuan province. The added resources
of the new acquisitions greatly enhanced Qin's economy as it
prepared for new conquest. Lord Shang's system of government,
continued by Han Fei, Li Si, and other leading ministers of Qin,
became known as Legalism, whose ideology made Qin the most
efficient, wealthy, and militarized state in the late
Warring States era.
In 246 BC, an ambitious and
charismatic young man named Ying Zheng inherited the Qin throne.
With ample resources and able ministers and generals, he launched
the final campaigns that eliminated all other states by 221 BC
(the Zhou royal house had been easily destroyed by Qin in 256 BC).
As a result, Qin became China's national dynasty, the first of the
imperial era. No longer satisfied with the designation "king," Ying
Zheng assumed the grand title huangdi, roughly "emperor,"
adding the word "shi" which means "first" to huangdi (thus
Shihuangdi). He called himself the first emperor and stated that his
successors would only add the prefix, "second," "third," etc., to
their title because henceforth all rulers would be from the house of
Qin. With unification, Qin laws, institutions, and administrative
regulations applied to the whole land. The remainder of Loewe's
essay deals with the despotic rule of the First Emperor, including
his persecution of Confucian scholars, his death, and the murderous
succession struggles that followed, culminating in the fall of Qin
in 206 BC. It ends with reference to writings during the succeeding
Han Dynasty that condemned Qin's tyranny, citing this as the reason for
its rapid downfall.
History often celebrates great
leaders, especially military leaders, because of the transforming
part they play in the world. Thus, the many historical works about
the First Emperor credit his victories and the government he created
with forever and irrevocably changing China. Because this short
chapter is associated with the magnificent exhibition of the
artifacts excavated from the pits surrounding Qin Shihuangdi's tomb,
it naturally emphasizes his revolutionary role in changing the
course of Chinese history. However, a number of other works offer a
deeper understanding of the evolutionary nature of social and
political changes in the preceding centuries that made possible and
culminated in the unification of the Chinese world under Qin.[2]
Chapter Three, "Imperial Tours
and Mountain Inscriptions," by Martin Kern (Princeton), discusses
the First Emperor's grand tours of inspection of his realm: the
first one took place one year after the wars of unification and his
death occurred during the last tour. This short chapter includes
photographs of some of the sites he visited and rubbings of some
surviving inscriptions he had carved on stone steles and on
mountainsides to record his visits and feats. As Sima Qian (145-87
BC), China's Grand Historian and author of the monumental history
of the Chinese world from the beginning to his time, described them,
the tours were undertaken to satisfy the ruler's megalomania. This
is the only chapter that makes no reference to artifacts in the
exhibition.
Chapter Four, "The First
Emperor's Tomb--The Afterlife Universe," by Jessica Rawson, a
noted art historian of early China, describes the monumental
size, construction, and original structures of the tomb complex and
the resources and manpower required to build them. The project began
right after Ying Zheng became king in 246; work intensified after he
became emperor in 221 and was not finished when he died, as
evidenced by the fact that some of the accompanying pits are empty.
The essay also explores the First Emperor's purpose in building this
mausoleum, which was far grander than those of his ancestors and not
part of the cemetery where they were buried. Rawson asks whether he
saw his mausoleum as a commemoration of his life and deeds, or a
place to continue his reign after death as ruler of the cosmic
order? Lastly, what was the function of the terracotta soldiers?
To defend him against the spirit soldiers who represented the men he
had killed or to dominate the cosmos just as he had controlled
everything in his earthly realm while alive?
Chapter Five, "A
Two-Thousand-Year-Old Underground Empire," by Wu Yongqi, Director of
the Museum of the Terracotta Army in China, and two British experts,
includes interesting information on the underground dam and other
devices that diverted water and prevented seepage into the tomb,
technical details on the construction of the main pit for the
terracotta soldiers, horses, and carriages, and the quantities of
the various materials needed for the project. Based on the names of
the foremen engraved in the clay of the terracotta soldiers, Wu
estimates approximately 1,000 men worked in teams for twelve years
to complete the modeling and firing of the men, horses, and
carriages. The single largest raw material item, clay, was the
locally available loess
soil. There is a fascinating description of one
pit designed to entertain the Emperor in his afterlife: it measures
925 square meters and simulates a lake filled with forty-six
life-sized, realistically modeled bronze geese, swans, cranes, etc., plus fifteen terracotta musicians with their string and percussion
instruments.
An appendix summarizes the
results of some scientific tests addressing specific questions on
the precise size and current condition of the tomb chamber and other
issues. There follows a glossary of Chinese characters and their
Pinyin alphabetic transcriptions, an inventory and description of
the 134 items in the exhibition, notes, a short bibliography, and a
list of works cited.
Though well written by experts
in several disciplines, The First Emperor suffers from
repetitions as each author introduces the same source or explains
some fact already known to the reader. Also, inclusion of the
Wade-Giles transcription system along with the Pinyin in the
Glossary would have been very helpful.[3]
While scholars of China are conversant with both systems, most
general readers are not, which can lead to confusion. For example, a
contributor explains that one reason the Qin Dynasty is important is
because the name "China" derives from the word "Qin." This makes no
sense unless one knows that the equivalent of "Qin" in Pinyin is
"Ch'in" in Wade-Giles. In any case, approximately 95 percent of the
people of China today call themselves the people of Han, which shows
that the succeeding Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220) left a more
enduring legacy. This is because the Qin Dynasty survived a mere
four years after the founder's death, while Han rulers abolished its
overly harsh aspects but retained and modified its rational
reforms. The longevity of the Han Dynasty ensured the survival of
imperial government for two millennia in China.
Eastern Michigan University
jupshur@emich.edu
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[1] The Rise of the Chinese Empire, vol. 1:
Nation, State, and Imperialism in Early China, ca. 1600
B.C.-A.D. 8 (Ann Arbor: U Michigan Pr, 2007) 47.
[2] The best short study of social changes
preceding the Qin unification is Cho-yun Hsu's Ancient China
in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722-222 BC
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford U Pr, 1965).
[3] The Pinyin system was devised in the 1950s in
the People's Republic of China and adopted in 1979 as the
standard Romanization method for modern Chinese by the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO); though it
superseded the Wade-Giles system that had been prevalent in
innumerable works published since the nineteenth century, the
latter still continues to be used in many books and articles.
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