The Penguin History of the World

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.

Sunzi also recommended a centralization of the means necessary to wage war; the nobles must pay taxes to the centre, and always be willing to follow the king into battle. As time had passed only noblemen could afford the more expensive weapons, armour and horses which increasingly came into use. The warrior using a chariot as a platform for archery, before descending to fight the last stage of the battle on foot with bronze weapons, evolved in the last centuries of the pre-Christian era into a member of a team of two or three armoured warriors, moving with a company of sixty or seventy attendants and supporters, accompanied by a battle-wagon carrying the heavy armour and new weapons like the convex bow and the strong iron lance and sword which were needed at the scene of action. The nobleman remained the key figure under this system as in earlier times.

Like in the much-faulted period that preceded it, the Warring States era was not just about disunity, conflict and destruction. It was also an era of great cities and palaces, of great art, and of advances in science and medicine. China’s bronze art and ceramics developed further, but was now accompanied by the creation of delicate forms of lacquerware, textiles and silk. A recent find from Jiangxi province in south-central China shows aristocratic dresses made of fine silk based on stunning dyeing and weaving techniques far more advanced than those of earlier periods. The tomb figurines of the era form naturalistic portraits of individuals, showing the massive gains in sculpture, drawing and painting in the late first millennium. By 200 BC Chinese art was set in patterns that would last almost for another millennium.

The first substantial gains in Chinese medicine also came out of this period of strife and seeming political collapse. The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, the oldest work of Chinese medical theory, was compiled around the first century BC but was based on earlier texts outlining the diagnosis and treatment of various illnesses. It is in part a detailed medical compendium, establishing the correct and incorrect relationships between man, nature and Heaven, outlining anatomy and pathology and how to arrive at the right diagnostic and therapeutic decisions. Importantly, these texts generally discard former theories of witchcraft and other forms of magic and replace them with observation and proven beneficial effects of herbs and treatments. Acupuncture came into Chinese medicine roughly at the same time, and has been a staple of it ever since.

Astronomy was another field that expanded much during this time. Shi Shen and other astronomers made detailed charts of the stars and observed the spots on the sun and their development. Comets and planets were discovered and recorded. A rudimentary compass was already in use. Most of these findings were established to help with the development of a more exact calendar, with navigation and with the correct relationships within the state and among states. Injustices and errors on earth were reflected in heavenly disarray, Chinese astronomers believed, and even though the sky held an observable reality of its own, it was linked to the reality of human lives in all sorts of ways. A solar eclipse or an earthquake signalled a change for the worse in the fortunes of a state, but they also gave scientists a chance to observe celestial and earthly phenomena on their own accord. For ordinary people such observations were of little use; they were more preoccupied with what the earth could bring forth than with what the sky above foretold.

China’s vast peasant population paid for all that China produced in the way of civilization and state power. What little we know of their countless lives can be quickly said; even less can be discovered than about the anonymous masses of toilers at the base of every other ancient civilization. There is one good physical reason for this: the life of the Chinese peasant was an alternation between his mud hovel in the winter and an encampment where he lived during the summer months to guard and tend his growing crops. Neither has left much trace. For the rest, he appears sunk in the anonymity of his community, tied to the soil, occasionally taken from it to carry out other duties and to serve his lord in war or hunting. Literature and the creation of history were for the powerful – the scholars and officials, the aristocracy and the kings.