Hi guys

Below is just a simple list of my favourite stuff; I will append a more thorough and comprehensive list over the next few days... I intend to draft out a systematic syllabus for students of Chinese military science to study...

Incidentally, I have come across reprints of a rare Ming Dynasty 1550s military regulations manual residing at the National University of Singapore, as well as some primary source material on the armaments and administrative details of the Qing 8 Banners and Green Standard Army... Will report over here more info as I find them... We really need to dig out all those unpublished and untranslated military manuals residing in the public libraries of China and do research and dissertations on these babies... There is room for several hundred Phds...

One project is to get our helpful moderator Yun to translate the Song Dynasty work "Bai Jiang Zhuan" or "Biographies of a Hundred Generals" into English. This work was a standard text in which military officers of the Song and Ming were well-acquainted, alongside Sun Tzu and the other six classics... Let's get the ball rollin' dudes...



_________________________________________________

1) Medieval Chinese warfare (300 - 900 AD)
Author: David A. Graff
Publisher: Routledge 2002
Comment: On warfare from the Jin to the Tang Dynasties

2) Chinese Ways in Warfare
Editors: Frank A. Kierman, Jr. and John K. Fairbank
Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1974
Comment: The earliest English language compilation of essays on Chinese warfare of various periods; chapter headings include:

i) The Campaigns of Han Wu-ti (against the nomadic Xiongnu warriors)
ii) Siege and Defense of Towns in Medieval China
iii) Hu Tsung-hisen's Campaign Against Hsu Hai ( a must-read essay on Chinese efforts to wipe out the Sino-Japanese pirate menace in the 1550s)


3) The Military Establishment of the Yuan Dynasty
Author: Ch'i-ch'ing Hsiao
Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1978
Comment: The end-product of a doctoral dissertation on the characteristics of the Mongol Yuan Army, with an English translation on the Yuan military, extracted from the "Yuan Official Dynastic Histories."

4) Science and Civilization In China, Volume 5, Part 6: Chemistry and Chemical Technology -- Missiles and Sieges
Author: Joseph Needham and Robin D.S. Yates
Publisher: Cambridge University Press 1994
Comment: A very expensive (I would recommend looking for it at the Reference Section of your library) but good book on siege engines, defensive devices and projectile weapons; includes an excellent and lengthy section on classical Chinese military thought.

5) One Hundred Unorthodox Strategies
Author: Unknown; Translator: Ralph D. Sawyer
Publisher: Westview Press, 1996
Comment: A Song Dynasty military manual, a compendium of one hundred strategic/tactical principles, each individually illustrated by accounts of historical battles demonstrating the use of the principle. An excellent complement to Sun Tzu.

6) The Tao of Spycraft
Author: Ralph D. Sawyer
Publisher: Westview Press 1998
Comment: A ground-breaking work on classical Chinese espionage

7) Fire and Water
Author: Ralph D. Sawyer
Publisher: Westview Press 2004
Comment: Focusing on the use of fire in battles, the employment of water in siege warfare as well as naval riverine warfare. An excellent and well-written book with illuminative translations of superb accounts of relevant battles from the Chinese classical histories.

8) Perpetual Happiness
Author: Henry Tsai
Publisher: University of Washington Press 2001
Comment: A book written for the layman but with academic integrity and details, about the life and times of the 3rd Ming Emperor, Yongle, the great warrior who undertook a series of aggressive campaigns against the Mongols....

A very good website pretaining to modern Chinese military is http://sinodefence.com/. It covers just about everything chinese military, and has regular updates with a very good discussion forum. Highly recommended.

A new book coming out on Chinese military history - "Warfare in China to 1600", edited by Peter Lorge.

https://www.ashgate.com/shopping/title.asp?...7546%202531%201

Sounds interesting, but really expensive, and not too much of a fan of those books which are a collection of essays...

Another military history of China, written by Peter Lorge, will be released at the end of this month. It is entitled "War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900-1795", and seems very interesting from the listed contents.

I thought this is interesting to share... It's praise from Peter Lorge regarding the work of David Graff and Kenneth Swope in adding to the Western study of Chinese military History. Taken from the Introduction of "Warfare in China to 1600":



Both Graff and Swope's dissertations sound like interesting reads... wonder where one can get ahold of them. And hopefully Swope's book on the Imjin war will materialize someday soon...

It's interesting that you brought up Peter Lorge's name. I'm currently incontact with him (referred by David Graff). Peter has a book coming out titled "War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900-1795". It isn't out yet but supposably due out 01 Nov 05. I e-mailed asking him who the publisher is, when I find out I'll post it.

cheers

Yes, very interesting sounding book. I found out about it today and posted about it here:

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...dpost&p=4763373

It's published by Routledge Publishers.

Thanks for tpublisher. I tried a Barnes and Noble search as well as a Amazon.com search and neither had anything. Peter informed me the release date would be 01 Nov.

Cheers

Are any of these books an encyclopaedia or database of Chinese War with complete accounts and detailed information of battles, weaponry and armour, etc?

No, as of now there is still no such book in English. The only "military history of China" published so far comes nowhere near to being an encyclopedic reference.

Copied from the "Recommended Reading For Beginners" thread:

A Military History of China
Edited by David A. Graff and Robin Higham
(Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2002)
On Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=books


Description: For military buffs lamenting the lack of English-language material on Chinese military history, this is the best general work available. Graff is an expert on the military history of the Age of Fragmentation and the Tang, while Higham specialises in modern Chinese military history. For this book they gathered a collection of essays by a range of experts on various aspects of the Chinese military, from the ancient wars with nomads to recent developments in the PLA. The coverage is thus diverse rather than comprehensive, and leans towards the modern history side. However, there are good recommendations for further reading at the end of every essay, making this book a good launching-pad for further research on a particular area of interest.

This book by Ralph Sawyer in the famous Cassell series might actually be what we've been waiting for. However, it has not been published yet, and is recorded as one of the top pre-orders on Amazon.com:

"The War and the Chinese Empire": http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030435287...=books&v=glance

What do you guys think of the blurb for his book?


A geodesist (a scholar studying the size, shape and surface of the Earth) named Marvin Whiting tried writing a book like that in 2002 (which I have not read), ambitiously entitled "Imperial Chinese Military History, 8000 BC-1912 AD", but his lack of professional experience and analytical depth apparently caused it to fall short, as the Amazon review says: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/059522134...=books&v=glance

Another recent collection of essays on various aspects of Chinese military history:
"Warfare in Chinese History", edited by Hans van de Ven
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/900411774...=books&v=glance

Essays inside:
The Han abolition of universal military service / Mark E. Lewis
Dou Jiande's dilemma: Logistics, strategy, and state formation in seventh-century China / David A. Graff 77
Tibet in Tang's grand strategy / Denis Twitchett
Waging war for peace? The peace accord between the Song and the Liao in AD 1005 / Nap-yin Lau
Mountain fortress defence: The experience of the Southern Song and Korea in resisting the Mongol invasions / Huang K'uan-chung
Culture, history, and imperial Chinese strategy: Legacies of the Qing conquests / Peter C. Perdue
Military dimensions of the 'Boxer Uprising' in Shanxi, 1898-1901 / Roger R. Thompson
New states of war: Communist and Nationalist warfare and state building (1928-1934) / Hans van de Ven
Defending China: The battles of the Xuzhou campaign / Diana Lary

Those interested in a comparative approach between Classical Greek and Chinese warfare may want to read this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/142353658...=books&v=glance

For military history from the late Qing to the 'Tiananmen Massacre', a recent book is Bruce Elleman's "Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795-1989": http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/142353658...=books&v=glance

Sanctioned Violence in Early China
Mark Edward Lewis
(State University of New York Press; 1990)
On Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/079140077...glance&n=283155


This is an excellent, well-written analytical study of the changing role of sanctioned violence during the Warring States transistion, and how those changes reflected the changes in Chinese society at that time. The first chapter details Chinese society under the warrior aristocracy of the early Zhou, whose authority stemmed from their exclusive monopoly over sanctioned violence - sacrifice, warfare, and hunting - in service of the state altars. The second chapter describes the rise of the territorial states of the Warring States era as a result of increased ferocity in warfare, and how military service was extended to the general populace as a means of political control. The third chapter shows how the proliferation of military theorists during the Warring States period resulted in the role of the warrior being marginalized and denigrated, with military command now falling to those with a mastery of the growing body of military treatises. The fourth chapter explains how the Han imperium was justified by claiming it was the earthly simulacrum of Heaven, most notably through the hunts, performances, and military excercises that took place in the imperial parks. The fifth chapter shows how changes in society during the Warring States transitions were reflected in the mythology of the Yellow Emperor and his battles. Finally, the sixth chapter explains ancient China's perception that all violence in the cosmos originated from the "qi" that permeates all existence. I would highly recommend this in-depth study.

Just purchased... I hope this book is worth it...

Yeah, me too... I bought it about 2 weeks ago, but apparently it's not going to arrive until Jan. 3-9. Wonder what's going on...

I've had the same problem with "Firearms: A global history to 1700" ordered on dec 17th, estimated delivery date dec 19th, still hasn't arrived.

Lorge's book is the latest in a series from Routledge that aims to cover the whole of Chinese military history:

David Graff's 300-900 volume

Peter Lorge's 900-1795 volume

Bruce Elleman's 1795-1989 volume

I believe there will be a future volume on military history before 300 AD, probably including the Three Kingdoms.

It remains to be seen if Sawyer's one-volume work will surpass these ones.

I just recieved the book, and it's a slim volume - only about 183 pages not counting the index. It does not seem to go much in-depth. Haven't read it yet, but looks awfully disappointing!

No coverage of tactics, equipment or battle descriptions? At least I can still cancel my order.

I'll get it, since I already got Graff. Wasn't awared this was coming out. Thanks.

BTW, what Sawyer's work are you talking about?

I would reserve judgement until I read it, but it does seem to be only a very general account of military events between 900-1795. Not on par with Graff's work either, it seems.

Hmmm...I'll go ahead with the order and hope the book turns out to be worth it.

On the bright side, the last two books I purchased, "The renaissance at war" and "Firearms: a global history to 1700" are excellent!

I believe Yun is speaking of "History of Warfare in China":

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081332194...=books&v=glance

Apparently, it's going to be a multi-volume work by Sawyer covering pre-Imperial times to the end of the Ming (bottom of the page):

http://www.ralphsawyer.com/bio.htm

Nope, I am talking about this one (copied from my earlier post):

This book by Ralph Sawyer in the famous Cassell series might actually be what we've been waiting for. However, it has not been published yet, and is recorded as one of the top pre-orders on Amazon.com:

"The War and the Chinese Empire": http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030435287...=books&v=glance

What do you guys think of the blurb for his book?

QUOTE
At the same time as civilisations in Greece and Mesopotamia developed the first professional armies, Chinese military technology was the equal of anything to be found in the Middle East or Europe. From fortress cities to chariots, cavalry to military engineering, China developed along very similar lines. Faced with the constant menace of nomadic tribes to the north - ancestors of the Huns - China built the most famous fortification in the world: the Great Wall of China. By the end of the first century AD Chinese outposts were established within a few days march of the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. Barriers of culture and language have prevented western historians from appreciating the importance of the Chinese Empire and warfare. Now, internationally acknowledged expert Ralph Sawyer has written the first serious account of Chinese military history. This is a genuinely original contribution to world history.

It's a single-volume work in the prestigious Cassell History of Warfare series, and there is no release date known but it could be soon.

Well- since Sawyer is being so prolific, and the Routledge series is also almost complete, things are really looking up for studies of Chinese military history in English!

Is it just me or the above link doesn't work?

Try this one: The War and the Chinese Empire

I've also corrected the link at the earlier post.

A few of the titles I think sound rather interesting... (I own some of these)

1. Chinese Ways in Warfare
2. Warfare in Chinese History
3. Warfare in China to 1600
4. Science and Civilization in China: The Gunpowder Epic
5. Science and Civilization in China: Missiles and Sieges
6. Dictionary of a Ming Biography
7. Medieval Chinese Warfare 300-900
8. War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China 900-1795
9. The Military Establishment of the Yuan dynasty
10. 1587: A Year of No Significance
11. The Great Enterprise: Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-century China
12. The Army of Tang China
13. The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth-century China

A new book published last year:

War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe
Victoria Tin-bor Hui
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/cat...isbn=0521819725

Book Description
The Eurocentric conventional wisdom holds that the West is unique in having a multi-state system in international relations and liberal democracy in state-society relations. At the same time, the Sinocentric perspective believes that China is destined to have authoritarian rule under a unified empire. In fact, China in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (656–221 BC) was once a system of sovereign territorial states similar to Europe in the early modern period. Both cases witnessed the prevalence of war, formation of alliances, development of the centralized bureaucracy, emergence of citizenship rights, and expansion of international trade. This book examines why China and Europe shared similar processes but experienced opposite outcomes. This historical comparison of China and Europe challenges the presumption that Europe was destined to enjoy checks and balances while China was preordained to suffer under a coercive universal status.

Contents
1. A dynamic theory of world politics; 2. The dynamics of international politics in Ancient China; 3. Rethinking the dynamics of international politics in early modern Europe; 4. The dynamics of state formation and transformation; 5. Conclusion and implications.

Reviews
'Victoria Hui is perhaps the only person in the international relations field capable of writing such a sophisticated comparative history of the Chinese and European state systems. This book is pioneering in its efforts to ‘bring Asia in’ to the study of macro-historical change in world politics. She demonstrates expert command of Chinese and European sources, international relations theory, and social science research design. The result is a provocative argument about the importance of strategic amorality, ruthlessness, and resource mobilization in state building, and about why ancient Chinese states outperformed European states in these areas.' Alastair Iain Johnston, Harvard University

'Victoria Hui has successfully executed a stunningly bold macro-historical comparison, while bringing to light the workings of a fascinating international system. Scholarship on state making and system transformation in ancient China and modern Europe – and, indeed, in other international systems, past, present, and future – must contend with her arguments and evidence.' William Wohlforth, Dartmouth College

'Dr. Hui offers us a challenging reinterpretation of modern European history by a bold and original comparison with the period of state formation in China. In doing so, she challenges some dominant theories both in the theory of state formation and in international relations theory. The boldness of the method will provoke controversy, but nothing could be more valuable, for both historians and political scientists, than to understand European history in comparative perspective. This unusual work will be of great interest, not only to students and scholars of European and Chinese history, but also to those concerned with understanding contemporary global politics.' Michael Freeman, University of Essex

One volume of the journal War and Society, published by Australia's Defence Force Academy, was devoted to civil-military relations in 2000:

Volume 18: 2, October 2000
Joanna Waley-Cohen
Introduction to a set of articles on Civil—Military Relations in Imperial China.


David Graff
The Sword and the Brush: Military Specialisation and Career Patterns in Tang China, 618—907
It is often observed that in the early years of China's Tang dynasty military leadership was provided by an aristocratic elite capable of performing with equal aplomb in both civil and military positions, while in the middle and late Tang command came to be exercised by military specialists from heterogeneous and often humble origins. Though not entirely incorrect, this picture is a considerable oversimplification. Even in the early years of the dynasty civil and military career tracks were usually quite distinct, and in the second half of the Tang period parvenu specialists did not enjoy a monopoly over military command. Civilian scholar-officials responded to the increased autonomy of the soldiers by redefining military leadership as an intellectual exercise and asserting their own fitness for high-level command.



Jonathan Karam Skaff
Barbarism at the Gates? The Tang Frontier Military and the An Lushan Rebellion
Some scholars have argued that the cause of the mid-eighth century An Lushan rebellion, which nearly brought down China's Tang dynasty, was a sharp division between Chinese civilians and a "barbarized" frontier military. However, this paper shows that the Tang army's social composition was more complex. Soldiers came from Chinese and non-Chinese backgrounds, and the latter were assimilated to varying degrees into Chinese culture. When the rebellion broke out, both loyalist and rebel forces included Chinese and non-Chinese troops. Lacking evidence of a sharp division between Chinese and non-Chinese, the paper argues that institutional problems, most importantly a failure to control An lushan, caused the rebellion.


Peter Lorge
The Northern Song Military Aristocracy and the Royal Family
This article examines the relationship between military families and the emperor during the Northern Song dynasty. Starting from the seldom discussed but not unknown fact that a majority of empresses were chosen from families with military backgrounds, I will demonstrate that a select group of families defined by their military contributions to the dynasty maintained a highly privileged position of power and prestige during the Northern Song. While the literati worried about maintaining the status and privilege of lineage over several generations, this small group of military families kept their status and power without studying and passing competitive examinations or navigating the treacherous political waters of the bureaucracy. The existence and behaviour of this aristocracy make it clear that the scholar-officials' views on the questions of who should wield power, what the attainment of high bureaucratic rank meant, and how the dynasty was formed and maintained were not universally accepted outside their ranks. While the literati debated the substance of 'This Culture of Ours' the military aristocracy more practically held their grip on 'This Dynasty of Ours'.



Kenneth Swope
Civil-Military Coordination in the Bozhou Campaign of the Wanli Era
The long reign of the Wanli Emperor (r. 1573-1620) is generally perceived as the last hurrah of Ming rule in China. During his tenure as monarch the Ming experienced a brief revival of fiscal solvency and military strength. Thus the Ming state was able to not only maintain the political status quo in East Asia, but also to expand its frontiers and pursue military goals to a degree largely unseen since the early fifteenth century. The most famous military actions of the early Wanli period were the so-called Three Great Punitive Expeditions (San Da Zheng), conducted from 1592 to 1600. Ming success in these endeavours was due to their use of talented civil and military officials in tandem. The final campaign, and the subject of this paper, was the conquest of the Bozhou native chieftainship of Wang Yinglong.

Li Hualong, a jinshi degree holder, embodied the perfect balance of wen and wu as he served first in the Korean campaign and later as supreme commander of Sichuan, Huguang, and Guizhou in charge of suppressing the revolt of Wang Yinglong. Li made use of spies, local tribespeople and the talents of his military subordinates to wipe out the rebels and formally incorporate their territories into the regular Ming administrative structure. This article examines civil-military coordination in the Bozhou campaign in order to move beyond mere numbers and generalisations and see how the Ming military and its support personnel operated in the field. This approach can be illuminating both for students of the late Ming and military history in general.


Yingcong Dai
To Nourish a Strong Military: Kangxi's Preferential Treatment of his Military Officials
Having built their empire upon the ruins of the Ming dynasty, the founders of the Qing dynasty spared no efforts to avoid the pitfalls which led to the collapse of the Ming. For them, one of the most important and direct causes of the downfall of the Ming was its failure to maintain an efficient military system. Therefore, the Qing rulers endeavoured to construct a different mechanism to keep their military forces in form. As one of the chief architects of the early Qing policies, the Kangxi emperor played a critical role in establishing this new system. This article explores the origins and development of Kangxi's philosophy which underlay his different treatment of military officials and civil officials, and discusses his implementation of this philosophy during his long reign. Kangxi gave a high priority to guaranteeing the morale and fighting capacity of his military forces. He chose to be more lenient towards his military officials than his civilian officials, and was especially flexible towards his frontier military commanders. The selection and appointment of military officials did not follow the regular appointment procedure, and military officials were allowed or even encouraged to seek extra incomes other than their regular salaries through involvement in commerce and other unconventional activities. By examining Kangxi's philosophy and practice in this area, this paper suggests that the successes of the early Qing empire had a great deal to do with its efficient military system, and that a strong military owed much to the special treatment it received from the Kangxi emperor, whose policies were producing a de facto military aristocracy.


All but one of the articles published in this volume had first been presented in draft form at a panel of the annual Association of Asian Studies (AAS) conference in 1999: http://www.aasianst.org/absts/1999abst/china/c-5.htm

Would not be surprised if "History of Warfare in China" 's published @ the end of this yr or early next yr.

Note on Sawyer's book. Look at it being published somewhere in the mid 2008.