Yuri Pines's "China’s Aristocratic Age"

Yuri Pines is the Michael W. Lipson Chair in Chinese Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy, The Book of Lord Shang: Apologetics of State Power in Early China, Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript Xinian and Early Chinese Historiography, and other books.

Pines applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period, with the following results:

Page 99 of my China’s Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period focuses on ebbs and flows of foreign policy of Chu—a dominant power in the southern part of the Zhou (Chinese) realm—during the final decades of the Springs-and-Autumns period (770–453 BCE). Having overthrown his brother, the ruthlessly expansionist King Ling (r. 540–529 BCE), the new ruler, King Ping (r. 528–516 BCE), opted for retrenchment and eased the pressure on Chu’s dependencies. This mildness backfired, however; several dependencies and allies interpreted it as a sign of weakness and opted to shift allegiance to Chu’s major southeastern rival, the state of Wu. In 506 BCE, Wu delivered a crushing defeat on Chu, even briefly occupying its capital. Once it recovered, Chu abandoned its erstwhile caution and began systematically annexing its former dependencies and allies, marking a new stage in its territorial expansion.

These policy fluctuations reflect a certain feature of Springs-and-Autumns politics: it was an era of constant political experimentation. Is it better to annex weaker neighbors or to maintain a smaller, more manageable polity? How should outlying territories be governed—by delegating power to indigenous elites, to autonomous appointees from the center, or implementing tighter centralized control? How can a rules-based interstate order be preserved amid routine infractions by major powers? How can effective governance be maintained in an age when many rulers ascend the throne as inexperienced youngsters—or even toddlers? How can domestic stability be preserved amid perennial competition among powerful ministerial lineages? What matters more the battlefield: securing victory or preserving one’s honor? Under what circumstances should the ruler consult the capital-dwellers? These questions—none of which had simple answers—continually preoccupied contemporary statesmen. Some offered solutions that were viable for years or even decades, but ultimately, no enduring remedies to these interstate and intrastate problems emerged.

China’s Aristocratic Age analyzes why—despite several temporary successes—the aristocrats of the Springs-and-Autumns period failed to design a viable polycentric political system. This failure doomed the aristocratic polycentric order. Statesmen of subsequent centuries sought stability instead in a unified, centralized, and bureaucratized empire. As I argue in the book’s conclusion, “After three centuries of the Springs-and-Autumns, China became immunized against polycentric rule. This may be the most surprising contribution of the aristocratic age to China’s eventual endorsement of the unified empire as the normative civilizational orientation.”

Visit Yuri Pines's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Everlasting Empire.

--Marshal Zeringue