36 Chapter Two
mental policy towards merchants and others who enriched themselves
by skillful or lucky manipulation of the growing market system of
China. Like organized resort to armed force, private riches acquired
by personal shrewdness in buying and selling violated the Confucian
sense of propriety. Such persons could be tolerated, even encouraged,
when their activity served official ends. But to allow merchants or
manufacturers to acquire too much power, or accumulate too much
capital, was as unwise as to allow a military commander or a barbarian
chieftain to control too many armed men. Wise policy aimed at
breaking up undue concentrations of wealth just as an intelligent di
plomacy and a well-designed military administration aimed at prevent
ing undue concentrations of military power under any one command.
Divide and rule applied in economics as much as in war. Offi
cials who acted on that principle could count on widespread popular
sympathy, since plundering armies and ruthless capitalists seemed
almost equally detestable to the common people.
The technology of Chinese armament also lent itself to the mainte
nance of bureaucratic supremacy. Since Han times, and perhaps be
fore, crossbows had been the principal missile weapon of Chinese
armies.^27 The crossbow had two salient characteristics. First, a cross
bow was about as easy to use as a modern handgun. No special
strength was needed to cock it. A longbow required years of practice
to develop sufficient strength in thumb and fingers to draw the bow to
its full arc, whereas once a crossbow had been cocked, all the archer
had to do was to place the arrow in firing position, and sight along the
stock until a suitable target came into view. A few hours of target
- No satisfactory account of the development of the crossbow in China seems to
exist. A Chinese text, Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yüeh, attributes the inven
tion of the crossbow to a man named Ch’in, from whom the invention passed to three
local magnates and from them to Ling, ruler of the state of Ch’u in south central China
from 541 to 529 B.C. Archaeological evidence tends to support this dating, for several
tombs of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. contained crossbows. The first notable
improvement in crossbow design came in the eleventh century, when Li Ting invented
the foot stirrup (about 1068), allowing use of the back and leg muscles for cocking the
bow. Correspondingly stronger bows could then be brought into use. I owe these bits of
information to personal communications from Steven F. Sagi of the University of
Hawaii and Robin Yates of Cambridge University. Published materials seem hopelessly
inadequate. Cf. C. M. Wilbur, “History of the Crossbow,” Smithsonian Institution An
nual Report, 1936 (Washington, D.C., 1937), pp. 427–38; Michael Loewe, Everyday Life
in Early Imperial China (London, 1968), pp. 82–86; Noel Barnard and Sato Tamotsu,
Metallurgical Remains of Ancient China (Tokyo, 1975), pp. 116–17. For European cross
bows the admirable work by Ralph W. F. Payne-Gallwey, The Crossbow, Medieval and
Modern, Military and Sporting: Its Construction, History and Management (London,
1903), offers clear and abundant information, and includes a little on modern Chinese
crossbows as well.
