Roy A L D I V I S 10 N MOD E L 407the problem that emerged in Korea in the Choson period: the replacement of
duty soldiers by payments, but in cloth rather than cash.
The T'ang fu-ping System
Yu did not bother to trace the decline of the Han system of universal military
service, but he obviously regarded it as a fact familiar to his readers. Almost
from the time that Emperor Wu of the Former Han began his large-scale con-
quests in the late second century B.C. the militia ideal began to break down; by
the time of the Northern and Southern dynasties from the third through sixth
centuries A.D., aristocrats and warlords controlled their own private soldiers.37
The Ju-ping system, the organization of military service that complemented the
equal-field system of land distribution, originated in A.D. 486 in the Northern
Wei dynasty, a dynasty run by the non-Chinese T'o-pa people. It represented an
attempt to return to the militia model of the Chou.^38
Yu's description of the Ju-ping system relied heavily on The New History oj
the Tang Dynasty (Hsin T'ang-shu) written by the famous tenth-century Sung
scholar-statesman Ou-yang Hsiu. After the T'ang military reorganization of A.D.
636 there were ten circuits (tao) in the empire with 634Ju or che-ch 'ung-Ju (564
according to a different source) under a commandant called a tu-wei. At the height
of the system there was a total of 500,000-600,000 fu-ping militiamen and no
fewer than 80,000 capital guards.^39
Ou-yang Hsiu was particularly enamored of the institutional advantages of
theJu-ping system because he deplored what he portrayed as a shift from virtue
to brute force as the main determinant in the rise and fall of states since the
Warring States period in the late Chou (fifth-fourth centuries B.C.). Of the mil-
itary systems of all the dynasties of conquest since the Chou dynasty, the only
one worthy of emulation was the Ju-ping system of the T'ang because it was
based on, but not fully consonant with, the militia ideal associated with the Chou
well-field system.^40
Ou-yang Hsiu also admired the distribution of che-ch 'ung-Ju garrisons around
the provinces, and the delegation of registration, training, logistical, and com-
mand functions to their commandants (tu-wei). After it ceased to function, the
official, Li Pi, lauded its organizational advantages and urged its restoration to
Emperor Te-tsung (r. 780-805) because the tu-wei had done such an efficient
job of training the militia during the agricultural slack season and helping the
district magistrate in calling up soldiers during emergencies. The proximity of
the peasants to regional garrisons meant that they did not have to waste precious
time in traveling to distant posts, and the dismissal of militia soldiers from duty
after a war obviated their use as a base of political pawns by their commanders.^41
Another T'ang commentator, Tu Mu, also admired this feature because it would
have prevented the anti-dynastic regional rebellions of Han Hsin, Ching-pu, and
the Seven Feudatories of the Han, and An Lu-shan of the T'ang dynasties, and