Reflection on Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy since 1949 by M. Taylor Fravel

               This very dry book is a study of the development of Communist China’s military strategy, covering about 70 years of modern Chinese history in which there were three major shifts in Chinese strategy. The book may not be written as a summer beach-read page-turner, but it is incredibly clear in showing the reader the facts of Chinese military guidelines.

               Fravel starts with some background on how the Communists (CCP) came to power. In the first phase, in the late 1920s, the CCP tried to create urban uprisings and take power in cities, but it didn’t work. Then, in the second phase, the CCP established rural bases to develop the Red Army. The third phase, they started to seize cities in 1930. However, the Nationalists responded strongly and encircled the Communists by 1934 using what the author calls an “offensive net,” and the CCP began the Long March to the west, where they would regroup despite dropping in strength from one hundred thousand to just ten thousand soldiers after travelling over three thousand miles. It was during the Long March that the CCP held meetings to examine the reasons for its defeat, and it was during this time when Mao, who had no hand in the loss, gained power and control over the party. The Communists regrouped during the Sino-Japanese War, avoiding direct contact with Japanese forces, letting the Nationalists and the Japanese fight each other. In the fifth phase, from 1945 to 1949, the Communists returned to fighting the Nationalists and triumphed.

               After 1949 and safely in power, the senior military officers of the Communist Party developed their strategic guidelines, which served as loose plans for warfighting. Each strategic guideline has four components. The first is the “identification of the strategic opponent and the operational target, based on the specific military threat posed by the opponent.” Second is the primary strategic direction, referring to “the geographic focal point for a potential conflict.” The third component is the “basis of preparations for military struggle,” essentially the “how” of the plan. Fourth is the “basic guiding thought,” which is a principle or set of principles to guide the plan. These guidelines had changed much during the civil war but less so once in power.

Active defense, which serves as the title of the book, is the guiding principle of Chinese military strategy. It assumes a superior enemy, putting China on the defensive. It is about overcoming weakness, not how to go on the strategic offensive or how to engage a weaker opponent. It is basically about counterattacking- minimizing damage from the first enemy attack and responding powerfully enough to deter further attacks. It is about self-defense for the Chinese from Russia and the United States. The Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) defines active defense as “using proactive offensive actions to defend against the attacking enemy.”

The other two important concepts to know are “luring the enemy in deep” and “people’s war.” Luring the enemy in deep was one of Mao’s favorite military ideas. It is what it sounds like, bringing the enemy within and destroying them though attrition brought on by guerrilla warfare. The use of this strategy ended by the late 1930s. People’s war is all about mobilizing the entire nation to use ever person against the enemy. It reminds me of a more defensive version of American “total war” in World War II.

The 1956 strategy was called “the strategic guideline for defending the motherland” and was based on the coastal defense of China’s mainland during the first 6 months of a US invasion. It was the result of high party unity after victory in the civil war and the need to adapt to the type of war that senior military leaders foresaw. Now that China needed to defend its own territory, the strategy changed from maneuver warfare to positional warfare, trying to “do everything we can to hold key areas, islands, and important cities along the coast.” The CCP had fought maneuver warfare during the civil war, holding little territory permanently, but now in charge of the country, they needed to shift to defend the homeland.

In 1964, under the heavy influence of Mao, the party returned to the strategy of “luring the enemy in deep.” It is a strange case where a country returned to an older strategic guideline, and unlike all the other changes since 1949, this change to the strategic guideline was initiated not by a senior military officer but by Mao himself. This strategy was also anomalous in the way that it was drafted- not codified and discussed and approved by senior officers as was typically done, but rather based on remarks Mao had made throughout the year. Mao had wanted to use military policy for domestic goals, specifically “developing the third line,” which was the “massive industrialization of China’s southwestern hinterland that would consume over half of domestic investment in the Third Five-Year Plan.” A move this big was going to be controversial, so Mao used the military necessity as an excuse, so the strategic guideline was really made for domestic political reasons, not as the best defense for China. This was probably not a very good way to run the military, and it was just the beginning of Mao’s Cultural Revolution that would start in 1966 and last until his death in 1976. Due to factionalism in Chinese leadership, this plan would remain China’s strategy until 1980, when Deng Xiaoping consolidated power. The author, due to the fact that this policy is so anomalous, does not consider it a “major change.”

In 1980, the Central Military Committee of the CCP adopted a new plan to defend against possible Soviet invasion called “active defense.” In contrast to luring the enemy in deep, the 1980 plan called for using forward defense to stop a breakthrough. The name of the game was positional warfare. There was also a shift in Chinese naval strategy from “near-coast defense” to “near-ocean defense,” signaling that China meant to expand its naval presence from its own coast to waters adjacent to China. We know that today they go even further, using the nine-dash line policy to take over the South China Sea.

               In 1993 came the final major change to Chinese defensive strategy. For the first time, it was based not in how to defend Chinese territory from an invasion, but on how to win limited wars with new ways of fighting. It was inspired by the Gulf War and the revolutions in warfare that occurred then as well as the unification of the party, which took a while to happen after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. The primary goal of the new guideline was to prevent Taiwan from officially gaining independence from China, though I would personally think that this is a more diplomatic goal since Taiwan is de facto independent and has recognition from many countries in some way or another. In 2004 and 2014, the CCP revised the guideline to put more focus on the “informatization” of warfare, meaning “the application of technology to all aspects of military operations” (sensors, electronics, automated command and control systems, and information operations over the internet and other media to affect public opinion) and “integrated joint operations,” meaning “unified operations under a single command-and-control network” rathe than different services coordinating together. Integrated joint operations are more centralized.

               The final chapter focuses on Chinese nuclear strategy, which has not really changed since China developed the bomb in 1965. The Chinese have always focused on missile warheads rather than bombs dropped from planes to use nuclear weapons as a strategic defense and deterrence. They created the Second Artillery as an independent branch to manage nuclear weapons. The number of nukes China has is small, but big enough to inflict serious damage on an enemy in an emergency as a retaliation, as China has a no-first strike policy.

               To conclude, this is a really great book for learning about Chinese military strategy. It is very clear, and I found myself using a lot of quotes in my reflection, as the writer says things as they are and doesn’t leave a lot of room for guessing. This book does exactly what it sets out to do.

Miscellaneous Facts

• Shortly before the Tiananmen Square protests, Zhang Ziyang suggested separating the army from the party, which must have been very controversial and did not happen.

Reflection on Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream by Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson

               This is a pretty cool book that just says that we should spend more money on scientific research and development as a country. Specifically, the federal government should step in to do things like basic research that don’t yield profits very quickly to entice the private sector. It talks a lot about Vannevar Bush, who was the chief of the scientific research program that the United States federal government ran in World War II, which serves as a model for the authors. The primary mechanism of research is to build a trifecta of government funding backing university research that will have commercial uses in the private sector. The authors point out that government spending on research and development has significantly declined as a portion of GDP beginning in the 1970s and we would do well to bring it back to old levels. US government funding has been critical in the development of radar, the internet, the atomic bomb, and the mapping of the human genome, mainly in the ability of the government to fund expensive projects with high ceilings that may be risky. They propose developing a board based off of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission that would evaluate regions of the United States for potential federal science investment complemented by increases in education funding to ensure that there are trained workers who can do these new jobs. They would also increase the amount of later-in-life-education, as they point out that by the time a person hits thirty, they get no more formal education usually, but are still learning new things. More training for mid-career professionals could be very useful.

Reflection on A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire Book 2) by George R.R. Martin

               Another great book in A Song of Ice and Fire. ACOK is the story of the next phase of the War of the Five Kings. While AGOT gives us the prelude to and the first phase of the war, dominated by the sacking of the Riverlands and Northern victories, ACOK gives us the second phase, dominated by Stannis Baratheon, the scattering of Renly’s forces, the buildup to the Battle of the Blackwater, and the battle itself. There are many other stories happening at the same time, as Jon and Daenarys are all POV characters whose stories have nothing to do with the War of the Five Kings. In ACOK (excepting the prologue), Daenarys and Tyrion, our only two non-Stark POVs, return as POV characters. The only POV character not to return, for obvious reasons, is Lord Eddard Stark. All the other Starks do return: Catelyn, Jon (kind of a Stark), Bran, Arya, and Sansa. Theon and Davos provide new POVs.

               Catelyn Stark has an interesting POV that takes her from Riverrun to the Reach and the Stormlands, attempting to broker a deal between Stannis and Renly Baratheon, which she fails to do. She stops appearing towards the end of the book, but in the beginning, she sits in on Robb’s war councils, where it is becoming clear that things are not going to go well for the Northmen. At a fundamental level, when ACOK opens, the Northerners do not have any good reason to be in the Riverlands. They were there to save their lord, Eddard Stark, but he was executed. They decide to proclaim an independent kingdom. However, they claim the Riverlands as part of their kingdom, which is a huge area outside of the traditional North to have to defend. It is also unacceptable to any of the claimants to the crown, and they fail to ally themselves with any of the other four kings. Robb would only accept Stannis, who refuses, and then tries to find terms with Balon, who goes and attacks the North instead. Despite all this, the Northerners continue to win tactical victories in the Riverlands and the West. However, at the strategic level, the announcement that Robb will be King in the North only has the benefit of encouraging the Northerners to stay South to fight in a war, but the much bigger disadvantage of making it impossible to win that war. Neither Stannis nor Renly will accept the loss of half of the kingdom, and the Northerners isolate themselves further.

               To me, this book has a weird feel to it as the two most prominent characters in AGOT (in my opinion) were Ned Stark and Daenerys Targaryen, who play almost no role in this book. After all, Ned is dead and Daenarys is on the far side of the world with only 5 POV chapters. Daenerys’ story is interesting nonetheless, as she goes through trials that allow her to save her khalasar, which was extremely weak at the end of GOT, receive interesting prophecies, let her dragons grow, and meet two new companions who will help her on her journey: Ser Barristan Selmy and Strong Belwas. The most interesting thing that happens to Dany is her visit to the House of the Undying, where she sees four little men raping a beautiful woman. Perhaps this has to do with the War of the Five Kings? She also sees a banquet of blood with a dead king with a wolf’s head, obviously a prophecy of the Red Wedding. There is not much else that happens, but she resists temptations from both Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Jorah Mormont to go east to the Jade Sea, choosing instead to keep her eyes on the prize: Westeros. Her last chapter is a huge tease that ends in a way that really makes you think she’s going to Westeros, yet here we are three books later and she’s wandering the Dothraki Sea.

               I think that the most prominent character in this story is Tyrion Lannister. He has by far the most POV chapters in the book at 15, as he is the only set of eyes through which we see King’s Landing as Joffrey settles into power and as the Lannisters prepare for attack now that Eddard is dead. His 15 POV chapters are matched in the series only by Eddard, who had 15 in AGOT. Tyrion is constantly in a struggle with his family. In the first book, he struggles with his father, and in the second with his sister. He has not seen the one member of his family who actually likes him, his brother Jaime, since they left Winterfell early in AGOT, but he thinks about him often. Tyrion keeps succeeding and rising to the challenges that face him. In ACOK, his primary challenge is to get power for himself as the King’s Hand and to use it to stay alive and protect King’s Landing from Stannis’ attack. While we root for Tyrion as a reader, he does get sort of darker as this book progresses. In Tyrion VI, he hears a petition from Ser Aliser Thorne of the Night’s Watch about the dead coming alive. He makes Thorne wait so long that the moving hand that he had has completely decomposed and then mocks him in court. He had vowed to Lord Commander Mormont that he would help, but Tyrion is not much help! Even though he sends men with Ser Aliser for the Watch, by mocking him in court he keeps the court in disbelief over the true claims of the Watch that the dead are rising. In this critical moment, Tyrion causes huge damage to the entire realm. Tyrion also slaps Shae when she mocks him in Tyrion X, which is fucked up.

               The third and worst thing Tyrion does is a threat he makes in a conversation with his sister, Cersei, in Tyrion XII. It is a major turning point in the siblings’ relationship, as it ends the last bits of goodwill between them and is likely the reason that Cersei sent Ser Mandon Moore to kill him. In it, Cersei reveals that she has captures Alayaya, mistaking her for Shae, Tyrion’s whore. She promises to harm the girl if anything happens to Joffrey, at which point Tyrion decides that “if she thinks me such a monster, I’ll play the part for her,” and tells her that whatever happens to Alayaya will happen to Tommen, including the beatings and the rapes. We, as the readers, know it is a bluff, but Cersei doesn’t. Later in the same conversation, he tells her that "I have never liked you, Cersei, but you were my own sister, so I never did you harm. You've ended that. I will hurt you for this. I don't know how yet, but give me time. A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid." This quote is huge! It is what makes Cersei think that Tyrion was responsible for Joffrey’s death later on and is the final cut that solidifies the Lannister schism.

               After Tyrion, the most prominent character is Stannis Baratheon, even though he doesn’t have a single POV chapter. We hear about him through other characters, mainly Ser Davos Seaworth, but also Catelyn Stark. Stannis is pretty cool because he’s been built up a lot. We hear a lot about him in AGOT, mostly people wondering when he will strike, so the tension has been building up to the Battle of the Blackwater for a long time. The entire book is really a big prelude to his battle, at least in the grander scheme of political events. The POV chapters of Tyrion, Davos, Catelyn, and Sansa are dominated by it.

               Theon has a story line that is very important and tragic. He seizes Winterfell in ACOK for the Ironborn but finds himself abandoned by his father and sister. He meets Reek, who helps him with all sorts of things before revealing that he is truly Ramsay Snow after killing Northmen, mainly Cerwyns and Tallharts, outside Winterfell’s walls. Theon is totally delusional. He has way too high an opinion of himself and thinks about taking the black before Ramsay Snow “rescues” him. He thinks to himself that he could even rise to be Lord Commander, even though he’s an idiot. Maybe that’s why he thinks he could do that. We know that bad things are coming for him in A Storm of Swords.

               The last character I wanna specifically talk about is Sansa. This whole book is basically torture for her. Her world comes crashing down and she becomes a friendless hostage in King’s Landing. It’s a huge time of personal growth for her as she successfully navigates all of the challenges posed to her by the Lannisters and prepares her escape.

               Some interesting stuff happens at the Fist of the First Men. Specifically, in Jon IV, Ghost refuses to enter the ringfort, getting spooked by something. Then, in the same chapter, Ghost finds an old warhorn and dragonglass, recently buried with a cloak of a brother of the Night’s Watch. That is very interesting, and I am shocked that people were not more interested when Jon brought that stuff back. Jon tried to blow the horn but it was cracked and didn’t work. He gave it to Sam. I have a feeling that this stuff is gonna be very important. I found Jon’s chapters to be way more interesting in ACOK than in AGOT, as he spends ACOK north of the Wall, ranging and eventually getting captured by Wildlings. This book also introduces us to Dolorous Edd Tollett, the funniest character in the books. He was definitely my favorite side character.

Things I noticed:

• Prologue: White ravens leave the citadel, announcing the coming of winter, which is very early compared to the show, in which winter is announced in season 6 (I think).
• Prologue: Maester Cressen introduces us to a poison that takes the form of a “little crystal seed,” called the Strangler, which we know will later be removed from a certain someone’s crystal hairnet and dissolved in a cup of a certain boy-king’s wine.
• Tyrion III: The funniest moment in the book is easily when the Small Council is trying to think of a rumor to shame Stannis to match the (true) rumor spreading about Joffrey’s incestuous parentage. As they plot, it is suggested that perhaps Stannis’ wife, Sylese, is cheating on him with another. When they think of people to be her lovers, Cersei immediately suggests brothers and uncles. I laughed out loud. That lady has a serious family-sexuality complex.
• Tyrion IV: I’m not sure if this comes to anything, but I notice that Lady Tanda has been having lots of dinner parties since AGOT with people like Littlefinger and Balon Swann.
• Tyrion VI: When Tyrion interrogates Grand Maester Pycelle, it is revealed (and later confirmed in another chapter) that Renly originally wanted to marry Margaery Tyrell to his brother Robert, showing that Renly was working against the Baratheons for a long time and that the Tyrells wanted to marry Margaery to a king for a long time. Eventually she marries three: Renly, Joffrey, and Tommen.
• Daenerys II: An interesting quote from Daenerys’ thoughts in light of the series finale on HBO: “Dany had no wish to reduce King's Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father. [paragraph break] But before she could do that she must conquer.” It is really interesting to see where her mind is at while in Qarth.
• Arya VII: Arya overhears that many people have seemingly killed Beric Dondarrion. She hears that Amory Lorch killed him at Rushing Falls and the Mountain had killed him twice. GRRM gives us these rumors now so that we think that they are just false information, but we will learn later that Beric is actually being revived and living again.
• Tyrion XI: Wisdom Hallyne of the Pyromancers finds that they are able to make way more wildfire than expected and asks Tyrion if they’ve seen any dragons about, since the existence of dragons allows them to make more. Tyrion says no, but we know that the answer is yes. Ha ha George. I wonder if Stannis would have won if Dany hadn’t woken the dragons?
• Jon VI: The only R+L=J information I saw in the book was in Jon VI, when he thinks to himself, “He was his father’s son. Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?”
• Arya X: Arya hates a Frey boy in Harrenhal named Elmar, little does she know, Robb and Cately had agreed to marry her to that little boy. In Arya X, Elmar tells her that the Freys have been dishonored and that he won’t get to marry a princess. Arya told him “I hope your princess dies,” not knowing that she was the princess. What a world.
• Arya X: While AGOT ends with Arya getting her first kill, ACOK ends with her second, though this one, a Bolton guard, was premeditated.

Reflection on The Everglades: River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas

               This classic book, first published in 1947, brought the Everglades into national public consciousness. It has a particularly beautiful beginning, as Douglas writes that, “There are no other Everglades in the world.” She goes on to describe their majestic beauty, plant and animal life, and importance as an ecosystem in the first chapter. Throughout the rest of the book, she tells us their history and explains the importance of the Indians and Europeans that battled over it and the Americans who moved in. When she wrote the book, Miami had not yet become the capital of Latin America. The final chapter is a call to action to protect this incredibly unique and valuable region.

               “The surface rock below the Everglades dips south at an incline of half a mile every six miles,” and is like a sort of spoon entering a cup of coffee. As the spoon enters, it fills with coffee. You can hold it so that just the rim of the spoon is visible, as the liquid is held by only three sides, joining with the rest of the cup on the fourth side. That’s sort of what the Everglades is like, but the liquid is moving, very slowly, but moving at a pace of one mile own for every 12 miles south-southwest.

               The people who lived in the Everglades were the Timucuans in the north, near Tampa; The Mayaimis lived near Lake Okeechobee; The Tekestas also lived in the area south of Okeechobee. The Calusas or Caloosas dominated the rich river of grass further to the south. However, all these peoples were killed off by Europeans and disease in the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries. By the end of the 18^th century and beginning of the 19^th, groups facing pressure from the north in what is now Georgia and Alabama moved south to evade the white man. There were two linguistic groups that moved south: Muskogee-speakers, dominated by the Creeks who had crossed the Mississippi from the west, and Hithiti-speakers, the most important of which was the Mikasuki or Miccosukee. “Okeechobee” is a Hitchiti word, replacing the old name for the lake, which was “Mayaimi.” The Seminoles, whose name might be derived from “cimarron,” a Spanish word for runaway or escaped slave (due to Seminole acceptance of the runaways from the north), emerged as a group from the Muskogee-speakers, arriving from the northeast, led by a chief named Chipacasi or Se-pe-coffee. The city of Tallahassee is named after the Talasis, a Muskogee-speaking tribe. There were about 80 villages of Indians living in South Florida.

               In 1835, facing encroaching Americans and troops sent by the federal government to seize their lands, the Seminoles, led by Osceola, went to war with the United States, using a strategy of guerrilla warfare. They managed to keep the federal troops at bay and preserved their lands in the Everglades for a time. It was during this war that Seminoles massacred Major Francis L. Dade and his men in December 1835, shortly before the introduction of a new county to Florida, named “Dade” in his honor. Osceola was betrayed and taken prisoner in 1837, dying in chains as a symbol of Seminole resistance. The war dragged on until February of 1842, resulting in 3,930 Indians shipped to Arkansas (and later to Oklahoma) and 1,555 men dead in the US Army and Navy. Douglas does not tell us the Seminole casualty count except to say that it was “greater than that.” The war cost the US government 40 million dollars.

               Florida was slowly coming under control of the US government as Indian populations continued to wane. In 1845, Florida was made a state, a slave state to balance the free state of Iowa. And in that very year the new state legislature urged Congress to “examine and survey the Everglades, with a view to their reclamation,” meaning drainage. The problem with drainage is that the Everglades ecosystem already has its own drainage. It flows out to the southwest nice and slow. The canals that would eventually be built by destroying rock surfaces in the east and west coasts would mean saltwater infiltration, as the fresh water could not push it out from all sides. Plus, as long as rain kept coming (and it would), water would need to keep being pumped out. Okeechobee naturally flooded, feeding the Everglades with water, so they needed to build a dike, however, the one that would be completed in the 1910s war breached in hurricanes in 1926 and 1928, killing thousands because it held back water to lead to a bigger flood when breached. Apparently, the Indians of the Everglades had built ancient canals, but Douglas does not mention much more information about these but to say that they existed. All of these drainage projects were to have negative impacts on the Everglades ecosystem. It was only five years after statehood in 1850 that the state passed the Swamp Lands Act, designed to secure lands for drainage and reclamation and to create the Board of Internal Improvement, which would oversee the development of these public lands.

               By the turn of the century, the South Florida area was developing more to the east of what would become the I-95 corridor. The farmer William Brickell donated land to create streets in Miami and Julia Tuttle showed Henry Flagler that Miami was below the “frost line,” meaning that oranges could still grow that far south even during a frost. Flagler built his railroad to Miami and eventually all the way to Key West, with the Key West portion lasting until the Labor Day Hurricane of 1926 destroyed it. The real estate speculator R.P. Davie bought “25,000 acres of black muck” in what is now the town of Davie and sold it at $30 an acre, having only paid $2 an acre for it. It was a bad investment, as the Florida real estate market crashed shortly thereafter. But in spite of the busts, Florida kept growing, and While Douglas didn’t know it as she wrote the book in 1947, but the biggest times of growth were yet to come in the years after World War 2.

               To end the book, Douglas tells us how good it is that Everglades National Park was created. She tells us that we must protect this unique and special ecosystem, and she certainly did, speaking out in 1979 against the construction of an airport in the middle of the Everglades when she was 89 years old. She lived to be 108 and is certainly a Floridian hero. This is a really cool book (except for one part where she goes into some racist pseudo-science about native Americans) and I would recommend. To end, here is a quote from a man who lived in the Everglades and hunted there:

“When I was trying to sleep in that thick swamp I would often hear strange noises of birds and some coons and other screams which might have been panthers but I had no gun and felt perfectly safe as if home. The hoot owl was great company; he would scream out in the dead silent hours and almost made one shiver to think what fine agreeable neighbors he had. I very rarely saw a rattle snake. I killed a few, just for meanness, when I was about the age of twenty, and used to carry one or two of those rattlers’ fangs in my pocket to pick my teeth with; but thank the Lord, I have no teeth now.”

Reflection on The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough

               The Pioneers was not the book I expected it to be. I thought it was going to be a historical study of the American settlement of the west, but it is actually totally focused on the town of Marietta, Ohio from 1787 to 1863. It is a good book, though I’m not sure what I would use this information for. It is mainly a colorful illustration of what life was like for the first generations of American settlers in what would become the state of Ohio. Marietta is found on the Ohio River and was the first town settled in Ohio, temporarily serving as the capital until it was moved to Cincinnati and then Columbus.

               I really liked the egalitarian aspects of the Ohio Company as set up by Rufus Putnam for the settlement of the region. For example, no one could purchase less than one share or more than five. That created a region of smallholders, not one powerful landowner ruling over the rest. They also banned slavery. Each settler got a small lot in the town and a larger lot to grow crops outside of the central township, copying the New England model of settlement. McCullough alleges that the people of Ohio were also pioneering what would be called the American way of life, though I think that America is too diverse to have one group claim that.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Ohio is home to large mounds, which confounded American settlers. Even the natives of the area did not know who made them. It was later revealed that they are the work of the Ohio Hopewell culture and the Great Mound was built between 100 BC and 500 AD.
• The term “bushwhacking” comes from settlers on the Ohio River having to grab hold of bushes and trees on the river’s banks to pull the boat upstream.
• In 1791, the Ohio governor, St. Clair, met a huge defeat against Indians where he lost 623 military men and 200 women and children, the worst military disaster for American forces to that point. It was also the source of the very first congressional investigation.
• There was a weird plot at one point hatched by Aaron Burr after he killed Hamilton to start a new country in the west, though he was arrested by Jefferson and then tried for treason, but found innocent. He spent the rest of his life in Europe.

Reflection on Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat

               This is a cool cookbook that is written to teach you about the holistic approach to cooking, using what Nosrat calls the “cardinal directions” of the culinary art: salt, fat, acid, and heat. I learned about why it’s good to salt meat before you cook it, allowing salty flavor to penetrate deep into he tissues. I learned how to tell apart good and bad olive oil and that classic puff pastry has 730 layers of dough and 729 layers of butter. I also learned that oranges are less acidic when closer to the equator. I also learned that oranges that are higher on the tree and further outside on the branches are sweeter than those that are lower on the tree and closer to the trunk. This book inspired me to do some cooking.

Reflection on A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire Book 1) by George R.R. Martin

               Now here’s a great book. I have watched the show through four times I think now and this is my second read-through of the books. I noticed a lot more things and I remembered all sorts of things that I’d forgotten. AGOT is such a good introduction to the series with a slow build that develops into several thrilling plotlines. Several different characters’ stories are told in a seemingly unrelated way until they develop into a Stark-Lannister war. However, three point-of-view characters plotlines seem to stay well out of this storyline, being Jon, Daenerys, and Bran (though Bran is used to describe what’s going on with Robb until he leaves Winterfell).

               The most compelling two characters in this book for me are Eddard Stark and Daenerys Targaryen. Stark’s story is a sort of murder mystery, with an outsider (Stark) thrust into a world of intrigue, assassination, incest, and family secrets. His investigation is the exciting tensions that carries the reader through the King’s Landing plot of the book. He is the key character of the book until its last act. Daenerys’ story is the other one that I love most. She is the only character that from the beginning, the absolute beginning, you know is destined for big things. Her transformation in the books from her unlikely marriage to Drogo that elevates her over her brother, Viserys, who abused her, to the death of Viserys, to the fall of Drogo, to the birth of her dragons, takes her from the position of being sold as a slave to becoming an independent khaleesi. Her story in this book is incredibly captivating. Jon, who we also know is later destined for big things, is really on back burner for most of this book, as it remains unclear to the reader when something will happen with the Others. By the end of Daenerys’ arc, we can see what Martin has planned for her, as she says of the Dothraki who betray her that, “I am the dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die screaming.” I see very little hinting in this book of Daenarys going to free the slaves. Though she demonstrates some compassion, she tries to tell herself that this is the way of war, and it would seem like she would reject freeing slaves after her problems with Mirri Maz Duur. I believe that Martin had no plans to include the slave-freeing plot when it was still going to be a trilogy, but added it in later.

               I think that most of the book is honestly the Stark parents blundering into problems for their families. They have no plan. Both Eddard (in trying to discover Jon Arryn’s secret) and Catelyn ( in trying to bring Tyrion to justice) are solely concerned with doing the right thing, but they never think about what’s going on around them. The Lannisters, on the other hand, are ruthlessly ambitious, and Martin tells us through the book that it is better to be ambitious and have a plan than to single-mindedly pursue moral ends. Power is critical, and the Stark parents were just not up to the level of southern intrigue. It is incredible to me that even after getting word that his wife has kidnapped Tyrion and even after Jaime kills his men in the streets and even after the Lannisters and Tullys call their banners, Eddard Stark still does not call his banners. That is plain stupid. I noticed that in Eddard XI, where I also noticed what I recently read in a bryndenbfish essay, which is that Ned made a very bad mistake in not sending Loras to go after the Mountain. By sending Beric Dondarrion (a no-name lord) instead, he loses Loras’ support when he could have brought the Tyrells against the Lannisters. Ned is not a competent political thinker, planning only for the short-term goal of defeating the Mountain’s brigands. He does not conceive of the fact that a war is brewing at all, and it Eddard XI that is made most clear by his lack of will to call banners and his refusal to send Loras, forsaking what would have been an incredibly powerful alliance with the Tyrells. Then, in Eddard XIII, after King Robert dies, he refuses an alliance with Renly Baratheon! If only Stannis had actually done something, he could have been Ned’s dream ally, but Ned just waits and waits and loses out on two critical allies (who will later turn the tide of the Battle of the Blackwater). If the Starks had gotten an alliance with the House Tully (which they did), House Tyrell, and House Baratheon (under Renly), that would have been an unstoppable alliance with Arryn neutrality under Lysa and a lack of will in House Martell to help their enemies, the Lannisters. That would have been the end of Lannister power. Similar mistakes are made by Robb at the strategic level, as he allows himself to be declared King in the North to retroactively give meaning to the Northern struggle after Ned’s death, but that also ends all reason to keep fighting in the south, which will soon cause him problems.

R+L=J

               As Eddard investigates Robert’s bastards, following the path of mysteries that led Jon Arryn to his death, we get the first hints about Jon Snow’s true parentage. It happens pretty late, all the way in Eddard IX: “He thought of the promises he’s made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he’d paid to keep them.” We are also told that Lyanna did not want to marry Robert, though as a reader, one may not connect this to Ned or Jon very quickly. In Eddard X, we get the scene at the Tower of Joy, where we hear about Lyanna’s “bed of blood,” which implies the bed is a birthing bed. The implication is essentially confirmed in Daenarys VII, when Mirri Maz Duur claims to know “every secret of the bloody bed” as Daenerys prepares to give birth. Another connection I drew was between Eddard X and Daenerys X. The quote in Eddard X that interests me is right after that famous line, “And now it ends.” Martin writes that, “A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.” First of all, the blood-streaked sky reminds me of this line from Daenerys X: “Dany looked and saw it, low in the east. The first star was a comet, burning red. Bloodred; fire red; the dragon’s tail. She could not have asked for a stronger sign.” This is the first time we hear about the comet that will also be mentioned by everyone at the opening of the next book. I see it as pretty significant in marking the births of both Jon and Daenarys, who were born at the same time, as well as the dragons, about a decade and a half later. I also think it is interesting that Eddard’s chapter says “as blue as the eyes of death,” which is a very weird way to describe either a sky or the eyes of death, unless the eyes of death are wights. There is no other reason that dead eyes would be blue.

               The clearest R+L=J hint comes in Eddard XIV, when he remembers the tourney at Harrenhal while he is in the dungeons beneath the Red Keep. He dreams/remembers Rhaegar being the champion of the jousting competition and scandalizing everyone by laying the queen of beauty’s laurel not in the lap of his wife Elia but in the lap of Lyanna Stark. They are winter roses. Martin writes as the dream finishes, “Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood. She had loved the scent of winter roses.” The words “promise me” remind us that Ned has a secret. The “bed of blood,” reminds us that it has to do with Lyanna’s childbirth. The new information is that “She had loved the scent of winter roses,” which can be logically meant to say “she had loved Rhaegar,” being that he gave her those winter roses. So now with the new information that she and Rhaegar loved each other and that this is related to her “bed of blood,” it becomes clear on a reread that Lyanna is Jon’s mother and Rhaegar his father.

               I feel like on my read through of the book, R+L=J was not obvious to me by any means. However, as I return to my notes and page markers it is very clear. Lots of the clues that are revealed are seemingly revealed in an order that makes it difficult to discern but they are there. What I wonder is if we continue to get clues in the next book.

Thing I Noticed:

• Bran II: Right at the very beginning of the chapter, Martin writes from Bran’s perspective that, “The king wanted wild boar at the feast tonight,” definitely a wink to the king’s own death.
• Bran III: When Bran is dreaming with the three-eyed raven and feels himself falling, he looked down and “He could see the whole realm, and everyone in it.” Martin described him seeing all of Westeros and Essos and then North, beyond the Wall, foreshadowing the powers Bran will get.
• Catelyn IV: I noticed that Littlefinger claims to have bet for Jaime Lannister against Tyrion. We find out later in the book that Tyrion never bets against his brother.
• Catelyn VI: She thinks to herself that, “Sometimes she felt as though her heart had turned to stone,” a hint at Lady Stoneheart.
• Tyrion V: Lady Lysa Arryn sits on a weirwood throne.
• Jon VII: Jon dreams a nightmare about “dead kings” who come “stumbling from their cold black graves,” a clear foreshadowing of the crypt scene in the battle against the White Walkers in the show.
• Bran VI: Osha says to Bran, “Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?” And Bran will later send wind as he learns to be the three-eyed raven.
• Jon VIII: Jon burns his hand when he kills the wight with fire in the Lord Commander’s quarters. I associate this burned hand with Victarion’s burned hand later on. It is Jon’s right hand.
• Tyrion VIII: Martin writes that, “It had been nigh on a year since he’d lain with a woman, since before he had set out for Winterfell in company with his brother and King Robert.” This means that about one year passes in the book. But are Planetos years equal to Earth years?
• Sansa VI: We hear from Sansa after her father’s death that Grand Maester Pycelle “felt her brow, made her undress, and touched her all over while a bedmaid held her down.” I had not noticed this on my first reading but it is incredibly messed up that Pycelle molests her, basically doing it the moment that she loses all her protection at court. This is a very bad dude.
• Catelyn XI: Cately had already mentioned in an earlier POV chapter that she had always waited for her father and when he returned to Riverrun from wherever he had been, he would ask her, “Did you watch for me?” There is a really beautiful reversal of the relationship in Catelyn’s final POV chapter as her father dies. Martin writes, “’My little cat.’ A tremulous smile touched his face as he groped for hers. ‘I watched for you…’” That was such a sad line honestly.
• This is a very Stark-heavy book. We get perspectives from Bran, Catelyn, Eddard, Sansa, and Arya. Leaving only Robb and Rickon without POV chapters. The only other POV characters are Tyrion and Daenarys, giving us 5 Stark POV characters, one Lannister, and one Targaryen.

Reflection on No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes by Anand Gopal

               No Good Men Among the Living is primarily a story of Afghans trying to make it through the American invasion, though the book really covers all the time since the end of the Soviet invasion from 1979-89. It is really good at conveying personal stories, though I would have liked a more ordered analysis about the major events and turning points of the war. But that is not what this book is. This book is primarily about people and telling the story of the war through their eyes.

               It is pretty astounding to think that by December of 2001 the Taliban was defeated by American forces. Eighteen years on, with our troops still in Afghanistan, it is hard to understand how we could have achieved victory against the enemy so quickly and still be there. I think at a fundamental level, the problem is that our invasion was not that crazy of a turning point for Afghanistan, it was really just our entry into what is now a forty-year war. It began with the Soviet invasion to prop up a Communist government from 1979-89. The U.S. backed the mujahedeen resistance, but then those same mujahedeen started fighting against each other in a civil war from 1992 to 1996. The Taliban (meaning the students) emerged as the victor, ruling over the country for four years until they made the mistake of sheltering Osama Bin Laden, bringing upon them the wrath of the United States.

               When the USA invaded, we destroyed the Taliban quickly and the author asserts that US forces were looking for something to do. Due to a lack of a clear enemy, the allies that the USA had made to fight the Taliban started using US forces to pick each other off, especially in the south of the country. People knew that the USA wanted to destroy the Taliban, so they just told the USA that whoever they wanted out of the picture was Taliban. The entirety of chapter 7 in the book is examples of the US forces being used as different warlord’s private hit squads. This is definitely a lesson in occupation strategies. The locals know the environment better and the United States needs to be ready to disregard bad intelligence. People know how to use these situations to their advantage. Big turning points occurred in 2006, when the Taliban resurged after a low point in 2003 and then in 2008, when the Taliban was weakened again after executing a bus full of economic migrants to Iran that they suspected were enemy fighters.

               The USA spent way too much time and money with these warlords, funneling tons of money to them outside the state. For example, the US paid one guy’s “private security contractor” to “escort” our forces along a highway $1-2000 dollars per trip. That basically made him the feudal lord of the highway. He became very rich, and since he was not the new Afghan state that US forces were trying to build, there was now more money (which equals power) outside the state. This happened over and over again all over the country. Gopal writes that, “Of the $557 billion that Washington spent in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2011, only 5.4 percent went to development or governance. The rest was mostly military expenditure, a significant chunk of which ended up in the coffers of regional strongmen like Jan Muhammad. In other words, while the United States paid nominal amounts to build the Afghan state, it fostered a stronger and more influential network of power outside the state.” The US government contracted out the war, leading to a lack of control over what was going on. Contractors also contracted out to sub-contractors and local warlords. All of this created power outside the state at a time when the new Afghan state needed to get control of its territory.

               In conclusion, I learned two major lessons from this book. The first is that the US forces should not have held on so tightly to allies in the region. This is a place where there are no good guys who truly believe in our values, and as a result, we should not get sentimental about our relationships. We often ended up in partnerships where our intelligence services were manipulated by our “allies.” Second, when trying to build up a state, you need to actually put the money into the state. All of this cash going into security contractors just hurts the state because power is a zero-sum game. Every dollar you give to some security company that is not the state you are trying to build is a dollar spent against yourself.

Miscellaneous facts:

• Only 12% of Afghan soil is arable and only half of that is used due to water scarcity.

Reflection on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

               This is a cool book that I remember hearing lots of talk about when I was younger. I feel like I was under the impression that this book advocated for building a cabinet out of rivals to achieve better results, but it definitely does not do that. The book does not advocate for anything except for making the case that Abraham Lincoln was a “political genius” and certainly very wise. The book follows him and his cabinet members, principally William Seward, Secretary of State, Salmon Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, and Edward Bates, the Attorney General. Other key characters are the two different Secretaries of War, first Simon Cameron, and afterwards Edwin M. Stanton, the Postmaster General, Montgomery Blair, and the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles. This is a book about the actions of and relationships between those cabinet members on a background of what amounts to essentially a biography of the later life of Abraham Lincoln.

               The early chapters of the book, really almost the first half of it, cover the personal lives and careers of Seward, Chase, Bates, and Lincoln. Seward was a jovial man and a talker who lost his father at a young age. He rose up in New York politics and became a popular politician thanks to a partnership with newspaperman and political handler Thurlow Weed and a very good wife, Frances. Frances was a staunch abolitionist and Seward himself became one on an 1835 trip to the South. He won the governorship of New York in 1840 and 42. He was a moderate and the presumed nominee of the Republican Party in 1860, being that he was the most popular man in the party. Salmon Chase was a foil to Seward. He was not very friendly at all and probably made more bitter by the fact that he was widowed three times. He had a daughter, Kate Chase, who made her father’s political goals her own goals in life and promoted his ambitions as much as possible. Speaking of his ambitions, he was very ambitious. He had started his career after gaining fame for protecting an abolitionist publisher’s house against a mob and then for serving as an abolitionist lawyer. He developed a close partnership with future Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. As he tried to gain the Republican nomination in 1860, he was the governor of Ohio. Edward Bates was a successful St. Louis lawyer and a true family man who loved his wife and 18 kids. After some experience as a state and federal legislator in Whig circles, he went to the River and Harbor Convention and made a serious impression, being elected president of the convention and earning himself a national reputation due to a speech he made. Lincoln was the least likely of the four of them to win the nomination in 1860. He had won four terms to the Illinois state legislature and supported Whig ideas, like a national bank and tariffs, but in the state legislature he only made progress on internal improvements, mainly in infrastructure. He married Mary Todd in 1842 after a depressive episode. Mary came from a wealthy family but had to work hard and suffer with her new husband who had very little money. He lost two elections to the Senate in Illinois, but in 1858 gained fame for debates he did around the state with his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. He was very talented at analogies. Where Seward might reference Classical Greece, Lincoln might have referenced something more everyday and understandable.

               Lincoln won the Republican nomination after several ballots, as he had made himself everyone’s second choice. That was a good move since Seward did not have the thing locked up and once everyone saw that their candidate would not win, they would look for compromise, compromising on Lincoln. He then won the election of 1860 because the Southerners were divided on their candidates. Early in his presidency, Lincoln needed to make sure that border states, especially Maryland, did not secede, and in his inaugural address, Lincoln said that he had “no lawful power” or even an inclination to interfere with slavery. But by the spring of 1862, Lincoln was already thinking seriously about abolition, getting ready to draft the Emancipation Proclamation.

I was stunned by the disrespect that General George McClellan demonstrated to his president. This is an excerpt from the book:

He reported a visit to the White House one Sunday after tea, where he found “the original gorrilla,” as he had taken to describing the president. “What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now!” he ranted. “I went to Seward’s, where I found the ‘Gorilla’ again, & was of course much edified by his anecdotes—ever apropos, & ever unworthy of one holding his high position.”

On Wednesday night, November 13, Lincoln went with Seward and Hay to McClellan’s house. Told that the general was at a wedding, the three waited in the parlor for an hour. When McClellan arrived home, the porter told him the president was waiting, but McClellan passed by the parlor room and climbed the stairs to his private quarters. After another half hour, Lincoln again sent word that he was waiting, only to be informed that the general had gone to sleep.

Lincoln was apparently ready to let this all slide with McClellan if he could get a victory. I remain unconvinced that Lincoln handled this situation well. Lincoln kept McClellan on for a long time in error I think. However, it was smart to get rid of him the day after the midterm elections of 1862, as it may have affected the outcome negatively for Lincoln, so I can’t be sure.

               Lincoln’s management style really lived up to the name “Honest Abe.” He never let subordinates take the blame for his own decisions, and this won him their loyalty and trust. He confronted a really tough situation in December 1862, when Chase started spreading negative rumors about Seward to the Senate, leading Seward, who was the closest cabinet member to Lincoln, to offer his resignation. Chase had been jealous of that relationship. Chase was forced to testify to the Senate, where the same Senators who heard him tell lies about Seward heard him contradict himself in public. In embarrassment he offered Lincoln his resignation. This worked out perfectly for Lincoln since Chase and Seward balanced each other out—Lincoln rejected both resignations. Chase would resign two more times and on the final time Lincoln accepted. Chase had been plotting against him, yet Lincoln decided to make him Chief Justice, not letting personal differences outweigh his own professional opinion.

               Lincoln was also known for his self-confidence. I’m not sure what his “trick” was for this, but he was courageous when against public opinion and did not let himself get hampered by self-doubt. It worked out well for him through the spring of 1863, as July led to victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. It also worked throughout 1864, when he thought he would lose the presidential election until the Union took Atlanta thanks to General Sherman.

               This is a very solid book and it provides good information on the Civil War and specifically high-level, executive branch Union politics during the war. I wish it focused more on the leadership lessons provided by Abraham Lincoln. There was one quote right at the end that I liked, where Goodwin states that, “his political genius was not simply his ability to gather the best men of the country around him, but to impress upon them his own purpose, perception, and resolution at every juncture. With respect to Lincoln’s cabinet, Charles Dana observed, “it was always plain that he was the master and they were the subordinates. They constantly had to yield to his will, and if he ever yielded to them it was because they convinced him that the course they advised was judicious and appropriate.”

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Personal losses were very common for the men of the early 19^th century. Seward, Bates, and Chase all lost their fathers young. Lincoln lost his mother, sister, and first love. Chase also lost three wives to early deaths.
• Lincoln, Seward, Bates, and Chase all opposed the war with Mexico.
• This is not really a “fact,” but it’s worth stating that the South was really at a disadvantage in the Civil War from the very beginning. In the election of 1860, they could not even agree on one Southern candidate, split between the Democrats’ Stephen A. Douglas, the Constitutional Union Party’s John Bell, and another candidate, John C. Breckinridge.
• Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis lost their sons during the war.
• Black participation in the war was absolutely critical to Lincoln’s decision to support abolition. With over 100 thousand black soldiers fighting for the Union, Lincoln pointed out that to go back on his abolition promise would likely lose the war for the North to his opponents.
• The United States Navy grew tremendously during the war, from just 76 to 271 ships and from 7,600 seamen to 51,000.
• Lincoln at one point developed a plan for peace with the Confederacy that offered compensation for slaves that neither his cabinet nor Jefferson Davis would accept. I guess sometimes there is no ability to compromise and somebody just needs to win.

Reflection on Imperial China: 900-1800 by F.W. Mote

               This is a truly epic book. Covering nearly a millennium of Chinese history, Mote takes you deep into the political machinations, economic changes, social reforms, and religious revolutions that swept through China. This is the fullest look at Chinese history that I’ve ever read and is seriously enlightening I took a ton of notes and will write a summary of the event detailed in the book that stuck out most to me. I feel like I’ve taken a college class, which is a very good quality for a book to have.

               The book begins by describing a period of turmoil in China. The years from 907-959 are known as The Five Dynasties and Ten States, when China was divided and ruling states rose and fell, rarely lasting more than a few years or controlling more than a few major cities. The following chapter is simply titled, “Abaoji,” the name of the founder of the Liao Dynasty. If that name doesn’t sound Chinese to you, that’s because it isn’t. Abaoji was a Khitan chieftan from the northwestern steppes who lead his cavalry into northern China, conquering much of it and founding the Liao dynasty, which imitated much of Chinese government and culture. His empress, Yingtian, who came from another Khitan tribe, became extremely powerful after his death. While a Chinese dowager empress would work from behind the scenes, Yingtian was always prominent and even more after her husband’s death, when she rejected the traditional self-sacrifice that was expected of her upon death. She did, however, against the counsel of her ministers CHOP OFF HER OWN RIGHT ARM, which must have been a very risky move in a time before modern medicine. She was able to elevate her second son over her first for the throne, as the first was considered too “sinicized.”  That second son, Deguang, had a successful reign for twenty years, but died in an invasion of Song Dynasty lands. When it came time to name a successor, Yingtian was finally defeated trying to name her third son over the second son’s son. It is worth noting that Yingtian’s career reflects a seemingly universal tendency for women to hold more important roles in nomadic societies with a weaker state than in sedentary societies. Unfortunately, while this book does detail the lives of many important women, it does not analyze the larger role of women in China very much.

               The Liao Dynasty, in which ethnic Khitans ruled over Han Chinese in north China as well as their own people on the steppe, was a time of major cultural exchange. The Chinese took up horseback riding and the Khitans gained literacy. The Liao introduced civil exams by the mid-10^th century. Abaoji, the Liao Dynasty founder, formally continued Confucianism at court but also opened up Daoist temples. On a mass level however, the Khitans loved Buddhism. This may have been helped by the fact that is coexists well with other belief systems (East Asia never really got the memo of “exclusive truth” that is common in the West) as well as the fact that Buddhist monks acted as international emissaries, using Chinese as a lingua franca.

               The Song Dynasty emerged out of the five dynasties era through a series of coups that elevated military commander Zhao Kuangyin to the Chinese throne. He centralized military power, solidifying his dynasty, which the previous five dynasties had been unable to do, allowing generals to have all the power, overthrowing the emperor with ease. Zhao changed his name to Taizu, the traditional Chinese name for the founding emperor of a dynasty. He was succeeded by his brother, who took the name Taizong, traditional for the second ruler of a dynasty. There is no traditional name for third and so on. Their names would have been Song Taizu and Song Taizong. The second emperor, Taizong, was aggressive and invaded the Liao in 979 and lost. Then they invaded Liao again in 986, losing again. Song foreign policy remained very passive for a century after. In 1005, the Song and Liao signed the Treaty of Shan Yuan, which forced the Song to pay tribute to the Liao, though the Song would not have called it tribute.

               Oral and written exams that dated from the Tang Dynasty were formalized in the Song period. There was a Confucian renaissance. Mote stresses that while modern scholars in China often view the Song with some contempt or its political weakness, one should recognize its cultural achievements. Buddhism was vital to Chinese life but would diminish in the 11^th and 12^th centuries due to the Muslim conquest of India, cutting off the flow of monks. Song Taizong and his son Zhanzang were patrons of Daoism., which was seen as complementary to Buddhism in that Daoism was more human and less pious and abstract. The author estimates a Chinese population of 100 million people in the year 1100, with six million living in cities. Rice farming improved during Song, and was maybe responsible for this high population.

               Along with the Liao and Song dynasties, there was a third Chinese dynasty at the time, in northwest China, squeezed between the other two, called Xi Xia, or Western Xia. The dynasty was created by Tangut people, a civilization that bridged Inner Asian and Tibetan culture. Their dynasty was recognized by the Song in 967 and submitted to the Liao in 986. Unfortunately we have no written history from the Tangut point of view, making what we read about them biased by outsiders. The Xia played off both the Song and Liao, but became drawn closer into the Liao orbit after the decisively gained the upper hand in their 1004 invasion of Liao and the 1005 Treaty of Shan Yuan. They developed a script based on Chinese and were in a constant struggle between whether to embrace Chinese culture or nativism.

               I love the title of Chapter 9, which is, “The ‘Wild Jurchens’ Erupt into History”. The Jurchens were a steppe people from modern day Manchuria who were submitted to the Liao. However, some groups less so that others. The Liao used a Chinese concept, considering those that were tame to be “cooked” and those that were wild to be “raw” (this is the literal Chinese: cooked/raw). It was the “wild Jurchen” population, led by chieftain Aguda, that rebelled agains the Liao, declaring the Jin (gold) Dynasty in 1115. They found huge and quick success, though Aguda died in 1123. The Jin defeated the Liao and captured their emperor in 1125 under the leadership of Jin Taizong, Aguda’s brother, Wuqimai. Then they immediately invaded the Song Dynasty, penetrating far further than the Liao Dynasty ever had, essentially splitting China in half. However, the Jin did not eliminate either the Liao or the Song or the Xia. The Liao named another emperor in the west, in the Tian Shan Range and the Taklamakan Desert. The Song became known as the Southern Song, with the division falling between the Yangzi and Yellow Rivers. The Xia were forced into an alliance with the Jin when the Liao emperor was captured and mostly left alone. The Jin Dynasty and Jurchen people were interesting in that they copied the Khitan horse archers within one to two generations but not the nomadism. They engaged in a coordinated migration into the northern half of China, which the Khitans had never dreamed of under Liao. Within one to two more generations, the Jin had copied Chinese social organizations. The Jurchens owed their success to the Meng’an and Mouke system, which mobilized the population into fighting units of 100 and 1,000. These were family units that were “required to supply one able-bodied fighting man, his weapons and armor, and two to four mounts.” The impressive thing is not that this is a genius system, but that chieftains were able to implement this level of social control on a population of hunters and fishers that had never previously been a part of a state. By 1135, just two decades after Aguda decrlared their independence from the Liao Dynasty, they were done conquering and had stabilized the borders of their massive empire (which was even bigger and richer than the Liao).

The Jin Dynasty would last from 1115 until 1234, a very satisfyingly numbered year, which happened to be the year that they were invaded by Mongolians. From the 1120’s to the 1140’s, about 3 million Jurchens moved south, with about half that number being slaves. Unlike the Khitans, the Jurchens did not strengthen their homeland, opting instead for a Great Migration. Mote gives us four stages of the Jin Dynasty:

1.      1115-1135: The Period of Dual Institutions (The Jin adopt two law codes for the sedentary and nomadic peoples. They try and fail to get the Chinese to shave their foreheads, a traditional way of showing submission among inner Asian peoples. Many Jurchens illegally intermarry and many become bilingual.)

2.      1135-1161: The Era of Centralization (Tribal institutions gradually disappear and are replaced by a strong, Chinese-style emperor role. Jin invade Southern Song in 1161 and fail terribly. They adopt many Chinese ways of government and culture.)

3.      1161-1208: The Period of Nativist Reaction (Emperor Wulu encourages a Jurchen cultural renaissance among elites. Jurchen continue to dominate Southern Song.)

4.      1208-1234: The End of the Jin Dynasty (The Mongols begin to invade and the Jin fight them for 20 years, eventually losing.)

F.W. Mote credits the Jurchens and their Jin Dynasty with putting up a very strong fight against the Mongols at the end, more than most peoples were able to do. They had ruled over 40 million people while the Southern Song had China’s other 100 million. They made money from coal, iron, and crafts as well as seized wealth from the Song and trade with Southern Song.

               The Jin conquest of Liao had given the Xi Xia Dynasty a little more breathing room in 1127. From the 1140’s onward, the Tanguts grew closer to China and continued to play a role that had them choosing between closeness with the Song or the other dynasty, which was now the Jin instead of Liao. The Mongols attacked Xia in 1205, 1207, and 1209, until the formation of a Xia-Mongol alliance from 1209-1217. The alliance ended when Xia refused to allow a Mongol levy of soldiers, prompting the Mongols to invade and destroy the Xia in 1227, though Chinggis Khan (how it’s spelled in the book) died during the siege of the Xia capital. The Tanguts had maintained regional autonomy from 881-1227 and even had a true Dynasty from 1038-1227, forming a significant Central Asian state. Like so many, they were wiped out by the Mongols in the 13^th century. While Confucianism was their state religion, Tanguts also practiced Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity, Daoism, and Islam. Above all else on the local level, however, was Buddhism, which Inner Asians loved because it wasn’t Chinese.

               The Song faced extinction from 1126-31 when the Jurchens invaded but were led out of it by Prince Kang (Emperor Gaozong) until 1162. Gaozong made a crazy escape from the Jurchens to the south during the initial invasion and then managed to resist their incursions further during a three-decade reign. He made the crucial decision not to counterattack the Jin, essentially accepting that the Song Dynasty would continue to exist in a truncated form. After his death, the Southern Song would continue politically until 1279, being led by weak emperors with powerful chief councilors. The Song had some success at increasing imperial control over their government, but it is unclear if this was a good thing, as it reduced initiative at all levels. They used lots of internal taxes and held monopolies on salt, iron, and steel. That said, the farming population of China remained strong and very different from the poor, nearly enslaved serfs of Europe. Chinese farmers were generally small landowners who developed what Mote calls an “achieving society,” wherein within a few generations a family could enter the elite. There was a high rate of interaction between urban centers and rural villages, where most people lived. The urbanites were even ruled by the agricultural calendar. Government was not very visible to the average Chinese and they had a good amount of social mobility relative to other regions at the time.

               In chapter 16, Mote gives us a “Mid-Thirteenth Century Overview” before he dives into the Mongol invasions. He stresses the importance of Chinese diplomatic ritual culture, which forced border states to acknowledge China as the center of the world and became very awkward during the Song Dynasty, when the Song were not very powerful. Inter-state relations formed a powerful conduit for the Confucian values of order and all of the non-Song Dynasties became more culturally Chinese over time. Chinese culture continued to spread, helped along by Buddhism and commerce. One thing to note is that there was no concept of the “rule of law,” as the emperors of China “governed by laws.” That is to say that the emperor was the complete power in the dynasty, even if bureaucratic officials and courtesans exercised influence. There was no higher concept of law that even the emperor had to follow, only rituals and customs as ways of expressing his infinite power. The emperor was the law.

               The Mongols, whose nomadic culture was dominated by the horse and mobility, were a group of Inner Asian peoples of little consequence living on the border of the Jin Dynasty’s northern steppe lands. They had a relatively strong role for women compared to the Chinese, much like the Khitans and other nomadic groups. In the late 1180’s, tribal leaders rallied around a man named Temujin against another Mongol leader (Jemukha) and named him “Chinggis,” or boundless/universal leader. He reformed the military into decimal groups, noting that the inter-personal relationships that dominated steppe-politics were not stable, and he began to conquer. In 1203, he destroyed the Keraits and then the Merkits. He did not just conquered them, but destroyed them, killing many and forcing many more to call themselves Mongols. He destroyed the Naimans in Kang Khitan (Western Liao) and in 1206 he defeated an anti-Chinggis alliance. Unlike the Khitans, the Mongols led by Chinggis did not allow defeated peoples to retain their old tribal identities, they were forced to become Mongols, giving the leadership more power. Chinggis was an extremely effective leader and he got results.

               Confirmed by the khuriltai (big Mongol meeting) as khan in 1206, Chinggis Khan was building his Mongol empire by unifying the steppe tribes into one people. However, he needed to augment his forces with auxiliary infantry, which he took from conquered and allied peoples. In 1218, after Khwarezm kills Mongol envoys, they head east from 1218-1225, conquering through Otrar, Bukhara, Samarkand, Kabul, and Tabriz. Chinggis died as they returned back and destroyed Xi Xia and his son Ogodei becomes khan. The Mongols conquer Sichuan and Jin led by Ogodei. They would also invade and conquer Korea in 1259. They would have conquered Europe and made it to Hungary before Ogodei died and all of the Mongol leaders had to hold a khuriltai to choose a new leader. Women would play a major role in selecting the new leader, who would be Mongke, son of Tului, Ogodei’s younger brother, the fourth son of Chinggis khan.

               When Mongke died in 1260, the Mongol empire fractured into several parts and China fell to Kubilai. Kubilai collected top Chinese advisors and while he did not adopt Chinese culture in any serious way himself, he saw the benefits that Chinese institutions and culture could offer. He names Shangdu as his capital, the source of the word “Xanadu.” Kubilai conquered China, which no other Mongol leader, not even Chinggis, had been able to do in 1276. There were lots of innovations in Mongol fighting, as the many rivers in china required a green-water navy. Kubilai was a strong and powerful leader, though he made mistakes in his two attempted invasions of Japan. The dynasty he founded and named Yuan would last under 100 years, from 1276 to 1368.

               The Yuan favored Mongols, giving them special privileges under law and special rights in appointment to office. Normal Chinese people were banned from owning weapons. Even when civil service exams were restored in 1315, they still gave preferences to the Mongols. The Yuan also enforced hereditary jobs, which was the opposite of the “achievement society” that the Chinese were used to. Chinese people had long had the tradition of setting out to achieve great things, and while many followed in their fathers’ footsteps, being forced to do so was upsetting. The Chinese obviously resisted and did not like these policies, but there was little they could do to oppose Mongol power. On the cultural side, the Yuan favored Buddhism, as steppe people always had, and the high level of cultural achievement carried over from Song. The Yuan Dynasty is noted for its scientific achievements as well as ceramics.

               The Mongols went though lots of factionalism and instability but it was during the long reign of Shun Di (he who complied), that the dynasty fell to civil war. He was a weak ruler, dominated by factions at court, and his reign was marked by natural disasters: floods, disease, and a period of abnormal cold. In the decade of the 30s, there were small social disturbances. In the 40s, there were people turning to banditry and attacking defenseless towns. By the 50s, there was huge disorder and the countryside had broken out into war. There were many groups vying for power that fell broadly under four categories:

1.      Yuan Loyalists- Led by Koko Temur, a culturally Mongolian Chinese, these forces had little moral connection to the dynasty but saw it as a way to profit.

2.      Local militias- These self-defense organizations became important despite a traditional warrior class like knights in Europe as common people banded together to protect themselves from other groups, usually bandits or the government.

3.      Bandits and Smugglers- These groups were divided between Zhang Shicheng and Fang Guozhen and concentrated around the central and southern coasts, where they were able to control serious portions of trade as well as parts of the Grand Canal.

4.      Sectarian Rebels- These groups had a very big impact, as the leader of one of them would win the civil war and found the Ming Dynasty. One messianic group, the White Lotus Society, developed into the Red Turban Movement, a religious movement led in the south by Chen Youliang and in the North by Liu Foutong, who tried to lead some sort of “Song revival.”

This period is known as the “Era of Rival Contenders.” It is the most complex and interesting part of the book and the section where I took by far the most notes. Here is how the era played out in an extremely simplified way.

               First of all, factionalism within Yuan caused a total lack of Mongol coordination against their enemies, especially coastal smugglers. This made Yuan loyalists almost a non-player right away, as they were barely able to launch attacks and when they did they could not follow through and hold together until victory. The Red Turbans of the north tried to install a boy emperor but were nearly defeated by smuggler Zheng Shicheng until saved by someone named Zhu Yuanzhang, who coopted their movement. Zhu then goes west and defeats Chen Youliang in a major naval battle at Boyang Lake, making him very powerful. He then turned east and wiped out the smugglers on the coast before wrapping things up in the north. Who was this guy? Well it’s a pretty wild story.

               Zhu Yuanzhang was born into rural poverty, and both of his parents and his older brother died of illness within a month of each other when he was a boy. He was cared for by neighbors until he moved to a Buddhist temple, where he was going to train to become a monk. He had not learned many blessings or rituals however and spent most of his time begging on the street. Then, one day, returning to the temple from begging, he finds that government troops have destroyed the temple. With nowhere else to turn, he joins the Red Turban movement at 24 years old in 1352. He joined the Red turban rebels of Guo Zixing, who had taken over Liu Foutong’s movement when he died. He was immediately made a squad leader, so he must have shown some promise, and he rose quickly through the ranks, even marrying Guo’s adopted daughter. He ends up leading a semi-independent force of a few hundred men and keeps bringing on more, many as fighters, but some who would become key advisers. He had become chief of staff to Guo Zixing before Guo’s death in 1355 and took over the movement from then on. He had to attack Nanjing twice, but took it at 28 years old in 1356 and made it his main base. He ended up winning the war due to the high motivation of the Red Turban movement, a strong physical presence, and good judgment of others’ character, giving him talented, loyal subordinates. By 1368, he had won the Era of Rival Contenders and became Ming Taizu, expelling the steppe nomads and founding the Ming Dynasty.

               As a ruler, he was initially good, but became increasingly paranoid and despotic. He ruled that none of his descendants would ever work (causing problems down the road for his thousands upon thousands of descendants). He made lots of reforms and even reformed his reforms but commanded his successors not to do so, making it very difficult to change the institutions he created and re-created. He created Confucian schools to educate appointees, but then often purged those appointees, killing lots of his court officials. He must have regretted it, as he commanded his successors not to purge so often.

In 1398, Ming Taizu AKA Zhu Yuanzhang died and his grandson Hui Di came to the throne. While it appeared to many that he would be a good, active ruler, his uncle, the Prince of Yan, rebelled in 1399. He had no legitimacy but won anyway in 1402, killing Hui Di and his son. Officials committed mass suicide, opposed to recognizing him. His victory really institutionalized violence in the Ming Dynasty, as he and his father both used it regularly. Mote comments that if the Prince of Yan was a character in English history, Shakespeare would have surely written about him, as he was tortured by his cruel actions towards his nephew. He would be known as Ming Chenzu. He moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, maybe because he was disturbed to live in the city where his great crime had taken place. During his reign, eunuchs grew in power and he put them in charge of the Eastern Depot, a sort of secret police force that investigated and attacked his enemies. Chengzu was heavily occupied with Mongolia and the northern border, fighting the Mongolians five times between 1410 and 1424, though he also got into a debacle in the southwestern region of Annam, where the war outlived him, lasting from 1407 to 1427. One really interesting thing that happened during his reign was the voyaging career of the eunuch admiral Zheng He, who sailed the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean in massive ships, going as far as Arabia and Somalia. They were mainly diplomatic and only visited places that the Chinese had gone before, not conquering navally, but showing off the treasure fleet of the emperor, Chengzu, and asking for recognition from foreign rulers. His ships were massive. The largest of them “had 2,500 tons cargo capacity and 3,100 tons displacement; by comparison, the largest of the three ships which brought Columbus to the New World in 1492 was 125 feet long and had a capacity of only 280 tons.” Zheng He’s longest was 440 feet long. However, unlike Columbus’ ships, these were not meant for discovery, only to impress foreigners. Therefore, while the Spaniards and other Europeans set out to voyage the oceans, ironically looking for a way to China, the Chinese stayed nearby, even though they clearly had the capacity to go to the New World. However, the Chinese had no China to look for. As “the center of the world,” there was no good motivation to look for anything better.

The rule of Chengzu’s grandson Xuanzong is considered to be the high point of the Ming Dynasty. Ruling from 1426-35, Xuanzong was a highly refined emperor, a great painter and calligrapher, though he became increasingly “licentious” at the end. He promoted eunuchs as a way of countering the power of the civil bureaucracy with men who had greater loyalty to him. One of them, Wang Zheng, would become extremely important as the de facto dictator during the reign of his son. That son, Yingzang, sought military glory, and Wang Zheng convinced him to launch a northern invasion of the Mongols. It was a disaster in which Wang Zheng was killed and the emperor was captured. The court named his brother emperor, and his brother continued even after the Mongols released him. Then, when his brother died, he took back over. It is weird how peacefully that went down. Things went alright for awhile in Ming, and Yinhzang’s grandson, Xiaozong, proved to be a consequential emperor from 1488 to 1505. He reduced corruption and diverted the Yellow River south in 1495, which would be the course it followed until 1852. While the Yuan had joined many canals, it was the Ming who truly finished the work on the Grand Canal. They didn’t have many more goo emperors, though. Wuzong (1505-21) and Shizong (1521-67) were “strong-willed, perverse, and inattentive to their governing and ritual responsibilities.” While emperors retained their unlimited power, the actual governing was done by eunuchs and the civil bureaucracy. Emperors used it more so to divert funds to their own profligate spending.

In chapter 27, the author takes us on a tour of the Ming borders that I found very interesting. Here is a short description of what was happening on China’s borders:

1.      Northern Border- The Mongols had split up and Buddhist monasteries had led to less nomadism and more settling down. Mongols wanted trade but the Ming did not, and they built and extended portions of the Great Wall from the 1550s to the end of the dynasty in 1644, though Mote says it was not that useful. In 1571, after the Mongols defeated the Ming in a war, they finally got the trade they wanted.

2.      Tibet and the Western Border- Tibet had close, Buddhist relations with India (except during the Muslim conquest) and Mongolia. “Dalai” as in “Dalai Lama” is actually a Mongolian word meaning “oceanic” or “all-encompassing in wisdom.” China began to interact more with Tibet throughout the Ming Dynasty.

3.      “Soft” Southern Border- The weird thing about the south of China is that up to this point in Chinese history, huge portions of it are still not considered to be ethnically “Han Chinese.” While China had been moving steadily southward since at least the Tang Dynasty, many native peoples remained and practiced a sort of cultural dualism and integration.

4.      Maritime East China Border- Tang and Ming China produced the biggest ships in the world, and while the government saw the sea as a source of piracy and lawlessness, China had a long history of exporting trace goods to Southeast and South Asia. China generally ignored Taiwan because Taiwan was a primitive society still without much purchasing power, so not much to offer the Chinese. Starting in 1514, China began to interact with the Portuguese, who established Macau as a trading colony in the 1540’s. Something important to know about the Chinese coast is that not all of it is good for ports. Natural harbors are formed where mountains and hills meet the sea, plunging quickly to great depths, allowing ships with large keels to come in. Northern and central China just don’t really have that except for the Shandong and the Liaodong peninsulas. The deltas of the Yellow and Yangzi rivers in north and central China have no natural harbors, which tend to be found in southern China, south of Shanghai and the Yangzi river.

China began to open up to the world more, especially in 1567, when the emperor Muzong lifted the ban on Chinese participation in oceanic trade.

               The Ming entered a long political decline from the mid-16^th century onward, dominated by the reign of Shanzong from 1563-1620, who was a terrible, corrupt, cruel, and perverse emperor. Even earlier, really after the end of the emperor Chengzu in 1435, the civil bureaucracy had taken on a much larger role and emperors had to turn to eunuchs for support. Chinese society, however, remained lively. While Chinese population as a portion of the world population (which had been about a third) was declining and most Chinese continued to live in small villages of around ten families, merchants grew in influence from the 16^th century onwards. However, unlike in Europe, where they led a revolution against feudalism, merchants in China easily joined the ruling classes. China became highly dependent on Spanish silver and became the biggest consumer of silver in the world, swallowing it all up thanks to Spanish trade routes across the Pacific from Acapulco, Mexico to Manila in the Philippines. This is when Europe started to increase in power and influence while China stagnated. That said, literacy and learning were common and Ming society was still seen by Europeans as superior.

               The Ming Dynasty fell to a resurgence of Jurchen power, the same ethnic group that had founded the Jin Dynasty and invaded northern China in the 12^th century, settling there. This time however, they would change their name from Jurchen to Manchu. I won’t get into the specifics of how the Manchus did it, but a lack of Ming money made things difficult when confronted with Manchu invaders and roving bandits. The Ming had made poor decisions at the highest levels and corruption had sapped the strength of the state. First, a bandit raider sacked Beijing and then the Manchus came in and swept him out. The emperor Shunzhi was a boy when he inherited the throne in 1644 and was ruled by a council of regents let by Prince Dorgon. It quickly became a cosmopolitan empire, hosting a German Jesuit at court. Dorgon stayed close to old Ming policies, though he made some tax reforms. They tried to implement the “queue,” a form of forehead shaving common to Inner Asian peoples who wanted to force others to demonstrate their submission, but the Chinese resisted this. Ming Loyalists fled to Dutch Taiwan, but the Dutch abandoned the island in 1661 and the Manchus, under the Qing Dynasty (officially founded in 1644), conquered the island, ending Ming resistance. One should note that a lot of modern Chinese regions, such as Manchuria, Tibet, and Taiwan, were all Qing conquests, who were an “alien people.”

               The Qing Dynasty took its form under Xuanye, emperor name Shengzu, but who is better known by his reign period name s the Kangxi emperor. He had  very long reign from 1662 to 1722. He came to the throne as a boy and was ruled over by the regent Oboi, who he and his teen friends overthrew when he was 15 years old. Convincing Oboi that they were playing games, they actually trained in the palace grounds to overthrow him. Pretty impressive for a group of teenagers. When he was just 19, border lords rebelled in 1672 and he defeated them in 1681 and took Taiwan in 1685. He was certainly tried by fire in his early years and became a very strong emperor. During his reign, Manchus enslaved Chinese farmers, introducing a completely alien oppression into the Chinese countryside. It is interesting to think how similar the Jurchen/Manchus acted 500 years later, from the Jin Dynasty into the Qing Dynasty, moving the entire people south. The Manchus were ordered not to do any labor, killing their work ethic that had made them strong. The Qing expanded Chinese borders on all sides and butted up against the Russians in northern Siberia. The process of bringing Tibet into China is an interesting one, as the author states that it really took place from 1696-1959 at varying levels of recognition, then trade, then political claims, then military force, then international legitimacy. The Qing were powerful but prone to factionalism and corruption, which stained the reign of the Kangxi emperor. There was high estrangement in the royal family.

               The Kangxi emperor was followed by Shizong, who ruled from 1723-35 and centralized power. He was effective, efficient, and authoritarian. The next emperor, like the Kangxi emperor, was known by his reign name. The Qianlong emperor ruled from 1735-96. He was a major art lover. He built lots of buildings and completed major infrastructure projects. He extended government control through the Baojia system, which appointed leaders of every ten households to annually report any deaths or births in the households and report tax obligations, greatly simplifying and improving the efficiency of the tax system. The Qianlong emperor was a great lover of Chinese culture despite his Manchu roots. He started a project called the “complete library” where he wanted to copy all the major Chinese works, though it turned into a sort of literary inquisition as they realized that most Chinese works talked very badly about the Jurchens/Manchus and other steppe peoples. The emperor won many border wars and though corruption continued without slowing down much and the empire was in decline, there was no sign of crisis and that decline would not have been very noticeable or clear to observers at the time. But a crisis was to come. Just 50 years after his death, China would lose the Opium Wars against Britain, Beijing would be sacked, and China would enter what the Chinese today refer to as the “100 years of humiliation.” I’ve read quite a bit about those times, and I was surprised that this book hardly mentioned opium, though I guess it would be slightly outside of the book’s focus. That said, it was a let down.

               The final chapter, titled “China’s Legacy in a Changing World” attempts to explain the turning point in Chinese history that would come in the early to mid-19^th century. Mote points out that contact with tiny European states would be this great empire’s downfall, beginning with the Portuguese, then the Spanish, then the Dutch, then the English and so on. These contacts generally followed a pattern of:

1.      Mutual Recognition

2.      Economic Interactions

3.      Broadened Horizons of Religion and Philosophy

4.      Changing Military and Diplomatic Scene

It is sad to watch China decline, with their leaders not noticing what’s happening and not realizing the extent to which they had been outmatched. Never a serious investor in the seas, China learned the hard way the value of naval power. The trade imbalance in which China exported to the world and took in silver could not be tolerated by the states of Europe, and so when Britain discovered that opium produced in India could sell in the Chinese market, they could not resist and sold the drug by force into China, addicting the Chinese against the will of the Qing. That said, the Chinese defeat was certainly not permanent and within a short 100 years, China was back in control of her own territory again, and the time of European domination was much shorter than the time of Qing/Manchu domination. China continues to benefit from its civilizational values that promote a high, communal work ethic.

               In conclusion, I want to say again that is book is stellar. It is incredible in its thoroughness, and while not perfect, specifically because it omitted greater discussions of women and the beginnings of the opium era, it is very complete in almost all other ways. This is a challenging book, but that is because of subject matter and not the writing. 900 years of imperial Chinese history is no light thing and a nearly 1000-page book on it is always going to be a difficult read. That said, F.W. Mote writes this book extremely well, bringing the historical figures to life and explaining very well every critical moment, philosophical concept, emperor, general, regent, and change in Chinese society. This book is without a doubt a masterpiece of scholarship and was extremely educational for me.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Surnames have been required in China since the 5-4^th centuries BCE, two thousand years before Europe. Ancestor worship in China came before all other religious practice. It was considered incest to marry someone with the same last name, even if it was common.
• The Jurchens created a script in 1120 and recreated it in 1138, neither had much success though, and it seems like they eventually forgot about them.
• The Chinese word for Europeans, which was “Farang” comes from the Arabic word for Franks.