The character of military techniques caused Chinese politics to be qualified by rebellion or the fear of rebellion. The difference between a mob and an army became slight. In times of poor government there were rebellions almost yearly. Insurrectionary forces gained momentum overnight; from era to era huge mobs, tens and hundreds of thousands strong, swept away governmental armies and erased corrupt or oppressive dynasties. The process may be described as popular unrest made effective with arms, which professional armies could not resist. The low place of the soldier in society prevented men of genius from organizing a dominant military caste; the professional armies were insufficient to make military government effective. By a crude and brutal democracy of mob and murder the populace of China could destroy dynasties and governments whenever economic, social, or political conditions veered too far beyond the limits of the tolerable.
Trained fighters there were, but they had the function of frontier defense; when civil war broke out behind them, the imperial governments frequently called back the frontier forces together with the barbarians they had been fighting. At least two great dynasties, the T'ang and the Ming, were destroyed because they used the nomads of the northern wilds in order to put down domestic insurrections. Light cavalry supplemented enormous bodies of infantry. In fact, the Chinese were put down by foreign conquerors only when the foreigners had Chinese allies, or when a campaign of terror had broken the spirit of popular resistance. Chinese warfare showed the disadvantages as well as the advantages of being carried on by what were in effect militia forces. The cruelty was personal and direct, and not covered with fine disclaimers; restraint of armed forces was the distinguished exception rather than the rule. The line between soldier and peasant was one which could be crossed easily, and the line between soldiery and banditry a matter of intention. At its best, military technique was honest and robustly egalitarian; at its worst it led to abuse of force such as lynching, robbery, and fanatical turbulence. The formal records of Chinese dynasties show the use of trained armies in foreign expeditions, in some of which they achieved feats of military accomplishment which rank with any of world history. Domestic troops were also employed as guards and ornamental bodies attached to the throne and other great offices of the Empire.
The convenience of rebellion was such as to make revolt a part of the unwritten constitutional practice—that broad ideological framework upon which the Chinese world rested. It was sanctioned by the classics. It served as a barometer of popular opinion. An unsuccessful rebellion, one without the dimmest chance of success, might well be launched by intelligent and patriotic men because its very appearance could prompt the government to reform. In the words of one of the earliest Western writers on the subject:
A military and police is maintained sufficient to crush merely factious risings, but totally inadequate, both in numbers and in nature, to put down a disgusted and indignant people. But though no despotism, this same government is in form and machinery a pure autocracy. In his district the magistrate is absolute; in his province, the governor; in the empire, the Emperor. The Chinese people have no right of legislation, they have no right of self-taxation, they have not the power of voting out their rulers or of limiting or stopping supplies. They have therefore the right of rebellion. Rebellion is in China the old, often exercised, legitimate, and constitutional means of stopping arbitrary and vicious legislation and administration.[9]
Thomas Taylor Meadows, the author just quoted, also noted that "of all nations that have attained a certain degree of civilization, the Chinese are the least revolutionary and the most rebellious."[10] Revolution is a word broad enough to include principles; rebellion, more narrowly, suggests action against men. The same tight, enduring system of ideological control served to restrain the Chinese in their thinking even when they had the material power sufficient to shake off their past and build Utopia in its place. Rebels themselves obeyed the unwritten precepts. The triumph of the civilians was complete: with infantry prevailing on the battlefield, the peasants were the strongest; and with the total population saturated in compelling, uniform ideas of right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, the scholars had only to await the establishment of administration to assume the leadership. Against malgovernment, the populace retained the power of rebellion. Against misrule, the scholars held the power which came to them as interpreters of a vast and persuasive code of tradition. Whereas Western courts, citing the past, can negate the acts of the executive or legislative by interpretation or annulment, the Chinese scholars would do the same not merely for law, but for manners, morals, thoughts, and social activities as well. The great peasant armies, though able to destroy military dictatorship, were by their very nature too loosely organized to establish it.
[The Military Organization of the Manchu Dynasty]
Although the Manchus, who conquered China in the first half of the seventeenth century and ruled it until the opening of the twentieth, did not profoundly modify Chinese culture, they affected the military scheme. The general outline of Chinese war and its place in society remained largely the same; but there were two innovations: the establishment of a warrior caste and the introduction of military techniques from the West.
The Manchus were a non-Chinese people living in the northeastern peripheral zone of Chinese civilization. They had adopted the Chinese form of empire and bureaucracy in their capital at Mukden in the early seventeenth century, before advancing toward China proper. Invited by the Chinese to lend their aid in a civil war, the Manchus found themselves excelling in effectiveness and leadership, which soon led them to conquer the whole country. The numerical disproportion between Chinese and Manchus was such that the conquerors would never have taken over the Empire and founded a new dynasty (the Ch'ing) had they not been assisted by large numbers of Chinese. On the other hand, the spectacular terrorism of the Manchu cavalry was a potent weapon, and the Manchus did not feel that they owed their throne entirely to the Chinese. They were in the anomalous position of half-conquerors, a people coming into China partly as aliens and partly as the new leaders of the Chinese. At the very beginning of their rule (commonly dated 1644) they had to decide on a policy to determine their relations with the Chinese: Should they allow their people to mingle with and disappear into the vast Chinese masses, or should they attempt a policy of racial separateness to keep their blood clear of Chinese dilution? Underlying this question there was the even more practical one: Should the Manchus rule China simply as another imperial house, or should they attempt to maintain their status as a racially separate caste of conquerors?
There is a Chinese legend which tells of a high minister of state, a Chinese in the service of the Manchu conquerors, who saw no remedy from the oppression of China in his own generation, but who nevertheless worked with craftily concealed patriotism to sow the undoing of the house of the Ch'ing. He recommended to the Manchus that they keep their fighting men from demoralization by ordaining that no Manchu warrior should enter any trade or profession but those of warfare and public administration, and that they should guard the ancient heritage of their valiant blood by making miscegenation a crime. Thus he schemed to stiffen the Manchu monarchy in a position of unbounded arrogance, so that a few generations of peace would find its armies sloven, atrophied, and useless, and its people still alien to the Chinese. With neither military power to overawe the masses nor popular affection to uphold their foreign-rooted dynasty, they were bound to go down; all this, the legend tells, the Chinese adviser who lived and died with high Manchu honors clearly foresaw. Actually the Manchus did move in such a direction, and with the prophesied results.