Something I was surprised by is that the Gangetic plain appears to have been much less bloody - in the sense that Mughal conquests of North India, the Delhi Sultanate’s conquests, the Mughal-Maratha wars, the 1947 partition of Bengal - all seem to top out at 2-5 million deaths, at least according to Wikipedia’s list of wars by death toll.
Any ideas why? I’m not sure what the population sizes were at those times.
The answer here deserves an entire essay of it's own, though frankly, I'm not as familiar with the history of the subcontinent as I'd like to be. In any case, briefly: the geography here is very different to the 'independent centres of power that require enormous standing armies to maintain the open border'. Any state able to dominate the Indus and Gangetic valleys is without demographic peer in the region. Further, it isn't under nearly the same threat of steppe raiders as the Chinese, thanks in part to the virtually impassable Himalayas. Further, a capital in e.g. Agra, Delhi, or Lahore, all serves as a natural centre of the empire from which power can be projected into both valleys without having to enable an independent base of power that might one day rise in rebellion. The same is not possible in China, given the scale and nature of the military challenges from the steppe, and the dynamics of the Plain that I talked about above. One way this plays out is that although the region is subject to a similar dynamic of 'decaying empire's rulers are swept aside by numerically inferior Northern Tribes [in this case out of the Hindu Kush]', the stage here is not set in the same way for a subsequent civil conflagration. Instead, influence over the broader region is merely degraded for a time.
Remember that conflicts like the Mughal-Maratha wars were not between peer powers, as the North-South divisions in China were. The former tends towards lower absolute casualties and asymmetric warfare where the lesser power attempts to impose unacceptable costs via skirmishes and raids, rather than the total war frequently seen in Chinese civil conflicts. The Mughal-Maratha wars are more similar in nature to the various conflicts between the Chinese State and its sometimes vassals, e.g. the Ming-Ho conflict of the early 15th Century, which while undoubtedly bloody, had similar troop and casualties numbers.
Great article – the observation that entire North China Plain can be regarded as the Yellow River delta is spot on. That makes (north and central) China kind of Egypt on steroids.
Two points I'd like to add:
(1) The traditional dividing line between north and south is Qinling Mountains and River Huai. The former is obvious enough as a dividing range; the climates of two sides of the mountain range are different. The latter may seem odd because today the Huai is a minor waterway and only a "half river" (it has no consistent route into the sea and flows into the Grand Canal at Hongze Lake). But actually the Huai has been for a long time the downstream of Yellow River, including during the time of north-south rivalry. That makes it a more natural line that's hard to cross and relatively easy to defend.
(2) You could have said more about the geographical locations of various imperial capitals. The oldest capital Changan was on the western periphery of the plain. It was chosen not only because it was the ancestral land of Qin, the predecessor dynasty, but also showed Han dynasty's strategic pivot to the west (today's Gansu and Xinjiang). The Han also had a secondary capital, Luoyang, that's more accessible from the eastern regions. In Eastern Han, Luoyang became the primary capital.
After late Tang and the destruction of both capitals, northern Chinese dynasties are ruled from Kaifeng, more to the population centre of the plain. If Changan is like the head that controls the body through a narrow neck, Luoyang is like the heart, and Kaifeng the belly button.
Placing the capital in Nanjing was an aberration in classical times, driven by the necessity of defence. Beijing only became important, as you noted, when the steppe powers invade the central plains. So it's only a "recent phenomenon" (by Chinese standards = in the last 800 years).
Thanks - both for the praise, and your detailed response.
I was conscious about the length while writing this, but if your comment is anything to go by, perhaps unnecessarily. I do note the Qinling-Huai line in the body of the text, but could have spent more time on the matter. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that for hundreds of kilometres west of roughly Fuyang the breadth of the Huai narrows considerably into a web of smaller tributaries more easily crossed, and with river management needing to be split in not-straightforward ways, particularly in the drier seasons. So although the border is not wide-open, over the longer term it seems that conflict is virtually inevitable (particularly given the Yellow's dramatic course changes liability to upend any detailed treaty that might be hammered out).
As far as more central capitals go, I touched on their earlier status, but admit I got a little caught up in the literary device of Nan/Beijing as a way to convey to the reader the enormous geographic scale of the natural concerns of the Empire, and the consequent impossibility of sustaining good governance across the generations.
Great article!
Something I was surprised by is that the Gangetic plain appears to have been much less bloody - in the sense that Mughal conquests of North India, the Delhi Sultanate’s conquests, the Mughal-Maratha wars, the 1947 partition of Bengal - all seem to top out at 2-5 million deaths, at least according to Wikipedia’s list of wars by death toll.
Any ideas why? I’m not sure what the population sizes were at those times.
Thanks!
The answer here deserves an entire essay of it's own, though frankly, I'm not as familiar with the history of the subcontinent as I'd like to be. In any case, briefly: the geography here is very different to the 'independent centres of power that require enormous standing armies to maintain the open border'. Any state able to dominate the Indus and Gangetic valleys is without demographic peer in the region. Further, it isn't under nearly the same threat of steppe raiders as the Chinese, thanks in part to the virtually impassable Himalayas. Further, a capital in e.g. Agra, Delhi, or Lahore, all serves as a natural centre of the empire from which power can be projected into both valleys without having to enable an independent base of power that might one day rise in rebellion. The same is not possible in China, given the scale and nature of the military challenges from the steppe, and the dynamics of the Plain that I talked about above. One way this plays out is that although the region is subject to a similar dynamic of 'decaying empire's rulers are swept aside by numerically inferior Northern Tribes [in this case out of the Hindu Kush]', the stage here is not set in the same way for a subsequent civil conflagration. Instead, influence over the broader region is merely degraded for a time.
Remember that conflicts like the Mughal-Maratha wars were not between peer powers, as the North-South divisions in China were. The former tends towards lower absolute casualties and asymmetric warfare where the lesser power attempts to impose unacceptable costs via skirmishes and raids, rather than the total war frequently seen in Chinese civil conflicts. The Mughal-Maratha wars are more similar in nature to the various conflicts between the Chinese State and its sometimes vassals, e.g. the Ming-Ho conflict of the early 15th Century, which while undoubtedly bloody, had similar troop and casualties numbers.
Great article – the observation that entire North China Plain can be regarded as the Yellow River delta is spot on. That makes (north and central) China kind of Egypt on steroids.
Two points I'd like to add:
(1) The traditional dividing line between north and south is Qinling Mountains and River Huai. The former is obvious enough as a dividing range; the climates of two sides of the mountain range are different. The latter may seem odd because today the Huai is a minor waterway and only a "half river" (it has no consistent route into the sea and flows into the Grand Canal at Hongze Lake). But actually the Huai has been for a long time the downstream of Yellow River, including during the time of north-south rivalry. That makes it a more natural line that's hard to cross and relatively easy to defend.
(2) You could have said more about the geographical locations of various imperial capitals. The oldest capital Changan was on the western periphery of the plain. It was chosen not only because it was the ancestral land of Qin, the predecessor dynasty, but also showed Han dynasty's strategic pivot to the west (today's Gansu and Xinjiang). The Han also had a secondary capital, Luoyang, that's more accessible from the eastern regions. In Eastern Han, Luoyang became the primary capital.
After late Tang and the destruction of both capitals, northern Chinese dynasties are ruled from Kaifeng, more to the population centre of the plain. If Changan is like the head that controls the body through a narrow neck, Luoyang is like the heart, and Kaifeng the belly button.
Placing the capital in Nanjing was an aberration in classical times, driven by the necessity of defence. Beijing only became important, as you noted, when the steppe powers invade the central plains. So it's only a "recent phenomenon" (by Chinese standards = in the last 800 years).
Thanks - both for the praise, and your detailed response.
I was conscious about the length while writing this, but if your comment is anything to go by, perhaps unnecessarily. I do note the Qinling-Huai line in the body of the text, but could have spent more time on the matter. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that for hundreds of kilometres west of roughly Fuyang the breadth of the Huai narrows considerably into a web of smaller tributaries more easily crossed, and with river management needing to be split in not-straightforward ways, particularly in the drier seasons. So although the border is not wide-open, over the longer term it seems that conflict is virtually inevitable (particularly given the Yellow's dramatic course changes liability to upend any detailed treaty that might be hammered out).
As far as more central capitals go, I touched on their earlier status, but admit I got a little caught up in the literary device of Nan/Beijing as a way to convey to the reader the enormous geographic scale of the natural concerns of the Empire, and the consequent impossibility of sustaining good governance across the generations.
Wonderfully informative piece.
Cheers!