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Greetings and welcome everyone, I'm 
Jeremy Wallace, a professor in the  

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Government Department here at Cornell, and 
the current director of the East Asia Program.  

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The Hu Shih Lecture, tonight's lecture, is 
the program's most prestigious annual event

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Professor Sherman Cochran whom I saw walk in, 
kind of argued persuasively and described Hu  

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Shih as perhaps the greatest Cornellian in an 
excellent lecture that you can watch online to  

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this day and I might have spent too much time 
today re-watching it myself. There's a gorgeous  

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new dorm named in his honor just a bit north of 
here that I bypassed on more than one occasion.  

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In these interesting days that we find ourselves 
in globally, perhaps too interesting of days,  

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the rich texture of his life could be used in 
many different ways as good as his thoughts  

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and writings and rather than kind of give my 
perspective on the way to think about this,  

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let me just leave that perhaps tantalizing 
idea in your minds for now and turn over the  

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podium to Professor TJ Hinrichs 
to introduce our honored guest.

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Thank you Professor Wallace and I would like to 
thank the East Asia Program including our director  

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Jeremy Wallace and especially the East Asia staff: 
Amala Lane, Sydni Tung, Tianran Song, Lulu Yuan,  

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Lily Wass, and Myka Melville.This is the product 
of great teamwork. Our co-sponsors: the History,  

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Government and Asian Studies Departments helped 
with disseminating news of the talk and last  

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but by no means least, I would like to express 
appreciation for my colleague and co-organizer:  

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Suyoung Son who does a good passing game and 
always catches the ball when my attention drifts.  

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Before introducing our speaker, I would 
like to share our land acknowledgment:  

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Cornell University is located on the traditional 
homelands of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ, the Cayuga Nation.  

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The Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ are members of 
the Haudenosaunee Confederacy,  

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an alliance of six sovereign nations with the 
historic and contemporary presence on this land.  

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The Confederacy precedes the establishment 
of Cornell University, New York State,  

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and the United States of America. We acknowledge 
the painful history of Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ dispossession  

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and honor the ongoing connection of the 
Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ people to these lands and waters.

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The annual Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture has 
been bringing to our community scholars who,  

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like Hu Shih, put earlier literatures in 
conversation with contemporary concerns,  

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whose work exposes and transcends the 
limitations of conventional boundaries,  

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conventional boundaries between disciplines 
such as political philosophy and archeology,  

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conventional boundaries between eras such as 
modern and pre-modern, conventional boundaries  

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between nations and civilizations. Professor 
Michael Nylan, Jane K. Sather Professor in  

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the Department of History at the University of 
California Berkeley does all of these things.  

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In 2004, our colleague Robin McNeil wrote that 
after Michael Löwy of Cambridge University,  

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Michael Nylon is arguably the leading 
Han historian in the west today.  

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20 years on we can say that she has consolidated 
herself from this position through groundbreaking  

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publications, scholarly collaborations, mentorship 
of junior scholars, teaching and public speaking.  

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Indeed, over the course of her career she has 
been so prolific that a recitation of her book  

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publications alone would unduly delay this 
presentation. I will therefore mention just  

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a few of her broader contributions to the 
field. From her first monograph on the great  

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plan chapter of the documents to her magisterial 
the Five Confucian Classics, Professor nylon has  

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tirelessly brought attention to the historicity 
of __, formation, learning and transmission to  

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the flexibility of historical actors in adapting 
classical traditions to contemporary problems and  

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to the contextual including political and 
existential stakes of classical learning.  

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She is attentive not only to reinterpretations 
over time and to reading practices but to broader  

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practices of learning to the materiality of texts 
and the materiality of objects such as mirrors, to  

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the rhythms and textures of daily life, sociality, 
and socialization and to what historians of  

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science call "communities of practice, "very 
often "communities of governing practice".

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While engaging often collaboratively in 
comparative studies, she anchors her work  

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in meticulous and deep reading of historical 
texts, demonstrating time and again the value  

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of rigorous, sinological, and disciplinary 
training, something too readily sacrificed,  

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I'm talking about EU Administration 
sorry in the name of cost cutting.  

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Finally through her work, Michael Nylan has 
given us tools for dismantling civilizational  

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tropes such as those currently being 
weaponized as nationalist narratives.  

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Her work contributes to better exposing 
and thus combating the new iterations,  

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for example of Confucianism as an ideological 
formation. Today she will illuminate for us the  

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evidence from early China on majority rule and 
consortial policy making, thank you [Applause].  

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I have to thank the Cornell 
community and especially TJ and  

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I want to make sure I pronounce your name 
correctly so forgive me, I'm hesitating.  

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It's been a warm welcome and it's 
been an opportunity to reflect upon  

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the path-breaking work of Hu Shih whose whole 
life was dedicated to finding early textual  

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traditions that might prove helpful to a 
rapidly modernizing and globalizing China.

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Although this Kentucky kid never heard 
of him until I was a graduate student,  

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in a sense I'm a student of Hu Shih, 
insofar as my project since graduate  

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school has been to strip away what I take 
to be false narratives about Asian values  

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with Chinese characteristics so as to better 
ascertain what might prove to be valuable today.  

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Needless to say, many false narratives have 
been embraced by people of Chinese descent  

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for good reasons and bad, as well as by American 
know-nothings. Only a few weeks ago, for example,  

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the current Taiwanese Minister of Culture 
claimed that in the long sweep of Chinese  

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history only post-1949 Taiwan could be deemed an 
open society and he talked of two thousand years  

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of Chinese history. About a year earlier, Xi 
Jinping's propaganda team released a bizarre white  

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paper hailing Xi thought as the final fulfillment 
of China's 5,000 years' worth of aspirations for  

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in quotes "whole process democracy". I have no 
idea what either politician could possibly mean,  

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but I feel I can say this with confidence: there 
is far more in Chinese history to be proud of  

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politically speaking than either man's narrow 
understanding of history would seem to permit.  

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So in the spirit of Hu Shih, I ask myself: what 
resources, if any, existed in early imperial times  

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in the area we now know as China that might prove 
useful to those of us who want to build a more  

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equitable and more sustainable future for China, 
for the Chinese diaspora, and for other lands and  

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peoples; a more, a greater vision if we refuse 
to whitewash or to blatantly distort the facts.  

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In asking this question I follow recent 
scholarly lines of inquiry by such historians  

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as __ who's rescuing history from the nation 
in 1995, "posited an Indigenous tradition of  

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dissent," this is a quote that enabled a 
degree of contestation much greater than  

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the more modern in quotes "disciplinary 
language of centralizing nationalism".  

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I also follow Hou Shidong's Han Jia De Ri 
Cheng published at the very end of last year,  

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which vividly depicts the Han courts as places 
where the emperors were highly conscious of  

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their inability to act unilaterally, subject as 
they were to strong institutional constraints.  

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Such histories are in my mind when 
I translate the documents classic  

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soon to be published after seven years 
of relentless toil, and when I'm all over  

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the Xunzi, the early histories, and other 
masterworks written in classical Chinese.  

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It's not letting you do that, let me 
try that, okay it's not letting me move.

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I'm not sure what I do, let me try this.

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Yes okay found it. Let me begin 
my talk today with two facts:  

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in 1987, Anton Hulsewe, one of the 
foremost Dutch sinologist of the day  

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provocatively titled an essay of his, in 
quotes, "Han China: A Proto Welfare State".  

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At the time his argument rested on a single 
strip, set of strips from __ near Wuwei, Gunsu.  

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Strips that Hulsewe admitted in the essay might 
well be forgeries. Only in the last decade do we  

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have enough excavated evidence from the North 
China Plain and from the Yangtze River Valley  

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to begin to flesh out Hulsewe's picture and to 
say definitively that the __ content tallies  

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with that of many scientifically excavated 
materials. In today's lecture, I'm going  

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to avoid reference to the unprovenanced 
materials as their content cannot be.

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My second fact dates to 1993 when Bernard 
Williams, then the foremost Anglo-American  

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philosopher of political realism registered what 
too many was an equally shocking observation  

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that his ancients i.e. the classical Greeks were 
in some senses an appreciably better shape a quote  

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"than we are today when it comes 
to ethical decision making".  

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In large part because the ancients did not elevate 
moral above pragmatic reasons, as Christians and  

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Kantians are want to do when seeking provisional 
solutions to perennial human dilemmas.  

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With all the four going in mind, let me 
turn to describe the prevailing traditions  

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urging wide consultation and 
majority rule voting at the courts  

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of the early empires. I'm going to 
go back because it slid a double.

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When we speak of voting today, most of us 
have in mind Joseph Schumpeter's minimalist  

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account of democracy from the 1940s. He's of 
course an American he's writing for us and his  

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definition is one person, one vote, to designate 
a candidate via competitive elections. However,  

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for the antique world I study, a better definition 
and one that is also in the dictionary, would  

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be the act or process of indicating a choice, 
opinion, or will on a question by some recognized  

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means or procedure. I'm going to tell you that 
we have in the years 155 to 156 one well-attested  

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instance of a massive referendum held in Sichuan 
province, wherein household heads male and female  

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representing a total of 1.5 million voted in 
a referendum to determine local tax policy.  

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But in my period, the Han Dynasty, most often 
the idea of voting surfaces in connection with  

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the majority rule processes undertaken at court 
conferences to decide the court's future policies.  

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Notably the final decisions taken by 
the group specially convened for such a  

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court conference were deemed to have the 
force of law i.e. to be like a statute.  

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Until such time as a later court conference 
decades and sometimes even centuries later,  

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voted to overturn the ruling or set of rulings. In 
addition, the early sources inform us that similar  

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conferences were held at the provincial and 
county levels on both regular and ad hoc bases,  

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even if our court-centered histories provide 
few details. Still, the newly excavated county  

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level sources that I've been working with with my 
graduate students frequently talk of its so-called  

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advisory bureaus operating outside the capital. 
Even if the fragmentary evidence from far-distant  

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locations is hard to patch together. The bottom 
line is this: even if deciding not to act,  

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Wuwei in Chinese was the default in governing in 
the early empires for many reasons consequential,  

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majority rule, voting at court was exceedingly 
common. By "consequential" I mean that such votes  

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with rare exceptions determine the court's 
policies and they did not merely ratify the  

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emperors or region's will. As I will argue today, 
two types of highly choreographed interactions:  

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one centered at the court, and one centered in 
the ancestral temple were undergirded if you will,  

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by parallel implicit social contracts, and 
it is those contracts that most historians,  

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political scientists, and comparative philosophers 
have generally failed to consider and failed they  

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generally have, although there are scattered 
everywhere even in modern Chinese remarks that  

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they realize that the Han Dynasty ran rather 
differently than the later conquest dynasties.  

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Lu Xun, writing in his essay on chastity 
suddenly says, rest assured I'm not  

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talking about the Han Dynasty, to my great 
surprise, okay still, the common wisdom today,  

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East and West presumes that one man autocratic 
rule by an absolute monarch enforcing strict  

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hierarchies prevailed throughout Imperial China 
even if the notion of absolute monarchy is  

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ludicrous given the highly disparate sources 
of authority that prevailed in early China,  

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and all the more so, in an antique 
world that lack the transportation,  

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communication, and surveillance capacities that 
we moderns by fitful turns, enjoy and deplore.  

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Explaining why this fantasy is patently false 
are a good many __ on antiquity, I've just put  

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a scattering of them on this slide. Beginning 
with Patricia Crone moving on to Carl Pariani,  

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Moses Finley, Michael Mann, but anyway a review 
of all of those writings would take too long in a  

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single lecture, but let's just try for the next 
40 minutes or so to think of a way modernity,  

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and if people have particular questions 
about the conditions of the antique world,  

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I'm happy to address those in Q & A. We have time 
today to delve more deeply into what our sources  

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tell us about majority rule voting in court during 
the first 13 centuries or so of imperial history.  

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Needless to say, I work with a specialist 
in Tang and Song to make that statement.  

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These sources tell a consistent, if at 
points sketchy story. First, as I have noted,  

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our sources for the early empires nearly always 
identify "wuwei", not intervening as the default  

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rule in governing. "Wuwei" advises doing as little 
as possible, taking as few as possible unnecessary  

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initiatives, since changes in policies especially 
outs those outside the capital invariably  

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required huge expenditures not to mention the 
diversion of enormous labor units to new tasks.  

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Therefore, the court wouldn't to take an example, 
consider erecting a dike where no flooding had  

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visited the area in question. But if the wells 
run dry or a river repeatedly overflows its bank,  

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some timely provision for future disasters becomes 
prudent and necessary. Those in power, those with  

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access to those in power, and those with technical 
know-how then convened to consider how best to  

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begin bridge or dike building, storing up extra 
grain reserves in case there's a flood and so on.  

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This all seems obvious enough until we examine 
our own recent U.S history, where a few states in  

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the union have invested in major infrastructure 
repairs and alterations for more than 50 years  

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with predictably ruinous consequences. What 
is key here is this: by the early theorists,  

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the most fundamental capacity for human 
beings was not to bravely go it alone  

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but rather in quotes "to mobilize for collective 
action to achieve common ends". That is called  

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to "qun" in Xunzi's writings with Xunzi 
of the Chinese equivalent to Aristotle.  

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Not to act on behalf of community goals, 
seeing that individual fulfillment rests on  

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a flourishing community was to live a life 
of deprivation as an isolated sub-human.  

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Second, our sources in classical Chinese assume 
that no single person or group of people,  

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no matter how well educated or rich, has the 
requisite practical wisdom, technical skills,  

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or information to undertake long-term 
planning for a complex society composed  

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of human beings in different professions who 
hold a plurality of opinions and interests.  

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They further presume that it is seldom easy to 
ascertain when the exigencies of the present  

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situation demand deviations from past practices 
that would usually be considered tried and true.  

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That is the primary reason why court conferences 
must be convened regularly to discuss many affairs  

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of state. Thinkers express this in terms of the 
need to balance fidelity to constant principles  

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"Jing," by a readiness to make adjustments in 
light of the shifting contingencies, "quan".  

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The same thinkers further caution that short-term 
fixes seldom represent good long-term solutions  

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and there are often unintended consequences 
no matter how well you think you've planned.  

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Time and place matter as do the attitudes 
of the locals towards the proposed changes  

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and the Chinese thinkers were acutely aware 
of such complicating factors. Deliberations  

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by multiple parties, the ruler upon occasion 
but always high and low officials plus outside  

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experts are called for in consequence and no one 
expects or even seems to demand quick results.

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Third, I think it's extremely important that 
the vocabulary used in classical Chinese  

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sources to identify the main actors in governing 
is remarkably vague and probably intentionally so.  

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Vague, so as not to offend the reigning 
powers that be, and vague so as to allow  

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others besides the current power holders 
to weigh in and accrue power over time.  

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I put on the screen some examples, the word 
routinely translated as ruler, as everyone  

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in Chinese studies knows, in many instances means 
instead the person who is truly qualified to rule,  

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which is often not the executive. Qualified 
due to his temperament, his eagerness to learn  

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00:25:32,940 --> 00:25:39,840
from others, and his willingness to defer to 
the judgments of others while descent making  

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decisions. Similarly, the term for King as often 
as not referred solely to the hypothetical true  

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King serving the common good. Conversely, the fuel 
and __ gatherers, the lowliest men in the realm  

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00:25:56,940 --> 00:26:05,160
i.e. the landless might contain in their group 
true gentleman equipped with farsighted plans.  

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00:26:05,820 --> 00:26:12,480
Meanwhile, "Shi," a term that once went 
no amend nobles permitted to wear a sword,  

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00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:21,600
soon came to mean experts in a given technical 
field. In this connection, it is vital for us to  

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see that during the early empires, the sage was 
never held to be omniscient in stark contrast to  

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the sages in late imperial China who fairly float 
off the ground. It is equally vital to recall that  

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the classical Chinese grammar typically does not 
specify number, tense, case, or gender. Nearly all  

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meaning is contextually determined, which allows 
for considerable latitude in interpretation,  

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00:26:55,980 --> 00:27:04,680
forcing one to look for larger patterns to 
establish meanings. This explains why we sometimes  

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00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:12,660
do not know when reading, whether we're reading a 
factual, analogical or fully hypothetical account.

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Still we know the voting was consequential 
and we can discern this for several reasons.  

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00:27:22,860 --> 00:27:30,360
For example, the standard histories prepared 
by the court often provide the final tallies  

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00:27:30,360 --> 00:27:38,280
for the votes on a particular question, 
despite the historians' need to compress  

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multiple events into short fascicles more like a 
New Yorker essay. We're just going to show you.  

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00:27:48,660 --> 00:28:02,100
So we read 692 printed pages, the maximum fascicle 
is 200 to 500 strips with 23 graphs on it,  

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so you really need to imagine and think 
how are you going to compress it into this.  

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The same histories often identify the leading 
proponents of the competing proposals by name.  

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00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:26,460
The vote tallies were never unanimous or 
nearly unanimous. The history specifically  

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00:28:26,460 --> 00:28:33,960
describe the court conference participants being 
swayed by better evidence or greater eloquence.  

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00:28:34,980 --> 00:28:40,260
The decisions arrived at by the court 
conferences became dynastic precedence  

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00:28:40,260 --> 00:28:48,120
and as court precedence, the final rulings 
could be modified or reversed only by a new  

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00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:54,240
court conference whose pronouncements then 
became binding for the foreseeable future.

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Importantly, the highly choreographed  

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00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:11,520
and lengthy process of aggregating the policy 
preferences advocated by rival groups and then  

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00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:21,060
circulating the competing views via hand-copied 
position papers in a multi-stage process was never  

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00:29:21,060 --> 00:29:32,040
designed to produce perfect consensus but rather 
to arrive at the temporary best resolution of a  

220
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:40,440
given policy dilemma. As the Chinese texts call 
it a resolution of doubts for the moment. Still,  

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00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:48,360
if people felt their preferences and feelings were 
duly registered and could be revisited if the need  

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00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:56,880
arose, that feeling often went a very long way 
in getting them to accept unpalatable decisions  

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00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:04,200
and to deem the current mode of governance 
roughly equitable, if still less than perfect.  

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00:30:05,100 --> 00:30:13,260
Nor were the educational functions of these court 
conferences discounted. Young administrators were  

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00:30:13,260 --> 00:30:22,200
explicitly invited to debate the senior ministers 
and heavily rewarded for besting them in debate,  

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00:30:23,100 --> 00:30:29,760
and all administrators, young and old, were to 
learn from the accounts presented by the technical  

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00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:37,440
experts. The experts in ritual for example 
or the architects and the engineers. Thus,  

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00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:43,980
the moral and practical benefits of convening 
court conferences could hardly be overestimated  

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00:30:44,700 --> 00:30:51,660
according to the smartest early political 
thinkers, and this dialogic thrust was not  

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00:30:51,660 --> 00:30:57,960
merely cheap rhetoric but something of 
a real preoccupation with policy majors,  

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00:30:58,500 --> 00:31:06,300
judging from both the excavated and received 
sources. Why was that? To recap some of the  

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00:31:06,300 --> 00:31:14,520
chief benefits of having such proceedings, here 
they are the parties with the most power at court,  

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00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:22,320
for example, the emperor, the empress, the 
regents, the chancellors were visibly seen to  

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00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:32,460
avoid monopolizing the decision-making powers. 
That is repeated over and over and over again.  

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00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:40,620
Second, my sources say that having greater numbers 
mull over a specific problem often leads to better  

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00:31:40,620 --> 00:31:48,300
decision making through wide consultation 
with disparate groups. Third, long and careful  

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00:31:48,300 --> 00:31:54,840
deliberations, if they could not persuade the 
disgruntled parties, might at least go some  

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00:31:54,840 --> 00:32:03,240
way implicating them, since the final ruling in 
no way represented a rash unilateral dictate.  

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00:32:04,380 --> 00:32:10,080
Fourth, in the process of devising their 
innovative plans, the participants in debate  

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00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:19,020
would be devising the various sorts of persuasive 
arguments likely to convince those outside the  

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00:32:19,020 --> 00:32:26,940
court, out of the necessity to support the planned 
collective actions required by the proposal.  

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00:32:27,780 --> 00:32:34,020
And fifth, not only the emperor but also the 
members of his court might acquire what I would  

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00:32:34,020 --> 00:32:41,460
call plausible deniability if they agreed 
upon plans failed to achieve success, since  

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00:32:41,460 --> 00:32:49,800
the decision was manifestly collective and no one 
party could be singled out as especially to blame.  

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00:32:50,760 --> 00:32:57,600
Now I've given you the overview that is consistent 
in all my sources, let me give you a rough idea  

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00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:05,400
of the specifics. A host of topics were routinely 
referred to court debate including foreign policy,  

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00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:14,580
economic, and water control measures, treason, 
or official misconduct cases, revisions to the  

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00:33:14,580 --> 00:33:20,880
standard provisions for punishments, the objects, 
schedules, and locations of imperial cult  

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00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:29,400
offerings, the determination of auspicious omens, 
the allocation of relief after natural disasters,  

250
00:33:29,400 --> 00:33:36,420
burial rights, and posthumous titles for 
the nobles kings and emperors and empresses,  

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00:33:36,420 --> 00:33:45,900
you get the idea. They are convening continually. 
Court debates on a single topic could occupy the  

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00:33:45,900 --> 00:33:56,760
court's attention for no fewer than 15 rounds of 
debate. It has happened in 117 BC with each round  

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00:33:56,760 --> 00:34:04,800
generating new position papers in manuscripts that 
were duly circulated among all the participants,  

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00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:11,640
something like position papers. Recall that 
such hand copying by palace scribes was both  

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00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:19,800
hideously expensive and time-consuming in 
manuscript culture. The Stone Canal Pavilion  

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00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:27,480
Conference of 51 BC, those were talks devoted 
to ritual precedence occupied nearly two full  

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00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:35,280
years of the court's time, to cite a second 
example. Most court conferences apparently  

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00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:44,700
convene some 50 to 100 participants but one famous 
conference boasted no fewer than 902 participants.  

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00:34:45,420 --> 00:34:52,440
Conference participants often had to travel 
over long distances to get to the capital and  

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00:34:52,440 --> 00:35:00,420
then be housed and fed in style at the capital 
throughout the proceedings. All this indicates  

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00:35:00,420 --> 00:35:08,400
the very high priority that successive courts 
of the early empires placed on shared rulings  

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00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:18,120
on key policy issues, even when the findings 
of the court were not to the emperor's liking.

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00:35:22,860 --> 00:35:28,740
We know for example that the most powerful 
Eastern Han Emperor Zhangdi was highly  

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00:35:28,740 --> 00:35:35,880
displeased by the rulings produced by the 
White Tiger Pavilion Conference in A.D.79.  

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00:35:36,780 --> 00:35:45,180
Insofar as the conference rulings represented 
or advocated a reduction of the imperial status  

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00:35:45,180 --> 00:35:53,500
vis-a-vis the officials to a position where the 
emperor would figure as no more than primos __.  

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00:35:54,900 --> 00:36:01,800
As they provided impeccable support 
for their position from past precedents  

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00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:08,220
including the classics and para classics, the 
emperor Zhangdi duly approved the results.  

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00:36:09,780 --> 00:36:17,340
Moreover, he revealed to members of his Court that 
he felt incapable of overturning the collective  

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00:36:17,340 --> 00:36:24,060
decisions by the participants at the conference, 
even though at one point he had figured out he  

271
00:36:24,060 --> 00:36:31,260
might be able to do an end run around them 
by hiring a ritual expert to drop counter  

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00:36:31,260 --> 00:36:41,040
proposals. He decided never to do that. This is 
not an isolated case. Other emperors, empresses,  

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00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:48,480
regents, and ministers had had their pet proposals 
rejected by their conferences at their own Courts.  

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00:36:49,020 --> 00:36:57,420
Given all the evidence, we must conclude that 
this dialogic thrust was not empty rhetoric.  

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00:36:58,380 --> 00:37:07,800
So what well, let me show you just 
for a moment, what is going on.  

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00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:19,260
This is a classical __ classic we would call 
it. It's the Yi Zhoushu and what we see in this  

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00:37:19,260 --> 00:37:27,900
diagram is that nine people wear the imperial 
crown, eight actually, wear the imperial crown.  

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00:37:28,740 --> 00:37:35,160
The emperor for some reason doesn't wear it, I 
think so. He can see what they're saying. But  

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00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:43,440
this is not what we expect to see in the sources 
but once we've seen it, it's everywhere, okay.  

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00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:54,840
So what who cares and as one modern put it, and 
for some reason I think one slide is out of order,  

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00:37:56,520 --> 00:38:04,260
all viable states need a council or a cabinet, 
a Court of inquiry or commission to review rival  

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00:38:04,260 --> 00:38:10,980
claims, policies and procedures. They need 
an executive and a Court of law which is  

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00:38:10,980 --> 00:38:19,740
overseeing all implementation or lack thereof. 
Aristotle talked about this tripartite division  

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00:38:20,460 --> 00:38:26,580
in his politics, or as Sheldon Olin, 
a smart political scientist put it,  

285
00:38:26,580 --> 00:38:32,400
the simple, the central problematic 
governing and polity has always been  

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00:38:33,060 --> 00:38:41,460
how to render politics compatible with the 
requirements of order. What surprises then  

287
00:38:41,460 --> 00:38:50,100
is that it directly contradicts the standard 
narrative at each and every point to reiterate.

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00:38:54,540 --> 00:38:59,520
The imperial Courts in China regularly 
assembled leaders and consultants  

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00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:05,220
representing competing interest groups who 
participated in protected Court conferences,  

290
00:39:05,220 --> 00:39:12,540
whose chief purpose was to decide. The results of 
that voting were consequential, legally binding.  

291
00:39:13,140 --> 00:39:20,160
Many people besides the reigning monarch 
could ask that a Court conference be convened,  

292
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:25,200
we know of several regions, and 
empresses, high-ranking officials,  

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00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:32,820
a group of advisory consultants at the palace, 
and even delegations from the provinces who  

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00:39:32,820 --> 00:39:39,480
could demand that a Court conference 
to be convened. By the Five Classics,  

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00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:46,860
the emperor's vote on a given issue was never 
to count more than the votes registered by his  

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00:39:46,860 --> 00:39:55,680
officials, high and low, by his subjects, or by 
the unseen powers, and a range of institutions, 

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00:39:58,380 --> 00:40:08,280
I think this is a range of institutions including 
administrative offices with overlapping duties  

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00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:14,940
and a host of mechanisms were expressly 
designed to keep channels of communication  

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00:40:14,940 --> 00:40:23,400
open between administrators and those who they 
governed. Earlier at a Beijing forum event,  

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00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:31,260
I spoke about a specific location, the northern 
watchtower in Western Han Chang'an where many of  

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00:40:31,260 --> 00:40:38,220
these communications occurred, well what kind 
of communications? Petitions by commoners,  

302
00:40:38,220 --> 00:40:44,040
non-officials, regular reviews of Court 
cases by the administrator higher-ups,  

303
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:52,140
successive Courts dispatch of special envoys 
out to the provinces to inquire about local  

304
00:40:52,140 --> 00:40:59,220
conditions. All of these things were devised 
to keep these channels of communication open,  

305
00:40:59,940 --> 00:41:07,860
and many of the institutions at Court as well 
as the Court conferences were established in the  

306
00:41:07,860 --> 00:41:15,420
belief that administrative checks and balances 
are fundamental to good governance. That's  

307
00:41:15,420 --> 00:41:23,040
why junior people are invited to criticize the 
senior ministers and if they do so successfully,  

308
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:31,260
are catapulted up to the ranks of the ministers. 
Finally and importantly, we should note in this  

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00:41:31,260 --> 00:41:40,260
connection that the standard accounts of the early 
empires clearly label abuses of the Court systems.  

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00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:51,600
If I've lost it yes as when the regent called Hou 
Guang abused the system to strip two opponents  

311
00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:59,040
of their ministerial posts. Now this is something 
that might not work in the modern world but in the  

312
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:07,560
early empires, a bad reputation for monopolizing 
power in a family, even a ruling family, usually  

313
00:42:07,560 --> 00:42:14,340
entailed serious consequences down through 
history or one's family members and allies.  

314
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:23,460
This was an era when the mirror of history 
was judged to be a nearly infallible guide  

315
00:42:23,460 --> 00:42:30,600
to the probable outcomes of specific 
human activities. After Hou Guang died,  

316
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:37,560
the manipulator, we are told, the members of 
his immediate family were duly executed along  

317
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:45,000
with many of their clients. Despite the many 
services had earlier rendered the Han ruling  

318
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:51,900
house during his long tenure as minister and 
regent, and I'll bring up another example.  

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00:42:53,280 --> 00:43:01,140
So many people today point to Han Wudi and how 
great he was. In the history, he is said to be  

320
00:43:01,140 --> 00:43:10,200
like Wang Mang, the usurper in that he cannot 
practice "wuwei," the Art of Doing Nothing.  

321
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:17,400
The foregoing revisionist picture 
pulls together many undeniable features  

322
00:43:18,060 --> 00:43:26,760
of antique life. Aside from the imperial line 
itself, inheritance in early and middle period  

323
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:34,860
China meant particle inheritance so that the 
family property was divided among all sons and  

324
00:43:34,860 --> 00:43:41,880
with elites among all children because women 
got part of the property as their dowries.  

325
00:43:43,560 --> 00:43:51,180
This single fact combined with high mortality 
rates in the pre-antibiotic age, we've forgotten  

326
00:43:51,180 --> 00:44:00,360
that before 1930s, massive numbers of people died 
of childhood diseases, or women of childbirth,  

327
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:08,160
all this made for very rapid upward and downward 
nobility in short cycles the typically spanned  

328
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:16,320
three generations or so. Accordingly, many 
of the relatively poor and low-ranking had  

329
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:22,200
had some access to some kinds of knowledge 
that might prove valuable to the Court.  

330
00:44:22,860 --> 00:44:30,300
That may explain why the Court was willing to 
heed the advice tendered by parties of low rank,  

331
00:44:30,300 --> 00:44:39,120
why they took petitions from commoners on a great 
number of matters. It's surely relevant too that  

332
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:45,720
the founder of the Han ruling house was himself 
a commoner who rapidly ascended to supreme power,  

333
00:44:45,720 --> 00:44:54,000
thanks to __ advisors. It was he who forged an 
implicit social contract between ruler and ruled,  

334
00:44:54,000 --> 00:45:02,100
capital and provinces that was routinely invoked 
whenever major policy changes were contemplated,  

335
00:45:02,100 --> 00:45:09,120
though the social contracts, key provisions 
had been discussed for at least a century or  

336
00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:15,600
so before the founding of the Han. By 
the reigning metaphor, the good ruler  

337
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:29,880
was to act on behalf of the people. He was like 
a boat and they were the waters that bore him.  

338
00:45:30,720 --> 00:45:39,600
Also the empire was in quotes "held in trust by 
the entire imperial family rather than it being  

339
00:45:39,600 --> 00:45:49,560
the possession of one person or one dynastic 
line". Those lines were clearly laid out. True,  

340
00:45:49,560 --> 00:45:55,980
the imperial subjects owed taxes, labor service, 
and due deference to the Court's authorities,  

341
00:45:55,980 --> 00:46:05,100
but the Court owed them at least as much or more 
in return for their continuing allegiance. Like  

342
00:46:05,100 --> 00:46:13,740
the beneficent son, the court was to shed light 
on all below and thus the imperial Court paid  

343
00:46:13,740 --> 00:46:24,540
for a stunning 130,000 administrators and they 
typically would have 10 people on their staff so  

344
00:46:24,540 --> 00:46:33,720
we're moving above 1 million administrators who 
are tax-paying population of roughly 60 million.  

345
00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:45,180
Now that may not seem like a very great ratio, 1 
to 60 or 1 to 50, but recall that the Roman empire  

346
00:46:45,180 --> 00:46:54,060
under Augustus had not a single paid administrator 
for a population of 60 million as well.  

347
00:46:55,140 --> 00:47:01,140
With a ratio of roughly one official 
or functionary to 50 tax-paying people,  

348
00:47:01,140 --> 00:47:06,420
the early empires in China could 
be ambitious and they were,  

349
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:13,860
they set themselves the task of improving 
the people's lives and livelihoods:  

350
00:47:13,860 --> 00:47:21,480
famine relief, the construction and maintenance of 
major infrastructure projects, subsidies for the  

351
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:28,500
underprivileged and disadvantaged, the so-called 
Five Afflicted or Eight Afflicted Groups,  

352
00:47:28,500 --> 00:47:34,620
the provision of local schools and ritual 
centers, all this took a great deal of  

353
00:47:34,620 --> 00:47:42,420
planning as well as heaps of money, and I want 
to argue and heaps of money is what they had.  

354
00:47:45,900 --> 00:47:52,980
I'll get back to this slide, at the same time 
members of the governing elite were to inculcate  

355
00:47:52,980 --> 00:48:01,680
minimum standards for correct marriage and 
mourning rituals. Failure to provide this sort of  

356
00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:10,560
monetary ritual and education, intergenerational 
assistance gave the locals a reason to rebel,  

357
00:48:10,560 --> 00:48:17,520
and they knew it, and local rebellions 
were often very difficult to suppress.

358
00:48:19,740 --> 00:48:31,200
Let me just tell you a little bit about this 
slide. This is the burial of a deposed on Emperor,  

359
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:46,260
okay, who was buried in 59 BC and even then we see 
10 tons of metal buried in a quasi-imperial tomb,  

360
00:48:46,260 --> 00:48:54,420
far from the capital, is full of gold, we are 
seeing __ coins but it was full of gold and  

361
00:48:54,420 --> 00:49:05,220
bronze ingots as well and clearly they have this 
kind of money, and why do they have it?They have  

362
00:49:05,220 --> 00:49:11,460
it because they're the only place at that time 
that can make silk and that can make lacquer.  

363
00:49:12,660 --> 00:49:20,940
Those two commodities brought them all this money. 
Well what I'd like to argue is that perhaps the  

364
00:49:20,940 --> 00:49:32,100
very lack of economic and ideological unity in 
the antique world and hence they never aimed  

365
00:49:32,100 --> 00:49:40,980
for consensus made the need for wide consultation 
more obvious. Certainly multiple factors had to be  

366
00:49:40,980 --> 00:49:49,320
taken into account when the Court identified the 
true sages' desire for wide consultation preceding  

367
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:58,920
Collective Endeavors undertaken on behalf of the 
common good and the lowliest members of society.  

368
00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:08,940
As we sometimes heard in the 1950s, it's how 
we took care, how the Han Court took care of  

369
00:50:08,940 --> 00:50:16,800
these lowliest members that was considered 
the surest sign of legitimate governing,  

370
00:50:17,460 --> 00:50:28,560
let me cite a passage from 1156 that mirrors a 
host of passages from the 4th century BC onward,  

371
00:50:28,560 --> 00:50:38,160
in quotes "not even the rule of such sage kings 
as Yao and Shun can benefit everyone equally,  

372
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:45,480
thus the key to good governance lies in 
taking the majority rule as the right  

373
00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:52,920
view to avoid endless squabbles". Needless to 
say, none of what I described would have been  

374
00:50:52,920 --> 00:51:01,320
possible if the early empires in China had not 
implemented from unification in 221 BC onward  

375
00:51:02,220 --> 00:51:08,340
an incredibly sophisticated household 
registration system in each county.  

376
00:51:09,300 --> 00:51:17,340
That registry system listed the members of each 
household, their ages, whether they were liable to  

377
00:51:17,340 --> 00:51:25,860
taxation or labor service or instead to be granted 
special stipends to compensate them for any  

378
00:51:25,860 --> 00:51:33,000
disadvantaged conditions, nor would it have been 
possible without the early empire's monopolies on  

379
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:40,740
silk and lacquer which annually brought in 
such enormous sums to the Court's coffers,  

380
00:51:42,120 --> 00:51:49,560
and that allowed for very low rates of taxation 
and ample supplements for the disadvantage as  

381
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:57,720
well as for victims of natural disasters. Having 
explained the underlying social contract, finding  

382
00:51:57,720 --> 00:52:06,240
ruler to rule in early China, a social contract 
that was far more elaborate than any I know of,  

383
00:52:06,240 --> 00:52:14,220
if any other anti-culture. It seems right and 
proper to begin to describe the implicit social  

384
00:52:14,220 --> 00:52:23,280
contract binding ordinary living people including 
the emperor to the unseen powers aka the Divine.

385
00:52:25,860 --> 00:52:35,700
In the area we now know as China, only the 
emperor contacted heaven, asking that it bless the  

386
00:52:35,700 --> 00:52:45,120
commoners he shepherded and served. No one divine 
the will of the highest Gods like Apollo or Zeus,  

387
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:54,960
instead one divine the will of one's own deceased 
ancestors and that has been true since 1300 BC,  

388
00:52:54,960 --> 00:53:00,900
the time of the first writing that has 
been preserved for us: the Shang Oracle.  

389
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:10,440
If a problem required assistance from God's ranked 
above one's own ancestors, it was the job of the  

390
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:17,520
ancestors as lower level functionaries to 
forward one's petitions to the high gods.  

391
00:53:18,240 --> 00:53:25,380
Heaven was conceived of as an afterlife 
administration as many excavated tests attest.  

392
00:53:26,520 --> 00:53:33,720
The ancestors plainly had an interest in promoting 
the continuity of the family because they depended  

393
00:53:33,720 --> 00:53:41,640
upon the family to supply them with wine or meat 
or more precisely the savors from the offerings  

394
00:53:41,640 --> 00:53:49,320
that they needed to sustain themselves in the 
afterlife. At the same time, the ancestors were  

395
00:53:49,320 --> 00:53:55,740
apt to be displeased by immoral or short-sighted 
behavior on the part of their descendants,  

396
00:53:55,740 --> 00:54:01,980
and they could punish their descendants harshly 
visiting them with illness and sometimes even  

397
00:54:01,980 --> 00:54:10,860
with death. If the descendants showed themselves 
to be oblivious to the long-term well-being of  

398
00:54:10,860 --> 00:54:19,920
the family by their short-sighted and imprudent 
activities. Consulting the ancestors through two  

399
00:54:19,920 --> 00:54:27,240
types of divination: one by turtle, another 
by __ brought the descendants this benefit.  

400
00:54:28,380 --> 00:54:35,160
Since the ancestors resided in heaven and as 
a group had the benefit of collective old age,  

401
00:54:35,160 --> 00:54:42,180
they were probably more capable of providing 
to the living a good overview of the situation  

402
00:54:42,180 --> 00:54:50,520
unfolding on earth below. To contact the 
ancestors, one underwent a fast after after  

403
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:59,100
which one approached the Divine for a yes or no 
answer to a specific question: shall we go to war  

404
00:54:59,100 --> 00:55:04,980
with our neighbors, will the new daughter-in-law 
be safely delivered a child within the year,  

405
00:55:05,700 --> 00:55:11,820
there was none of the obfuscation deliberate 
and otherwise that we find with the Oracles  

406
00:55:11,820 --> 00:55:19,980
of ancient Greece __ and again since one 
expected disparate opinions on a given topic,  

407
00:55:19,980 --> 00:55:27,540
majority rule was to prevail. Here are 
the words of the great plan chapter of  

408
00:55:27,540 --> 00:55:34,620
the documents classic I've been translating 
for the last several years, seeing to doubt.  

409
00:55:34,620 --> 00:55:42,540
Judiciously establish an office the diviners of 
turtle and milfoil and then order them to Divine  

410
00:55:42,540 --> 00:55:50,880
by turtle and milfoil. Turtles show all these 
forms and the text describes all those forms,  

411
00:55:52,740 --> 00:55:58,140
and there are signs for correct alignment and 
for failure of the Divination to go through.  

412
00:55:58,140 --> 00:56:05,460
Altogether there's seven signs, five for the 
turtle, two for the milfoil. If one would deduce  

413
00:56:05,460 --> 00:56:12,420
the appropriate changes, one sets up leading 
experts for each of them and has them divine  

414
00:56:12,420 --> 00:56:21,900
by turtle and milfoil. If three men divine an 
issue, one follows what two of the diviners say,  

415
00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:30,360
and by the way we have explicit documents 
that say the very best diviners at court  

416
00:56:31,080 --> 00:56:40,320
are expected to have a 70 percent rate of defining 
the ancestors as medical doctors are expected to  

417
00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:50,160
have a 70 percent rate, so again, not perfection. 
Then in cases of grave doubt, the Divination  

418
00:56:50,160 --> 00:57:00,420
results from turtle and milfoil and one weights 
the vote of the turtles slightly more heavily in  

419
00:57:00,420 --> 00:57:06,660
a few extreme circumstances, but all of those 
results are to be correlated with the results  

420
00:57:06,660 --> 00:57:14,760
reported of the ruler's own heart, the members of 
his administration and the commoners themselves  

421
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:22,380
by a complicated procedure outlined in the great 
plan chapter that distinguishes foreign policy  

422
00:57:22,380 --> 00:57:31,980
from domestic policy, these groups all together 
have five votes. Generally speaking, majority rule  

423
00:57:31,980 --> 00:57:39,600
wins here too. So even if the world of the living 
reaches a consensus that is opposed by turtle and  

424
00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:48,000
milfoil, each registering the ancestors' will by 
a different divination method, it's auspicious to  

425
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:57,180
do nothing and inauspicious to act. and if the 
ruler and the turtle agree, domestic decision  

426
00:57:57,180 --> 00:58:06,720
making may proceed but all outside matters i.e 
diplomacy and war are never to be contemplated.  

427
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:14,400
Significantly if the ruler and his ministers and 
officers dispute the wisdom of a given course  

428
00:58:14,400 --> 00:58:23,340
of action but the turtle milfoil and commoners 
coalesce around a decision, the court may proceed.  

429
00:58:24,480 --> 00:58:30,300
There are other procedural rules about 
ascertaining the will or wills of the dead,  

430
00:58:30,300 --> 00:58:39,060
but what is perfectly clear in every description 
of this process as outlined in the classics the  

431
00:58:39,060 --> 00:58:45,720
nominal head of the empire, the ruler, is 
never should decide policies unilaterally.  

432
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:57,960
The ruler we learn thereby educates others about 
the wisdom of learning to yield and lead by turns  

433
00:58:58,680 --> 00:59:07,860
and there are no exceptions of this except 
in the case of a few recalcitrant evildoers  

434
00:59:09,540 --> 00:59:18,300
my conclusion is this: in modern discussions 
what matters most with voting is the autonomy  

435
00:59:18,300 --> 00:59:27,840
and rational choice of the person you're voting. 
That is missing naturally from the early empire  

436
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:37,440
sources because those are quite modern concepts 
absent in all of the slices of antiquity with  

437
00:59:37,440 --> 00:59:44,640
which we are familiar. I've been spending a 
lot of time lately thinking about the modern  

438
00:59:44,640 --> 00:59:53,040
philosopher Si Jiwei's notion which echoes 
Foucault in a way, that every successful state  

439
00:59:53,820 --> 01:00:01,560
subjects its members to various kinds 
of subjugation by a kind of magic trick.  

440
01:00:02,940 --> 01:00:12,120
The secret of today's liberal society as 
it were is its ability to style a liberal  

441
01:00:12,120 --> 01:00:23,100
society as seemingly the least coercively governed 
large-scale society that has ever been invented.  

442
01:00:24,480 --> 01:00:28,320
So what I'd like to say is that I wonder whether  

443
01:00:28,860 --> 01:00:34,140
we look when we look at antiquity 
in the world we now know as China,  

444
01:00:35,040 --> 01:00:44,280
if we are not looking at something similar in 
the way we think of what is the magic trick,  

445
01:00:46,980 --> 01:00:53,400
people before me have suggested David 
strand working in the modern period  

446
01:00:54,540 --> 01:01:00,660
that somehow public aspirations were 
unfinished and he thought that was  

447
01:01:00,660 --> 01:01:08,280
because there were no strong institutions in 
China. That's certainly not true of my period,  

448
01:01:08,940 --> 01:01:15,600
then we have Kenneth Pomerantz and he's 
saying there was only a great divergence  

449
01:01:15,600 --> 01:01:28,680
in the 18th century with fossil fuel mechanical 
and also the colonization of other places, which  

450
01:01:28,680 --> 01:01:37,020
brought massive amounts of cash into Europe and 
America and allowed the bourgeoisie to flourish.  

451
01:01:38,280 --> 01:01:46,380
My own hypothesis is this: what we see in the 
early Empires seems to be a third alternative  

452
01:01:47,220 --> 01:01:55,860
wherein attempts to generate questions and devise 
solutions only make sense if most members of  

453
01:01:55,860 --> 01:02:04,260
the community subscribe to the twin notions of 
human imperfection and intergenerational equity,  

454
01:02:05,040 --> 01:02:13,260
which in turn rests on two beliefs that most 
of us wish to be part of some larger good and  

455
01:02:13,260 --> 01:02:19,860
that to do this requires that we take 
a longer view. I come to this doubtless  

456
01:02:19,860 --> 01:02:26,760
because of my own interest in feminist care 
ethics and environmental issues but I am a  

457
01:02:26,760 --> 01:02:33,780
good historian and I didn't believe this story 
until I found it also in the excavated sources

458
01:02:33,780 --> 01:02:34,592
[Applause]