In the second and first centuries BCE, the Han empire expanded into regions previously unknown or, at best, poorly known to the Chinese (Hua-Xia) people: these included south China, the Korean peninsula, and Central Asia. The high cost and limited economic benefit of such expansion, accompanied by protracted warfare against the Xiongnu empire, prompted intense debates over the merits and demerits of imperial expansion. The debates continued into the latter half of the first century CE and revived in the seventh century, when the Tang empire began expanding into Central Asian and Korean lands previously ruled or dominated by the Han.
Han and Tang debates over imperial expansion produced an enduring anti-expansionist rhetorical tradition of identifying normative geographical boundaries for the “civilized” world of the “Central Lands.” Anti-expansionists held that Chinese expansion beyond these boundaries was not only unnecessary and unprofitable but also potentially disastrous, being contrary to Heaven’s will and the model of the sage-kings. The Central Lands core was properly the focus of imperial administration, while the peripheral lands of the barbarians (“those outside”) should be left autonomous and allowed to present tribute to the emperor at regular intervals as a ritualized expression of their submission to his moral authority. Barbarian rulers who lapsed in their tribute obligations could be admonished with imperial edicts and barred from trading with the Chinese. But they should not be subjected to military action unless they threatened the frontiers of the Central Lands core; even then, any punitive response should have limited aims and avoid a futile and unsustainable occupation of barbarian lands. The long-term results of this conservative model of a “bounded” or delimited empire included the framing of Chinese foreign relations as a stable and relatively static Sinocentric framework of tributary relationships, especially under the Ming dynasty. It also perpetuated a notion of the Central Lands as a “civilization-state,” rather than either a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural empire or a nation-state that formed part of a wider civilizational sphere.
The denigration of “barbarian” peoples and their lands as too inferior to be improved by imperial rule, and thus not worth the cost of conquering and ruling, was a common rhetorical feature of Han and Tang anti-expansionist discourse. Such rhetoric often dehumanized the barbarians and included a metaphor of “bridling” (jimi 羈縻) them like beasts of burden, as a compromise between governing them directly and cutting off all contact with them. In fact, the Tang empire used the term “bridling” to describe a form of symbolic, low-cost and low-risk expansion achieved by conferring nominal bureaucratic titles (e.g., prefect) on the rulers or chiefs of hundreds of “barbarian” polities along or beyond the frontier, effectively creating a buffer zone of client polities.
The “bridling” system of frontier management collapsed along the northern and northwestern frontiers during the fall of the Tang dynasty, eventually being replaced by fixed borders delimited by treaties between the Song dynasty and its rivals, the Kitan Liao empire and the Tangut Xi Xia state. But the system survived along the southwestern frontier through the Song, eventually evolving into the tusi 土司 (native chieftain) system used by the Yuan, Ming, and Qing.
In the Ming period, anti-expansionist arguments still used the strategy of stressing the permanence of the Chinese-barbarian boundary and the inferiority of barbarians. But they could also cite the first Ming emperor’s Ancestral Instructions, which contained an explicit injunction against invading countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia (see, e.g., source 2.18). It is noteworthy, however, that Ming Taizu’s instructions in this regard themselves began with familiar tropes from Han and Tang anti-expansionist rhetoric.
Sources
Part 1: Classical models
2.1 The Zuo Tradition (Zuozhuan) 左傳
2.2 The Documents (Shangshu) 尚書
Part 2: The Han empire
2.3 Huan Kuan 桓寬, Yantie lun 鹽鐵論 (Debates on the Salt and Iron Monopolies), 74-49 BCE
2.4 Jia Juanzhi 賈捐之, Memorial proposing the abandonment of Zhuya, 46 BCE
2.5 Yang Xiong 揚雄, Fayan 法言 (Exemplary Figures), ca. 9 CE
2.6 Wang Chong 王充, Lunheng 論衡 (Balanced Discourses), 70-80 CE
2.7 Ban Gu 班固, Baihu tong 白虎通 (Comprehensive Discussions from the White Tiger Hall), ca. 80 CE
2.8 Ban Gu 班固, Hanshu 漢書 (History of the Han), ca. 82 CE
2.9 Lu Gong 魯恭, memorial to Han Emperor He, 89 CE
Part 3: The Tang empire
2.10 Linghu Defen 令狐德棻 and Cen Wenben 岑文本, Zhoushu 周書 (History of the Northern Zhou), ca. 636
2.11 Fan Zuyu 范祖禹, Tangjian 唐鑒 (Mirror of the Tang), ca. 1085
2.12 Di Renjie 狄仁傑, Memorial proposing the abolition of Anxi and Andong, 697
2.13 Du You 杜佑, Tongdian 通典 (Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Institutions), ca. 801
2.14 Sun Qiao 孫樵, “Xu Xinan Yi” 序西南夷 (Preface on the Southwestern Barbarians), mid-ninth century
Part 4: The Ming empire
2.15 Hu Han 胡翰, “Zhengji lun” 正紀論 (On Rectifying Boundaries), ca. 1370s
2.18 Ming shilu 明實錄 (Veritable Records of the Ming)
2.20 Lü Nan 呂楠, Jingyezi neipian 涇野子内篇 (The Inner Chapters of Master Jingye), ca. 1542
Further reading
Abramson, Marc S., Ethnic Identity in Tang China (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), Chapter 5.
Bol, Peter K., “Geography and Culture: The Middle-Period Discourse on the Zhong guo — the Central Country,” in Huang Ying-kuei ed., Kongjian yu wenhua changyu: Kongjian zhi yixiang, shijian yu shehui de shengchan (Taipei: Hanxue Yanjiu Zhongxin, 2009), 61–105.
Brook, Timothy, Michael van Walt van Praag, and Miek Boltjes eds., Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations Since Chinggis Khan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).
Pines, Yuri, “Limits of All-Under-Heaven: Ideology and Praxis of “Great Unity” in Early Chinese Empire,” in Pines, Yuri, Michal Biran, and Jörg Rüpke eds., The Limits of Universal Rule: Eurasian Empires Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 79-110.
Robinson, David M., “Delimiting the Realm Under the Ming Dynasty,” in Pines, Yuri, Michal Biran, and Jörg Rüpke eds., The Limits of Universal Rule: Eurasian Empires Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 284-315.
Yang, Shao-yun, “‘Their Lands are Peripheral and Their Qi is Blocked Up’: The Uses of Environmental Determinism in Han (206 BCE–220 CE) and Tang (618–907 CE) Chinese Interpretations of the ‘Barbarians,’” in Rebecca Futo Kennedy and Molly Jones-Lewis eds., The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2016), 390–412.
Ethnic Identity in Imperial China 