EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 117 Bergeton Uffe (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Words of War: the Emergence of Wu 武 as an Abstract Concept of Warfare Key words: pre-Qin China, military history, wu 武 , war, military strategy Words of War: the Emergence of Wu 武 as an Abstract Concept of Warfare The terms wen 文 and wu occur together in Zhanguo texts to refer to contrasting methods of dealing with the affairs of a state in times of peace and war. This paper explores the question of when the term wu began to be used as an abstract concept of ‘warfare’ by analyzing the uses and meanings of the wen-wu pair from the Shang (ca. 1570–1045 BCE) down to the end of the Zhanguo period (481–221 BCE). Texts from the Shang and Western Zhou (1045–771 BCE) periods suggests that, at that time, wen and wu were mainly used as positive epithets in names or posthumous titles describing individuals as ‘(awe-inspiringly) beautiful’ (wen) and ‘warrior-like’ or ‘courageous’ (wu). What role did the eponymous association of wen and wu with Kings Wen and Wu play in the coining of wu 武 in the meanings ‘warfare, military (strat- egy)’? To what extent are these developments connected to the increasing professionalization and division of labor between wen officials, who specialized in peacetime governance, and wu officials, whose domain was warfare? The emergence of wu as an abstract principle of governance in times of war is also traced through analysis of the contexts in which it appears in overlapping distribution with other terms from the semantic field of ‘things related to the military and warfare,’ e. g., rong 戎 ‘armed, belligerent; military,’ bing 兵 ‘weapons; soldiers; military,’ and zhan 戰 ‘battle; war; military.’ Comparative analysis of rong and wu reveals that it was rong rather than wu which was the general word for ‘warfare’ in pre-Zhanguo texts. This changed in the Zhanguo period when wu and bing began to be used in contexts where rong had been used in pre-Zhanguo texts. I argue that this lexical shift is a reflection of a change in the conceptualization of ‘war’ and ‘warfare.’ Chen Chih-hao (Soochow University) The Aboriginal Boundary and Frontier Society in the Qing Empire Key words: aboriginal-boundary, Taiwan, Qing Empire, Qianlong emperor, boundary division The “concept of boundary” in the Qing Dynasty does not always refer to the national level but sometimes indicates the strategic concerns that led the Qing government to adopt different policies to control different spaces. Qing boundary lines, therefore, aimed to divide the imperial territory into diverse regions. The policy of the “aboriginal-boundary” implemented by the Qing government in Taiwan may demonstrate this idea, since the mountains that separated Taiwan into different parts, were used to mark off regions controlled by different strategies, especially those toward land reclamation. The boundary lines, moreover, divided Taiwan society into “inner” and “outer” regions: land reclamation was legal in the inner regions but prohibited in the outer ones. Because of the strategic character of border-setting, the border lines of Taiwan were mutable or transient, and changed over time. During the reign of the Qianlong emperor, the aboriginal-boundary was modified four times, the evidence of which can be found in the maps drawn in that period. Furthermore, to analyze more deeply the government’s decision in setting the boundary, we need to take into account the local social situation, for the maps also explicitly portray the condition of land reclamation. To sum up, this paper uses the newly-excavated maps to discuss two phenomena: the Qianlong emperor’s strategy towards controlling the marginal society near the borders, and the historical significance of the traditional Chinese concept of “boundary division”.