[godfry n. glad]

The Great Wall of China, by Arthur Waldron.

In response to a thread here at ff, I requested this via the interacademic libraries lending system and dropped the other three books I was reading to "scan" this. Unsurprisingly, I've been sucked into it.

It's mostly about Ming dealings with the neighboring nomads and how the "Great Wall" is a very modern distinction, there having been "walls" and "long walls" back into Chinese history to the fourth century BCE.

Those walls are not much like the western conception of the Great Wall...that conception being based upon the Great Wall which now exists and is a product of the Ming dynasty in the 16th century CE. Instead, they were primarily rammed earth or mud brick walls.

The author repeatedly makes the point that wall-building was a punctuated event in Chinese history, occurring when other measures to deal with nomad neighbors, including trade, tribute, and military cohersion, had failed. This, he amply demonstrates, was often due to the factionalism of the imperial court.