the new petro power paradigm - Diplomat Magazine

DELIGHTS|BOOKS
Sajjad Ali Qureshi
Justin McIntosh
Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan — the place he was hiding when he
was found and killed by a U.S. special forces military unit.
Children run toward the Israeli West Bank Barrier.
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took a terrible drubbing during communism.
Mao Zedong, for example, ordered
the magnificent walls of Beijing destroyed
because they were, to him, unpleasant
reminders of European colonialism during
the Qin dynasty (though of course they
extended back much farther in history).
Mr. Sawyer’s book covers the Legendary
Era and the Hsia and the Shang Dynasties,
leaving off at the commencement of
the Chou Dynasties in the second century
BCE. Allowing everything for the great
stretch of time involved, the huge amount
of territory covered, and the amazing diversity
of the feudalist people involved,
it is still possible, with the help of modern
archaeology and other tools, to arrive at
some useful generalizations.
First, groups of people lived together
in self-contained settlements for the protection
of themselves, their food stores
and their animals. Most of the earliest
examples of such places appear to have
been protected only by shallow ditches
around the perimeter. Later, ditches
were supplanted by moats; these were
easier to make than walls if one lived on
a lake, stream or river. Second, there was
never, despite the common assumption
otherwise, a long period of more-or-less
complete peace. Some groups were almost
always at war with some other ones.
Walled settlements were the result.
These grew much safer, more resistant to
attack and of course far more populous as
architecture and engineering became more
sophisticated. (At least for a long time.
Later, during the Chou Dynasties, they
almost always proved vulnerable to siege,
regardless how thick or high the walls or
how complicated the defensive geometry.)
One of Mr. Sawyer’s examples had walls
25 metres high. So it was that slowly that
the typical Chinese city took shape: “an
inner, generally segmented, and fortified
sector containing the royal quarters,
palaces, and ritual complex; outer walls
encompassing the important inhabitants;
and an external area for the general populace,
workshops, and livestock…”
To date, Mr. Sawyer has put 30 years’
work into researching and writing Ancient
Chinese Warfare and its predecessor. He’s
nothing if not inclusive. At one point, he
slips out of character and speculates on
the physiological need that leads humans
to feel that they are safe when behind
walls. Dr. Brown also dabbles with the
same question but on a higher level,
searching Martin Heidegger and Sigmund
Freud for support of this notion (but not
finding much). She does far better on her
FALL 2011 | OCT-NOV-DEC