² Most of the phenomena discussed in this essay have been systematically treated in Wittfogel 1957. I therefore ask the interested reader to consult this volume for fuller analysis, argument, and documentation.

³ Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 372 ffGoogle Scholar. It was essentially through the classical economists that these concepts entered into the thinking of Marx. From the early 1850's to his death in 1883 Marx, following Richard Jones and John Stuart Mill, assigned to “Asiatic society”—and the “Asiatic mode of production”—an important part in his multilinear scheme of development (ibid., pp. 373 ff.).

⁴ See Alexander, W. D., Brief History of the Hawaiian People (New York, 1899), pp. 42 f., 83Google Scholar; Bennett, Wendell Clark, Archaeology of Kauai, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin, No. 80 (Honolulu, 1931), pp. 9, 50 ff.Google Scholar

⁵ See Willey, Gordon E., Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Viru Valley, Peru, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 155 (1953), pp. 346 ff., 354 ff., 361 ff., 381, 395 ffGoogle Scholar., and especially 400 ff., 410 ff.

⁶ The divination texts of Shang suggest a slightly warmer climate for late Shang, but a seasonal pattern of rainfall and aridity similar to that existing today. See Wittfogel, , “Meteorological Records from the Divination Inscriptions of Shang,” Geographical Review, XXX (1940), 121 ff.Google Scholar

⁷ Richthofen complicated his analysis of the hydraulic conquest of the Great North Chinese Plain by relying on a relatively late source, the Yü kung. But his statement that the alluvial lowlands of the Northern Plain could be settled only after the completion of comprehensive dike works (see von Richthofen, Ferdinand Freiherr, China, Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien [Berlin, 1877], I, 354 ff)Google Scholar, expresses an elementary geo-agricultural truth which is valid independently of the date of origin of the Yü kung. (Cf. Wittfogel 1931, pp. 281 ff.)Google Scholar

⁸ The pioneer decipherer of the Shang inscriptions, Wang Kuo-wei, found in these in scriptions most of the names of the Shang rulers given in the Shih chi and the Bamboo Annals. Where differences appeared, he found the “suspect” Bamboo Annals more accurate than the Shih chi (Wang Kuo-wei, Kuan-t'ang chi-lin, 9.15a). Such facts, taken in conjunction with the manifestly high development of Shang culture and parallel situations in the prehistory of the Near East, suggest that the references to pre-Shang hydraulic activities in the Bamboo Annals and the Shih chi may also reflect, though perhaps with exaggerations, actual historical events.

⁹ Legge, , I, 215.Google Scholar

¹⁰ In the twenties, Ku Chieh-kang considered Yü a mythological figure who was first mentioned in the mid-Chou period. In the thirties he placed Yü much earlier, and eventually viewed him as the divine ancestor of the Hsi Jung, one of the tribes that supposedly participated in the creation of China's early civilization (Yü kung, VII, No. 6–7 [1937], pp. 81 ff., 90 ff.Google Scholar). Significantly, one of Ku's coeditors, Feng Chia-sheng, suggested that Yü may have actually carried out hydraulic works in the lower valley of the Fen River in Shansi (Yü kung, No. 2 [1934], pp. 12 ff.Google Scholar). In the summer of 1923, a heavy flood in that region inundated more than 110 villages (ibid., p. 13).

¹¹ Ganshof, , pp. 64 ff.Google Scholar; Bloch, , I, 351.Google Scholar

¹² See Ganshof, , pp. 79 ff.Google Scholar; Bloch, , I, 340Google Scholar; II, 21.

¹³ See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 175, 273 ff., 280 ff., 284 f.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Franke, O., Geschichte des chinesischen Reiches, I (Berlin and Leipzig, 1930), 111.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Maspero, Henri, Mélanges posthumes sur les religions et l'histoire de la Chine, Part III: Etudes historiques (Paris, 1950), pp. 114 f.Google Scholar

¹⁶ It was for this reason that, in my earlier writing, I also spoke of Chou feudalism, although, being aware of the need for hydraulic action in the North China lowlands, I noted that early Chou was “colored” by the presence of public waterworks which in later Chouradically modified the societal order. See Wittfogel, 1931, pp. 418, 425 ff.Google Scholar; idem, “The Foundations and Stages of Chinese Economic History,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, IV (1935), 40 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 378 ff., 391 ff., 395 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Wittfogel, 1931, pp. 411–415, 433 ff., 446 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Wittfogel, 1931, pp. 187–300, 410–456.Google Scholar

²⁰ Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 166 f.Google Scholar

²¹ Brown, Delmer M., “The Impact of Firearms on Japanese Warfare, 1543–98,” FEQ, VII (1948), 236 ff.Google Scholar According to a communication from Dr. Marius Jansen (University of Washington) on this topic, “the first integrated treatment of the subject [the art of war] comes in a work by Takeda Shingen [1521–73].”

²² Kuo yü (Shanghai, 1935), 2, 22 f.Google Scholar

²³ In Japan an incipient—and frustrated—early hydraulic development produced elements of an orientally despotic system of communications and census-taking. But the rising feudal order prevented the growth of these elements. Like the art of war, they gained in vigor only after the close of the feudal period. See Wittfogel 1957, pp. 198 ff.

²⁴ Kuo-ting, Wang, Chung-kuo t'ien-chih shih (Nanking, 1933), pp. 51 ff.Google Scholar

²⁶ Han shu (Po-na ed.), 24A.14b.

²⁸ T'ung-tsu, Ch'ü, Chung-kuo feng-chien she-hui (Shanghai, 1937), pp. 200 f.Google Scholar

²⁷ Legge, , I, 310.Google Scholar

²⁸ Legge, , I, 138.Google Scholar

²⁹ Legge, , I, 270.Google Scholar

³⁰ Por this concept, see Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 128 ff.Google Scholar

³¹ Peking Gazette, 10 11, 1898.Google Scholar

³² As contrasted with the dominant state religion. See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 115, 121.Google Scholar

³³ de Groot, J. J. M., Sectarianism and Religious Persecution in China (reprinted 1940), I, 109–116.Google Scholar

³⁴ Schurmann, Herbert Franz, Economic Structure of the Yuan Dynasty, Harvard-Yen-ching Institute Studies XVI (Cambridge, 1956), p. 6.Google Scholar

³⁵ Wittfogel, and Feng, , pp. 217 f.Google Scholar

³⁶ Wittfogel, and Fêng, , pp. 505 ff.Google Scholar

³⁷ Wittfogel, , “General Introduction” in Wittfogel and Fêng, pp. 15 ff.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid., p. 10. For the bureaucratization of the Manchus in the course of the conquest of China, see Michael, passim.

³⁹ “Introduction,” Wittfogel and Fêng, pp. 5–14.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Wittfogel, and Fêng, , p. 568.Google Scholar

⁴¹ “History of Chinese Society, Ch'in-Han,” MS (in preparation by the Chinese History Project).

⁴² Franke, O., Geschichte des chinesischen Reiches, IV (Berlin, 1948), 561 ff.Google Scholar

⁴³ Michael, , pp. 66 ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ “Introduction,” Wittfogel, and Fêng, , p. 14.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 15.

⁴⁶ The fallacy of this argument has been stressed by Walker, Richard L., China under Communism: The First Five Years (New Haven, 1955), p. 293.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ “Introduction,” Wittfogel, and Fêng, , pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 79 ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ See Chang, passim. In 1931, during the only major open discussion of the Asiatic mode of production, held in the USSR, a spokesman of the “feudal” party line rejected in a crude manner the bureaucratic interpretation of the Chinese gentry maintained by the author (see Wittfogel, 1957, p. 402).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 105 f., 345.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 356 f.Google Scholar

⁵² Chang, , p. 115.Google Scholar

⁵³ For a statistical survey of the social background of middle and higher officials under the major Chinese dynasties prior to, and after, the establishment of the examination system, see Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 348 ff.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Chang, , pp. 165 ff.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ The institutional meaning of the Indian “examination life” becomes fully apparent when we realize that even the members of the warrior class, the customary rulers of Hindu India, were expected to study at least one Veda, and that many Brahmins served in the government.

⁵⁶ Wittfogel, 1957, p. 338.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ He went beyond Morgan, and he restated an idea of Marx, when he contrasted the “work slavery” of Greek and Roman antiquity and the domestic slavery of the Orient (Engels, p. 162). With this remark Engels once more underlined the thesis that Oriental society did not pass through the “stage” of work slavery, which Marx and he considered characteristic of European antiquity.

⁵⁸ See Engels, , pp. 154, 162.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Mill had predicted such a transformation for Oriental society in general. See Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political Economy (London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, 1909), pp. 696 f., 701.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Karl Marx, article in New York Daily Tribune, 06 25, 1853Google Scholar. Italics in original.

⁶¹ Fischer, Louis, The Soviets in World Affairs 1917–1929 (Princeton, 1951), I, 391.Google Scholar

⁶² Laqueur, Walter Z., Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East (New York, 1956), pp. 208 ff.Google Scholar

⁶³ Lang, Olga, Chinese Family and Society (New Haven, 1946), pp. 110 f.Google Scholar; Lampson, Herbert Day, Social Pathology in China (Shanghai, 1935), p. 564.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Michael, Franz and Taylor, George E., The Far East in the Modern World (New York, 1956), pp. 402 ff.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 420, 422.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Constitution of the First Chinese Soviet Republic, adopted under Mao Tse-tung's chairmanship (see Yakhontoff, Victor A., The Chinese Soviets [New York, 1934], p. 221, of. pp. 276 f.)Google Scholar. Mao repeated this promise in 1936 (see Tse-tung, Mao et al. China: The March Toward Unity [New York, 1937], pp. 40 f.).Google Scholar

⁶⁷ For direct and indirect admissions that the national minorities bitterly resent their treatment by the Communists see New China News Agency (Kunming, 09 7, 1956)Google Scholar and Chinese Home Service (Peking, 12 1 and 17, 1956).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Weber, Max, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Grundriss der Sozialökonomik (Tübingen, 1921–1922), III, pp. 667 f.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 301–368Google Scholar, passim.