The Terra Cotta Army: China's First Emperor and the Birth of a Nation (review)

The unification of China in 221 BCE by king Ying Zheng of Qin (known to posterity as Qin Shi Huangdi, the First Emperor) ranks as one of the most momentous events not only in Chinese history but also in world history. The story of Qin's meteoric rise and even more sudden collapse has been told many times, most notably by Sima Qian, China's first and greatest historian, at the beginning of the first century BCE. A new twist was added to the story in 1974, when farmers digging a well near the First Emperor's burial mound at Lintong, Shaanxi, uncovered an army of life-sized terra cotta warriors deployed, presumably, to protect their master in the afterlife and eventually found to number upwards of 6,000. Since then, authors writing about the First Emperor for a general, non-specialist audience have felt obliged to give equal attention to the emperor and the artifacts.

John Man's book, the most recent addition to the popular literature on this subject, hews closely to the conventions of the genre. A combination of light historical entertainment and travelogue with archaeological factoids culled from specialist publications and interviews, the book is written in a sprightly and engaging style and lavishly illustrated with 32 pages of color plates. Although neither an academic historian nor a Sinologue, Man has done a creditable job of getting his facts right. He consistently draws on the best of the recent scholarship in English and German, turning to A.F.P. Hulsewé for an understanding of Qin law and Lothar Ledderose for the construction and assembly of the terra cotta warriors. He rightly dismisses the canard that each figure is the individualized portrait of an actual Qin soldier; the warriors, including their faces, were in fact assembled from standardized components to give the appearance of diversity. Man also makes few mistakes with Chinese names and terms; his only egregious sinological solecism is the consistent rendering of Zhao, one of the six kingdoms conquered by Qin, as "Zhou" – inviting its confusion with the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1045-256 BCE).

To the extent that this book has an argument, it is that the First Emperor has been the victim of a hatchet job by Sima Qian (who was criticizing his own ruler indirectly) and was not as tyrannical as usually depicted. This is neither a new argument (Man acknowledges the influence of Sima Qian's translator Burton Watson), nor is it held too consistently (since Man is also happy to compare the First Emperor to Stalin, Mao, and Kim Jong-Il). The book's greatest strength is in its lively forays off the beaten track – for example, to introduce us to the people who make terra cotta warrior replicas for the tourist trade. Its greatest weakness, from the perspective of military history, is that only about ten of its 288 pages (exclusive of the color plates) deal with military matters. These provide little detail about weapons and armor, and have nothing at all to say about tactics and organization. There is a growing literature, mostly in Chinese, that seeks to shed light on the Qin military system by close scrutiny and analysis of the First Emperor's terra cotta army, but John Man does not appear to have gotten anywhere near it. The material is there, but the first serious, comprehensive, English-language study of the Qin military utilizing the terra cotta warriors has yet to be written.