Examining Prejudice in Ancient China

A few months ago I taught a week long lesson on contextualizing prejudice in ancient civilizations, with a focus on ancient China during the Han Dynasty. As part of the lesson, I wrote four character sketches portraying prejudices of rich against poor (rulers against farmers), poor against poor (farmers against mountain dwellers), and powerful against powerful (a Chinese general against his nomadic enemies, and the Xiongnu nomadic federation against the Chinese).  Knowing that students often consider farmers and peasants unintelligent - even while rooting for them - I sought to portray their keen intelligence and agency. 

For the information on the Xiongnu, I used UC Berkeley's world history textbook, "Traditions and Encounters".  Information on the farmers and mountain dwellers comes from James Scott's influential "The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia", which has contributed to recent reassessments of how civilization functioned and who participated and why.  For other parts of the lesson I utilized information from the book "Enemies of Civilization", which compares prejudices in ancient China, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. 

HAN DYNASTY RULER

Imagine you are one of the rulers of the Han Dynasty…

As a ruler of the Han Dynasty, you need to make sure that enough food is grown to support the cities.  Most people who live in the cities do not grow their own food.  The farms that surround the city must support the merchants, craftsmen, servants, and politicians who live there.  Because most fruits and vegetables will rot quickly, the Chinese, like other civilizations, encourage people to grow grain, which can be stored for a long time. 

Grain is also very important for the army: the army traveled long distances for long periods of time, and fruits and vegetables would rot.  Because of this, the army carried cartloads of grain wherever it went.  As the army went farther from the big cities where grain was stored, they would stop by farms to gather more grain.  When the grain was ready to be harvested, farmers always knew there was a chance of the army stopping by to take it.  This made the farmers angry and scared, but from your perspective, farmers who hid grain from the army were making the Han Dynasty weak.  They were traitors.    

There are even more reasons why, as a ruler, you insist that farmers grow grain: if people grow grain, that means they have large fields to take care of.  Because of this, farmers cannot move around freely.  People who have farms must stay in one place, and so they are easy for the government to keep track of.  If the army needs more recruits, they can always go to the farmers and force their sons into the army.  For this reason, you have people working for you who keep track of how many sons work on the farms.  They also keep track of how much grain is grown, so the government knows how much it can take to be stored in the cities, and how much can be given to the military.   

FARMER/MOUNTAIN DWELLER

Imagine that you were once a farmer in the Han Dynasty.  However, you and your community fled up into the mountains. 

You live in a village high up in the mountains in the Han Dynasty.  Generations ago, your ancestors lived down in the valleys, where the farms are.  Many of the rulers and city dwellers thought the farmers were ignorant – anyone who worked on a farm must not be very smart.   However, they also knew that the farmers were an important part of the Han Dynasty.  Everyone knew that without the farmers, the cities and military could not exist, because they depended on the farmers for food.  Even though the farmers were always afraid that the rulers or army would take away its grain, they were proud that their work made the Han Dynasty strong. 

However, you prefer to not have to worry about the government taking your grain or forcing your young men into the army.  You have chosen to give up growing large fields of crops and to live in the mountains because that way, you cannot be found, and you have freedom.  The Han dynasty cannot send the military to take your rice and your young men, because without fields of crops to care for, you can move and escape.  Also, the mountains are difficult for an army to travel in.  Where you live, there are no roads.  The military needs to follow roads, especially because they have to pull wagons full of food and supplies. 

Of course, you need food.  For tens of thousands of years before civilizations started, people had no problem getting food, and neither do you.  Instead of growing fields of rice, you spread your crops all throughout the forest.  You grow many vegetables that grow underground, such as potatoes and carrots.  These crops cannot be found.  You also hunt and gather just as people in the past did.

Many farmers hate mountain dwellers.  They call people like you uncivilized.  Farmers think that the mountain dwellers are like animals – they don’t eat grain like people should, or dress like people should, or live in the right kind of houses.  They are upset with farmers who escape into the mountains, because they cause the government to be suspicious of farmers.  However, you consider your community to be very smart: it is the farmers who are acting foolishly. 

HAN DYNASTY GENERAL

Imagine you are a general in the Han military… 

As a general, one of your tasks is to protect the Han dynasty’s frontier from invasions.  The largest threat is the nomadic Xiongnu.  Because of their superior horseback riding, they are difficult to catch.  Even worse, however, is that they are nomadic.  This means that they are always on the move.  Because they live by herding sheep over thousands of square miles, you never know where they will be.  Because of this, they are very hard to control: this makes you angry, and causes you to despise them even more. 

The Xiongnu frustrate you.  Like many Chinese of the Han period, you believe they are everything the Chinese are not.  In fact, you think they are like animals: they move about like the animals, going wherever they please.  They do not have permanent homes.  Unlike decent people, they do not farm.  Instead, they mostly eat meat.  They even look like animals because they wear the skins and furs of animals: civilized people like the Chinese wore silk, or if they are poor, clothes made of plant fibers.  Some people even say that they honor only the young strong warriors, and despise their elders who have grown weak.  From your perspective, they are truly uncivilized.

XIONGNU NOMAD 

Imagine you are a member of the Xiongnu…

By the time of the Han Dynasty, your people have been living a nomadic life in central and northern Asia for a thousand years.  This land is known as the steppes – a word that means a dry grassland or prairie.  Because the steppes are difficult to farm on, your culture relies on herding animals across the plains, and on long distance trade.  Many people rely on the Xiongnu and other nomads to bring their trade across the long stretches of dry land in between China and other civilizations.  

Your people have been in conflict with the Chinese since the period of the Warring States, when Chinese states began moving into your steppe land to graze their horses.  They built massive walls to show that it was now their territory.  In response, the many different nomadic tribes became united under the Xiongnu.  Soon, the armies of the Han dynasty could not beat the Xiongnu, and the Chinese were forced to send them gifts of gold, silk, and even Han princesses in order to keep the peace.  Not only this, but the Chinese emperor agreed to recognize the leader of the Xiongnu as his equal – they even called each other “brother.”  Despite the fact that your people are powerful, the Chinese consider you uncivilized.

Fantasy Projects: Writing Curricula Based on the Oxford History of the United States

I have many "fantasy projects" - projects that I would love to engage in given sufficient time and resources.  The first would be re-reading the Oxford History of the United States, and using that resource to write tightly but thoroughly contextualized two page essays on major questions in US history.  The Oxford History, although vast in scope and rigorous in scholarship, is also highly readable, extremely thoughtful, greatly respected... and contains essential contextual information for understanding history that is largely unavailable at the secondary school level.  

In a nutshell, I believe I can take twenty pages of rich contextual information from the Oxford History and re-write it in two enticing pages, at a secondary school level, in a way that few other resources have accomplished. 

I imagine it would take me a month to read and take notes on each volume, and another month to write perhaps twenty two page essays that would help students (and teachers) make sense of history.  Since I have the summer ahead of me, I've decided to test this timetable and to see what product I can create.  I've just started reading Empire of Liberty, and believe I'll be able to start publishing some prototype essays here in mid-July.  

Provocative example questions from the post-revolutionary era that Empire covers include: Why could only men with property vote?  Why did so many founding fathers own slaves?  How did the Revolution weaken slavery, and why was it subsequently reborn with a vengeance?  How could the revolutionaries talk of independence while supporting slavery?  The answers to these questions require analyzing historical contexts in which notions of property and liberty differ dramatically from our own.   Students and adults jump to assumptions about these questions all the time, reading their present understandings of these subjects into the past, in a psychological phenomena known as presentism. (I hope to post an essay on the subject of presentism here soon). 

These essays would be able to stand alone, allowing for easy integration into curricula, but would also link together, creating a cohesive whole.  They would offer the rich scholarship of the Oxford History - lots of contextualization, rich descriptions of causality - and translate that richness into a shortened version accessible to sixteen year old students.

(For a samples of how I've made academic research available in secondary school texts, see my posts Contextualizing the Buddhas Life, and Examining Prejudice in Ancient China, which were written for sixth graders.)  

A Different Take on "People's History"

When someone (at least my age group) first hears that I'm a history teacher, their most common response is, "That's great!  Do you teach a people's history"?  I start by saying, "Oh yes!  Have you also read Zinn?"  But if they really want to chat about it, I give a longer and more critical answer: "I'm deeply committed to helping students understand oppression.  But honestly, I don't use Zinn.  His painting of history is too black and white, and I'm trying to help my students understand complexity.  My take on "people's history" is not Zinn's.  I don't demonize the powerful or romanticize the people like he does.  I help students think about context, which I think is critical for understanding power, in a way that he fails to do.  To me a true peoples history involves helping students understand why all people have thought, felt, and acted as they have, and Howard Zinn doesn't serve this purpose". 

Michael Kazin, a historian of populism and a leftist, writes that Zinn is "bad history... Zinn reduces the past to a Manichean fable... pitting 99% of the people against a conspiratorial elite of 1% - a premise better suited to a conspiracy mongers website than to a work of scholarship".  A harsh indictment, but the truth is, I agree with Kazin.  I would probably only use Zinn in the same way I use some bad textbooks: I would ask students to compare his version of an event to a more contextualized, less ideologically driven version, ask them to determine which sources are more trustworthy and why, and perhaps have them rewrite some passages.   

Zinn, in seeking to highlight oppression, created a history of good and bad which, in its radical oversimplification and misrepresentation, failed to actually help people understand why oppression existed and how it functioned.  Zinn can tell our students that oppression happened, and that resistance also happened.  But he can't help our students understand what we're trying to help them understand: why and how did historical events occur, including oppression and resistance?  What historical contexts allowed for harmful ethics to evolve?  Where did oppressive ideas come from, and why have they made sense, not only to elites, but to the people as well?  

Zinn's history also homogenizes social groups.  We know from educational psychology that multicultural education for young children leads them to develop stereotypic thinking if the stories they read homogenize groups of people, even if that homogenization is designed to highlight cultural beauty.  Social groups - be they slave owners or abolitionists - need to be portrayed in their complexity not only for the sake of historical accuracy, but for psychological and societal health.  We aren't helping students become good citizens who can meaningfully navigate and contribute to society if they learn to homogenize republicans and democrats, the rich and the poor, or any other group. The stark contrast of good and bad in Zinn is not only bad history, it leads to bad historical thinking, and perhaps even enforces the stereotypic thinking that we're trying to diminish in our students.  

A true peoples history requires rich and realistic portrayals of social heterogeneity rather than homogenization.  It also requires contextualization and providing students with the historical thinking skills to analyze context.  Contextualization is dual: there is the contextualization of the moment - what is happening directly around people that shapes their thoughts and actions - and the deeper contextualization that involves delving into historical causality: what historical contexts have shaped the societies and cultures that produce individuals?  This is the work of historians, but Zinn doesn't provide such work. 

Peter Seixas, a renowned scholar of historical thinking, writes that "Ironically, during the same period of time that Zinn's book went through five printings, academic historiography was undergoing a major shift in North America, to include diverse subaltern populations: women, workers, and ethnic and national minorities".  Academically respected historians today do not write the consensus, nation building history of the 1950's that Zinn heroically and passionately fought to debunk: as Daniel Rodgers writes in his profound Age of Fracture, which documents the radical intellectual shifts during the last quarter of the 20th century, they're more likely to be caught in "the long shadow of Michel Foucault".  (As am I...)

Historians of the United States today routinely write stunning histories of labor.  They write about how historical forces shape sexuality and gender roles.  We have recently seen a revolution on the history of emotion, and of the body.  Since the invasion of Iraq, historians have completely re-evaluated their notions of empire and have reframed the history of the US as one of empire building: this is not the far-leftist work of Hardt and Negri so popular seven years ago, but the trend of scholars at Yale, Princeton, and Harvard.  (See Julian Go's Patterns of Empire; Charles Maier's Among Empires, and the stunning book Comanche Empire, which details the workings of a Native American empire so different from Western empires that until now scholars have had trouble even recognizing it as such).  

As a teacher of history, I am also a student of history.  I am a student of understanding the people - all of them, through a deep analysis of the historical contexts that shaped them.  This is my understanding of a true peoples history, and as a teacher, my task is to provide students with the skills and the content that will allow them to thoughtfully consider the people in their many manifestations. 

The Context of the Buddha, Written for Sixth Graders

Before exploring the Buddhas story and his teachings, I wanted to establish the basic historical context of his life.  I wrote this piece for that purpose, as always, loving the challenge of compressing a rich and complex history into a hopefully thought-provoking half a page.  Students had just finished studying the Aryans and Brahmanism, and this reading begins with and extends their newly acquired knowledge of that subject. It was accompanied by a PowerPoint with maps which I used to show the location and movements of the Aryans and "Siddhartha's people", a term I used just because Siddhartha was born into an extremely diverse society with no single name.  

For those interested in knowing more about the context described here, I highly recommend Geoffrey Samuel's "The Origins of Yoga and Tantra", and Greg Bailey's "The Sociology of Early Buddhism".  "Origins" has incredible up-to-date references for those interested in Indian religion and culture. 

What was happening during the Buddhas time?  

The Aryans settled in northwest India.  Siddhartha, who became the Buddha, was born in the northeast.  The two lands were very different, and the Aryan way of life was very different from the lives of Siddhartha's people.  The Aryans lived in a land of great plains, where they constantly moved around grazing cattle.  Because they moved so often, they did not build cities.  The Aryans were made up of many tribes, who often fought with one another.  Because of this, they worshiped many gods of war.  The people the Aryans conquered became part of the lowest caste.  

Siddhartha's people were very diverse. Because they lived close to large rivers, people from far away came to trade and to live.  Merchants from many cultures came to the land Siddhartha was born in, and they later took the Buddhas teachings back to their homelands, which is one reason why the religion was so successful.  Instead of moving around like the Aryans, the people living in Siddhartha's land had farmed for many generations.  Their population had grown, and by the time Siddhartha was born, they had built large cities.   Because they were farmers, they worshiped goddesses of fertility – the ability to create and nurture life.  This busy, diverse society did not have a caste system.

Shortly before the Buddha was born, the Aryans started trading more with the people of northeast India.  Believing that the priests of the Aryans, called the Brahmans, were experts in communicating with the gods, people began to hire them to conduct religious rituals, and even to pray for them.  Because of this, Aryan ideas started to spread throughout Sidhartha's society.  Many people were upset.  A spiritual movement started that was critical of Brahmanism and of the caste system.  The movement taught that people should not rely on Brahman priests to pray for them, but should develop their own spiritual practice.  The Buddha became a great leader of this movement.   

In the boxes below, list the differences between the Aryans in the northwest and Siddhartha's people in the northeast. 

Aryans	Siddhartha's People

Which of these differences do you think are the most important, and why?  

Which differences might lead to tensions between the Aryans and Siddhartha's people?  Please explain why tensions might arise.  

My MA Thesis Presentation

In the 14 minute video below, I present my thesis on the importance of contextualization skills and contextualizing prejudice in history classes, with a focus on ancient civilizations.  I discuss a wide range of topics, most of which deserve a lecture of their own.  A few could use an entire workshop.     

I would be happy to send the thesis to anyone who would like to read it.  The abstract reads,

This study analyzes the historical thinking skill of contextualization and argues that contextualization is the optimal tool for helping students understand prejudice.  It is argued that contextualization alleviates the natural psychological tendency to read one’s own social world into the past and into other cultures.  This natural psychological tendency inhibits the ability to recognize the perspectives of others, which is necessary for the development of empathy.  Contextualization is then linked to the psychological literature on the development of prejudice in childhood and adolescence, and framed as a way to help alleviate prejudice as well as understand it.  The study closes with an analysis of a lesson structured to help sixth graders learn to contextualize prejudice in ancient China.