Bandit with traditional tattoos (source). In
premodern China, who enjoyed the most reproductive success? The thrifty
hardworking farmer? Or the local bandit/warlord?
In my last post, I asked how well the Clark-Unz
model of selection applied to Japan and Korea (Unz, 2013). Let me now ask a more obvious question. How well did it apply to China? After all, if such ruthless selection
had been going on for so long, the Chinese would surely be super-geniuses by
now.
Perhaps there is an upper limit to mean
intelligence. Above a certain level, the disadvantages may start to crowd out
the advantages, especially if tradeoffs exist between high intelligence and
other, no less valuable traits.
Or perhaps this model of selection did not operate
continuously. More to the point, whenever it ceased to operate, other selection
pressures took over and began to favor a different psychological profile. Remember, this model depends on the existence
of a State that can monopolize the use of violence and pacify social
relationships. Only then does natural selection favor individuals who get ahead
by working hard, being thrifty, and planning for the long term.
But such pacification existed very discontinuously
throughout China’s history. There were periods of anarchy when the State was
more or less absent and when power belonged to local warlords. Even during the
best of times, the power of the State was in a seesaw relationship with that of
bandits, particularly in the countryside. There was thus a parallel model of
selection that favored “big man” qualities: charisma, verbal bombast, physical
strength, ability to intimidate, talent for mobilizing gangs of young men ...
This point is discussed by Feichtinger et al. (1996)
who see Chinese history as a shifting equilibrium between farmers, bandits, and
the State: “Farmers who produce a good, bandits who steal this good, and rulers
fighting against banditry and taxing farmers.” When the State weakened, as it
often did, farmers had to placate bandits as best they could. Banditry may have
then surpassed farming as the best way to accumulate wealth, prestige, access
to women and, ultimately, reproductive success.
As Bianco (1991) notes:
About ten years ago, a Chinese
scholar, invited to spend his holidays in Haute-Provence, was worried: “There aren’t
too many bandits there?” As an emigrant settled in France since the revolution,
he continued—and to this day continues—to associate the countryside with
banditry as a matter of course. For a rich family like his own (otherwise he
would not have become a scholar), the obsessive fear of a bandit raid, of being
taken away or of extortion was constant. The landowners maintained private
militias who could at least stand up to the small gangs, and their sons avoided
venturing too far away for fear of being kidnapped. The oldest son especially
was the most valued prey because the family would have to rush to pay a high
ransom to ensure the continuity of their lineage and appease the spirits of
their ancestors.
[…] on some rail lines of southern China, the
train almost never reached its destination without being attacked at least once
[by bandits]. In the province of Yunnan, highwaymen controlled most of the
roads, stopped and ransomed travelers, and those merchants who persisted in
pursuing their occupation, since commercial traffic ended up being choked off
or became more selective.
We forget, especially the libertarians among us, how
awful things were before the State pacified social relations. It was this
pacification that made free and open societies possible. It especially made the
market economy possible. Ironically, when the Communists wiped out
banditry—something no previous regime had managed to do—they also laid the
basis for their country’s future economic takeoff.
References
Anon. A History of Chinese Tattoos and Chinese Tattooing Traditions, Cultural China,
Feichtinger, G., A. Prskawetz, E. Gröller and G.
Fischel. (1996). Despotism and Anarchy in Ancient China: Visualizing the
Dynastic Cycle, Jahrbuch für
Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Review of Economics, 47, 1-13
Lucien, B. (1991). Compte rendu de Phil Billingsley,
Bandits in Republican China, Annales. Économies, societies, civilisations, 46, 126-127.
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/ahess_0395-2649_1991_num_46_1_278931_T1_0126_0000_000
Unz, R. (2013). How Social Darwinism made modern
China, The American Conservative,
March 11